Chapter 11 Gift-Wrapped for a Predator #2
I didn’t touch the wine. Kira barely touched the food.
Felix, of course, wouldn’t shut up. He had the grin of a man who thought he owned the world already.
“I must say,” he told Pakhan, “your daughter is... radiant.”
She gave him a tight smile and reached for wine.
Pakhan puffed his cigar, beaming. “She’s untouched, you know. Pure. I kept her that way for someone deserving.”
Kira’s eyes widened, a deep flush spreading across her face as if the words physically slapped her.
I nearly choked on my food.
She shot me a glance—quick, anxious—before casting her gaze downward, cheeks still burning.
“Dad—” she began, her voice strained.
He dismissed her with a flick of his hand.
“Let a man speak truth at his own dinner table,” he said, lounging back with smug satisfaction. “She’s got fire, this one. But that’ll be good for the bloodline.”
Felix leaned in slightly, his grin stretching wider, teeth glinting. “Oh, I enjoy fire.”
I gripped my fork so tightly my knuckles went white.
I didn’t realize I was staring until her eyes locked with mine and then neither of us looked away. No one noticed. No one said a word. They were too busy laughing, drinking, celebrating this fucked-up arrangement.
It was just her. And me. And everything unsaid between us.
Her gaze burned through me, unwavering but fractured around the edges. Her jaw was tight, her chest rising like she’d been holding her breath since the moment he spoke. This wasn’t the look of a girl playing games.
She stared like tears were seconds away. Like she hated every second of this dinner but hated me more for seeing the truth in her eyes. And still, even now, she watched me like she needed my hands, my mouth, my everything—to burn this shame off her skin.
I held her gaze, my jaw ticking, heart hammering. Furious didn’t begin to cover it.
She didn’t tell me. And I hadn’t asked. I’d been too busy using her like a toy, dragging every moan and tear out of her throat because it turned me on. And she let me. Hell—she gave it to me. Her mouth. Her inexperience. Her fucking first.
Had I known what she was giving me—what it meant—would it have changed anything? Would I have stopped myself before it happened?
No. Because I’ve never claimed to be a good man. I’ve never pretended to be the kind of person who does the right thing when desire’s pulling at my spine like a trigger.
But now that I knew—now that the truth pressed into my skin like a burn—that she’d never done that before, not with anyone... and she gave it to me so easily? So recklessly?
Like it was nothing.
No. Like it was everything.
The realization wrapped a fist around my throat. My body responded before my mind could catch up—arousal, anger, shame. My hands clenched under the table.
She disappeared after dinner without a word. Slipped away like a shadow. Up the stairs. Light caught her nape—pale, naked, fragile—right before the dark swallowed her.
Pakhan poured another drink and slapped my shoulder like I was his favorite son. “Maksym. You really saved me a headache with that judge. Kyiv owes you.”
I nodded, but the words stuck in my throat. I couldn’t trust myself to speak without snapping.
She was untouched. And I’d already stained that.
—Kira—
Islammed the door behind me and turned the lock with shaking fingers. The echo of laughter and clinking glasses from the dining hall still rang in my ears, but it felt like it belonged to another world. One I wanted no part of.
I didn’t bother with lights. Just stumbled through the dark, peeled off my shoes, and collapsed onto the mattress. The sheets did nothing to soothe the sting beneath my skin.
Tears burned in my eyes before I could stop them. Not the soft kind—the hot, angry kind. The kind that scorched.
Fuck him.
Fuck all of them.
Felix. That smug, sleazy bastard with his gel-slicked hair and that fox-faced smirk. The son of “the biggest businessman in Moscow,” as my father liked to brag. As if that title meant anything except criminal royalty.
And now he was trying to sell me to him.
I’d known Felix was coming days before he arrived. The moment my father mentioned his name, something cold had settled in my gut. So I did what I always did when fear started circling—I looked for proof.
I looked him up.
Not in Russian. Never in Russian. That would’ve been pointless.
I searched in English. German. French. Anything foreign enough that he—the so-called businessman—couldn’t erase.
It didn’t take long.
There weren’t many articles—only two that hadn’t been scrubbed yet—but they were enough.
His father wasn’t just a “businessman.” He was a predator with money and lawyers.
Women had come forward years ago. Quietly.
Carefully. One article mentioned a model hospitalized with broken ribs and a shattered jaw, her face so swollen she was barely recognizable.
Another talked about a former girlfriend who vanished after filing a complaint—her statement retracted days later, her social media wiped clean, her name never mentioned again.
There had been no charges. No consequences. Only a suffocating silence that followed every whisper of what he had done.
And Felix? He was his son. Molded in that same image, nurtured by a man who knew no boundaries, who lived in the dark spaces where laws didn’t reach.
I’d stared at the screen that night, my reflection faintly mirrored in the glass, thinking—this is my future.
And my father—he knew. He always knew. He just didn’t give a damn.
Power mattered more. Strategic alliances. Political currency. My life, my body, my future—they were nothing more than leverage on his chessboard.
The way Felix spoke—oily and too familiar—made my stomach twist. Every word slithered from his mouth like he already owned me, like I was something he’d paid for and couldn’t wait to unwrap.
I could still feel his gaze—slow, invasive, undressing me across the table like he was already imagining what he’d do with me once the papers were signed.
I was expected to accept it. To lie back and play my part, like a well-trained daughter at the altar of family duty.
Like hell.
Then came the final blow. Casual. Cruel. Delivered like a toast.
Of course it had been my father. Why was I even surprised anymore?
“She’s still untouched,” he’d said, as if it were some rare virtue he had personally safeguarded all these years.
He hadn’t even looked at me. Just lobbed the words into the room like I was furniture.
Like it was a command he’d enforced my entire life.
Because that’s what it was. A rule he’d said out loud the day I turned eighteen.
Be a good girl. Your husband deserves a pure bride.
Don’t ruin that before he gets you. One sentence that explained everything—the locked gates, the bodyguards, the rules.
No dating. No parties. No stepping outside without permission. No life.
Even when I did manage to sneak out—to a club, to a party—it’s not like I ever let anyone near me. What would be the point? Fucking someone in a bathroom stall just to spite him?
The boys from school were pathetic. Rich, preppy cowards with their father’s money and politics. They talked like their dicks came with investment portfolios. Nothing about them made me feel anything except boredom and contempt.
And the men I met through my father? Corrupt, old, disgusting. Just like him. Just like Felix.
But Maksym…
He was the first one I wanted. The only one I craved. The only man who ever looked at me like I was chaos and beauty wrapped in fire. The only one I wanted to set me alight.
I squeezed my eyes shut, shame rushing through me like a fever. My face burned. I couldn’t tell what stung more—the humiliation, or the way Maksym had looked at me after.
He was pissed. I could see it. I felt it, even across the room. And now he’d never touch me again.
I rolled onto my side, pulled the covers over my head, but it did nothing to stop the ache. It sat in my chest like a stone.
My fingers itched.
I almost reached for the pills. My mother’s little white saviors, hidden behind the drawer lining.
But something stopped me.
Instead, I reached beneath the mattress and pulled out the sketchbook. My pencil was still inside the spiral.
I didn’t think. I just started to draw. Lines. Shadows. Sharp angles.
I drew his jaw first—Felix’s. Then his nose. His eyes, too close together. I dragged the pencil hard enough to dent the paper.
I didn’t realize I was snarling under my breath until I paused to breathe.
The sketch began to twist. Not just a portrait anymore. Something darker. Something ugly.
The way I saw him.
The way he made me feel.
And I kept going, tears streaking silently down my face, rage carving itself into every line.