by SR Jones
I am so fucked. How the hell can I get out of this mess? I can’t confess to Andrius. Me being a girl who wanted to hurt Allyov is worse than what Andrius thinks about me; that I am a regular waitress who Allyov took interest in for his lead gun-for-hire.
Maybe I could seduce Andrius the way I had planned to seduce Allyov, and then try to get him to let me go and tell Allyov to leave me be. He terrifies me though, as much as he attracts me. I’d hardly be sexually alluring stammering, stuttering, and shaking my way through a botched seduction.
Justina might help, maybe, but if I leave, I’m in danger. Allyov and his men have their tentacles everywhere. They have connections in law enforcement, the local councils, social services, and local businesses both big and small. You name it, and I’d bet good money on Allyov having a connection within it.
It means, even if I manage to get away, they can still find me. The only way I’m safe now is if I’m under Andrius’ protection. Either here with him, or out there as his ex-lover, but someone he still cares about. Allyov won’t buy the second option unless I’ve spent a lot of time with Andrius.
Andrius has said he won’t hurt me, perhaps I ought to give him the benefit of the doubt and be a good little captive. Give him no trouble so he’ll keep me, and persuade him in a few months he can let me go with a flashing neon sign on my head saying I am under his protection?
For now, I have no choice as I’m locked in my room packing my things. Maybe when I get to the country house, there will be more of a chance for me to get away, if I so choose.
Twenty minutes later and the key goes in the door. It’s Justina; she’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Her body is amazing; toned, strong, and lithe. She’s taller than me, and with her thick, glossy brown hair, she’s the sort of woman whose looks I envy.
“Come.” She gestures for me to follow her.
Doing as she says, I grab my two bags, filled with clothes, toiletries, and three books, along with my Russian dolls because they are so precious to me; I don’t want to leave them behind.
When I reach the bottom of the stairs, the door to the outside is wide open. For an adrenaline-charged moment, I contemplate dashing out of it and running. Footsteps stomping toward the open door temper my momentary hope.
Andrius is in front of me, staring down at me before he takes my bags and hoists them over his shoulder. I follow him outside and watch as he shoves my bags into the boot of a huge car, black with tinted windows. It reminds me of the cars Dad and I sometimes used to see important government figures being driven about London in. Justina reaches him and gives him her bag.
They both have their backs to me. The driveway beckons. Freedom calling me. Before I can stop to think about it, to let my mind catch up with the instinct screaming through me, my legs and arms are pumping as I race for the road. I open my mouth, suck in air, and prepare to scream for help when the oxygen I’m mainlining is abruptly cut off.
A warm hand covers my mouth, and a steel band slams into my middle. Then my legs are kicking uselessly at the driveaway as I’m dragged backwards and thrown unceremoniously into the back seat of the car, as if I’m one of the bags.
The door slams on me and clicks locked. I scrabble around trying to find the lock in the dim light so I can open it, but before I find it the front doors open and Justina and Andrius take their seats.
He shoots me and annoyed glance, but it’s the only sign he’s ruffled at all.
“The back has child locks that cannot be opened by the passengers. Useful for someone in my job,” he says with a cold smile. “You can’t get out. Stop making life difficult for you and me.”
He puts the key in the ignition and smoothly guides the car into drive.
He’s so bloody cold and calm, and it’s scarier than if he lost his temper and shouted at me.
Once we join the traffic on the main road, my panic worsens. I hate being locked in; it makes me restless. As if something is building inside me and I’ll explode if I can’t move about according to my own wishes. I used to be like this on long train journeys. Dad once took me to Edinburgh, and I fidgeted and fussed the whole way there. Drove him crazy. At least then I could have gotten off the train at any number of stops if I’d wanted to. Now, I’m truly stuck.
“So, what did you pack?” Justina turns to me with a friendly smile.
“A few clothes, my toiletries.” I don’t want to be her pretend best friend.
“A swimsuit?”
I shake my head. Why the hell would I pack a swimsuit? Anyway, I don’t own one. “No.”
“Oh, well, you can borrow one of mine. It will be a little big on you but should fit enough to stay up.”
“Why would I need a swimsuit?”
“So we can go in the pool.”
I gawp at Andrius who flicks his eyes to me for a split second in the rearview mirror.
“You have a pool?” I ask him.
“Yes.”
“It’s gorgeous. Definitely borrow one of mine, and we can have a nice afternoon relaxing by it one day, weather permitting.” Justina turns and gives me a brief smile.
“I brought my swimming costume and some running shoes, because a girl needs to work out.” She turns toward the front. “Oh, all my makeup so I can look beautiful.” She bats her lashes at Andrius who glances her way and grins.
He grins.
It transforms his face. The expression is genuine, and it’s affectionate. Smile lines fan down from his eyes, and a dimple pops in his cheek. I can’t stop staring. He’s so gorgeous I want to eat him up. And Justina is the one who made him shine like this. A bitter, acrid pang of something akin to jealousy stabs at me. I shouldn’t care that he clearly has feelings of one sort or another for her.
“A fancy dress, in case Andrius stops being boring and decides to take us out.” Justina continues with her list. “A pack of cards and some dice, so we can play farkle, and a few books.”
“Not the thing you were reading the last time about the billionaire and his kinky dungeon.” Andrius sounds truly horrified. “If it is, please don’t read anymore of it out loud to me.”
“No.” She pouts. “This time I brought serious books. Charles Dickens and Shakespeare. Ugh.”
“I love Dickens,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Really?” She turns again, giving me a glimpse of her gorgeous eyes. “I find him so incredibly boring, but I’m trying to improve my reading habits.”
I shrug. “I think you ought only to read what you like. I don’t believe in having to force yourself to read something.”
“This is what I think,” she says. “But my girlfriend keeps telling me to read some of the classics, so this week I will force myself to try.”
She rolls her eyes.
Girlfriend? She might mean a girl who is a friend, or she might mean a girlfriend; in which case she and Andrius aren’t anything more than bizarrely close employer and employee.
The little thrill of excitement I experience at the idea of her not being involved with Andrius in any romantic way disgusts me, and I force it down.
“If you want to read a classic, try Pride and Prejudice,” I tell her. “You would probably enjoy it, and I have a copy with me.”
“I haven’t read it, but I have seen the TV version.” She mock fans her face. “Mr. Darcy.”
“Oh, yeah, Mr. Darcy.” Even being transported to a mysterious country house with two psychopaths can’t seem to dim my love for Mr. Darcy because I find myself joining in with her delight.
“He’s so … I don’t know. He is the one man who might turn me,” she says with a giggle, and I have my answer.
She’s not with Andrius. She’s not bi, judging by her last sentence.
“You know, he probably wasn’t a nice man,” Andrius pipes up.
She shoots him an incredulous look. “So says the Russian hitman.”
He swears at her in Ukrainian. I don’t remember most of the language, but I know there are a few curses in there.
&nb
sp; “Okay”—she holds her hands up—“a Ukrainian hitman for the Russian mob.”
“Mr. Darcy was a gentleman and a kind and good man,” I say, sounding so prim I want to smack myself.
“He was a wealthy man in Regency England, which meant either he, his father, or his grandfather made their money in ways which I can promise you were not kind,” Andrius says.
“Well, he was old money, so maybe his fortune didn’t come from nasty things.”
“Old money? So, they were born to that land forever? Back for centuries and centuries?” Andrius once again catches my eye in the mirror, his lips twitching. “Or did they at some point take the land, or receive it after it was taken from others?”
“Andrius is still something of a revolutionary,” Justina says.
I can’t believe what is happening. I am in a car discussing Jane Austen and politics of the British Empire with a bratva hitman and his … whatever Justina is. It’s so surreal it takes away my ability to speak for a moment.
“I see I have convinced you of the error of loving Mr. Darcy with my profound intellectual arguments,” Andrius deadpans.
“Nothing Mr. Darcy did or did not do would stop me from loving him.” It’s a joke, but as soon as I say it, I see Andrius once more look to me.
“So, you’d love a man who did bad things?”
Oh, this conversation is heading in a weird direction.
“Only Mr. Darcy,” I say firmly.
“He would probably have been portly with a weak chin too,” Andrius says this final insult to my literary hero before focusing on the road.
“He so wouldn’t,” I mutter under my breath.
“We will be turning off the main roads in about twenty minutes, and then it’s another thirty minutes or so; do you need to stop for a bathroom break?” Andrius asks me, much to my surprise.
“How do you know I won’t run away?” I ask.
“Because I will be going right up to the door of the toilets with you, and Justina will be going inside with you and standing outside your stall. Because if you do run away, what will you do? Go to the police? That’s a bullet to the head straightaway once Allyov or his men find you. Run away and keep on moving? They won’t stop looking for you. When they find you, they will ship you off to the Middle East, and you’ll be nothing more than a whore. So, unless you are intensely stupid, which you do not seem to be, I don’t think running is a good idea.”
“No,” I spit out. “I don’t need the fucking toilet.”
“Okay.” His calm demeanor infuriates me.
For the rest of the journey, I fume in silence. We are on a long, winding country road, and I feel more than a little car sick when the indicator panel clicks on, dragging me out of my introspection.
I look up to see Andrius turning the car to face a huge gate. He gets his phone out and punches something into it. A second later, the gates swing open.
As the car drives through, I notice there are cameras on top of the gates, and they track our progress.
We head up a long, winding drive. It’s lined with trees on either side. Beyond them are rolling green fields, and at one point we go over a small bridge with a bubbling brook flowing beneath it.
This place is gorgeous. I wonder if there’s a development of houses on it, like where he lives in the city.
We round a bend, and I gasp. In front of me is a house which after our discussion of Pride and Prejudice immediately makes me think of Pemberley. It’s not as large and grand as I imagine that house to be, but this is a bona fide country estate.
The house is made of sandstone I think, and it looks old. It’s also huge.
I know a few of these old houses have been turned into luxury flats, and I bet Andrius has bought a unit in one of those conversions. It explains the pool too. I bet the place has a gym. Nice.
We near the house, and the drive turns to gravel as Andrius sweeps up by the front door. I expect there’s a concierge and wait for the door to open and someone to come and get our bags. Nothing happens.
I glance at the building and see there’s only one door. A huge, shiny black double door. No bells or buzzers for separate apartments inside.
Andrius climbs out of the car and immediately comes and opens my door for me.
He glances at my face and frowns. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
“I get car sick,” I say, still unable to stop staring at the house.
“Do you like it?” Justina asks as she comes around the car, grinning at me.
“Is it all yours?” I ask Andrius confused. “The whole thing?”
He nods. “Yes. All mine. We can talk here, we have privacy. It’s been checked out.”
I hear what he’s saying, but it doesn’t really compute because Andrius—rough, terrifying Andrius—owns a fucking mansion.
“It’s not a patch on Pemberley,” Andrius says with a small smile. “Probably more akin to the house Elizabeth Bennet lived in. I love it, though.”
I can’t get my head around the fact he reads the classics, owns a mansion … and kills people in cold blood.
The man is an enigma. A stunningly handsome, charismatic, mercurial enigma, and I’m his prisoner. I don’t know whether I’ve landed on my feet or am the unluckiest woman in the world!
“Come on inside ,and let’s get you settled into a room.” Justina takes my arm and pulls me toward the door as Andrius punches a code into an alarm on the outside of the door, shielding the numbers from my view with his body. He does the same again to an alarm on the inside. Yep, he’s one paranoid man.
Nervous, but also intrigued, I step into his lair.
Chapter 5
Andrius
Violet brushes by me as she steps into my home. Her scent hits me, soft and sweet with a hint of something a little richer and darker. Justina always wears strong scents. Don’t-fuck-with-me scents. Like her clothes. Her skintight jeans, t-shirts, biker boots with chunky heels and chains. Justina is stunning, but she isn’t soft. Nothing about her is, and I can’t blame her for it at all, not with how life has treated her.
Violet though, she’s soft. Big eyes, soft lips, soft hair, gorgeous, natural tits, I bet are soft as a pillow. I don’t normally do soft. Justina and I will never be anything other than friends, but Justina is much more my type in the sense she’s hardened and worldly, not in the sense she looks like my sister.
The two women I have a fuck buddy arrangement with are both leggy and overtly sexy in a way Violet isn’t. Violet is a stunning woman, but she can hide it. Some baggy clothes, messy hair, and you’d have to look at her properly to see the beauty in her classical bone structure. She’s petite and sweet, whilst still being seductive in a way I haven’t seen in a long while. Best of all, I don’t think she has any idea of how hot she is, which only makes her more appealing.
I resist the urge to lean into her, to touch her in some way; instead, I give her a wide berth, stepping back to give her space to get into the house.
She moves a few steps inside and stops. Then she puts her arms out and slowly turns around, her eyes wide as she looks around the impressive entrance. When I first bought this place, it fucking blew my mind. It needed tender loving care, and I spent as much cash on giving it a face lift as I did on purchasing it. Over time though, it has become ordinary to me. I enjoy being here because of the solitude and safety, but the grandeur … I have become inured to it.
Now, I see my home through Violet’s eyes, and it gives me a sense of pride at the awe shining in her gaze. It also makes me look anew at the hard work I put in. I hired people to do some of the technical stuff, of course, but I did a lot of the backbreaking work myself.
It cost millions to get this place habitable and comfortable.
“I can’t believe you live here.” Violet finally stops turning and stares at me with wide, sparkling eyes.
Ever since Allyov took her, she’s been scared, her gaze dull, flat. Now, it’s alive with wonder. Her eyes are sparkling, and in the bright light of t
he hallway I see their color properly for the first time. They’re a deep blue with an almost purple tint. Violet eyes. I wonder if that is why she was named Violet?
Looking around me, I see what she’s taking in. The stone flooring, the huge ceiling with the rose I had restored, and the chandelier. A staircase leads to the next floor, the deep, warm wood paneling glows in the light streaming in through the mullion windows. It’s stunningly beautiful, and I found myself growing used to it.
Worse, some days, in certain lights, I would look at it and the walls would almost glow red, reminding me I bought this place with blood money.
“I don’t understand,” Violets says. “You work for Allyov, but you must have more money than him.”
I sigh. “Before I got involved with Allyov, I did mercenary work, interrogations in particular, and that pays extremely well.”
She nods but then frowns. “Why would you leave better paid work to do … things for Allyov? It doesn’t make sense.”
Oh, it makes perfect sense to me, for my plan, but I’m not about to tell little Violet here that. I shrug. “I got sick of travelling all over the world and wanted to put down roots. I like England, but there isn’t much call for off-the-book interrogation work here. I knew Allyov from Russia, and I began to work for him.”
“So, the money to buy this you made doing mercenary work?” she asks.
I nod. “Yes. I made good investments too. When I saw this place for sale over a year ago, I bought it. It was cheap because it was listed, and it needed a lot of work. Doing it up cost more than buying it.”
“Wow, you did this? Restored it?” She points to the wood paneling and the windows, and I smile.
“Yes, I did, with help from architects I hired and workmen. But I did a lot of it too. Justina helped me.”
She smiles at me.
