by Box Set
The rest of the drive, Evelina doesn’t say a single fucking word, and by the time I’m pulling into the garage at the safe house, I’m pissed. After seven hours of silence, I’ve had enough. Leading her into the house, I check all of the locks and windows, making sure everything is still secure. Then rounding on Evelina, I put my hands on her shoulders and move my head to meet her gaze.
“You haven’t said two damn words to me all day, what the hell is wrong?” I ask, working to keep my voice level.
“I can’t do this with you, Luka. I’m fucking broken… how could you even want me after all this? Last night was perfect, but it was a mistake,” Evelina cries, tears flowing down her pretty face and dripping onto her shirt.
I can’t stop the flinch her words elicit from me, hearing her say what we did was a mistake.
Evelina looks away, not wanting to meet my eyes, but I don’t let her. She needs to face the fact I want her, and I know she wants me too. She is fighting against us, and even though I’ll never be able to make what I did to her right, I can damn well show her that while I’ll never be anything other than a bad man, I will always be good to her. Evelina will never need to fear me and what I’m capable of, because I will be a good man, just for her.
“You asked me why I didn’t kill you. The truth is, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There’s a light in you, Evelina, and not just in your name. You never gave up, and you never let them take it from you. You fucking shine, and it’s blinding, but I can’t look away.”
Her breathing hitches, and she lifts her gaze to mine. Hope, pure and unrestrained, is stark across her delicate features. Lifting my hand, I graze her cheek with my fingertips, lightly brushing against her soft skin.
“So, fucking, beautiful, Evelina” I murmur, breathing against her mouth.
I claim her lips with mine, swallowing the gasp that passes through them, and plunging my tongue in between. I want to taste her, to memorize the way her mouth molds with mine, and the way her hands clutch at me as though she never wants to let me go.
Evelina breaks the kiss, “I shouldn’t want this… I shouldn’t want you, Luka. But, I don’t know if I have the strength to fight.”
Laughing quietly, I brush the dark hair from her eyes, and I look deeply into them, “So don’t fight it then. Let it happen, Evelina.”
“I can’t forget everything that has happened… how we got here,” she whispers.
“I don’t expect you to. I’m so fucking sorry for what you went through because of me, and I’ll never be able to make amends for it. You shouldn’t forget it. I’m a bad fucking man, and you’re too damn sweet to be with a monster like me,” I tell her honestly, stroking her cheek with my fingertips.
“You're a better man than you think you are, Luka. You’re not a monster, not like them, no matter how much you might think it,” she protests, tears spilling down her cheeks and running over my fingers that are still resting there.
“I've killed people, Evelina. I was supposed to kill you,” I say. The words tasting bitter, like ash on my tongue.
Evelina shakes her head, but when she steps back I follow. I’d hunt this woman down to the ends of the earth if she made me because I can’t let her go. Without her fire, there’s nothing but darkness in me. Evelina brings out the specks of light lurking within my blackened soul. I’ve never told her that the meaning of our names are a perfect mirror, only mine doesn't reflect what's inside my heart and soul, not like hers.
EPILOGUE
LUKA
It’s been two weeks since we arrived at the safe house, and I can tell Evelina is worried about them catching up to us, no matter how many times I’ve told her that no one knows about this place. The name on all the ownership documents is vastly different from my own and is impossible to trace back to me. I made sure that there was no paper trail between this false identity and my own, erasing everything that could ever link it to me.
Even having explained this to Evelina, right down to the finer details of how I obliterated the man who helped to create this alias, she still worries. Shaking my head, I get up to look for her in the house. She’s restless, and I know being cooped up is bothering her after spending so long in captivity, but until I’m fully certain they’ve not tracked us down, I’ve put us both on house arrest, and the extra precautions haven’t eased Evelina’s worries.
The house is as unassuming as any other of the small houses in this town, which is around two hours drive from Moscow, and a very long way from where we were in Kazan. Although I never thought I’d use it, I always kept it as insurance in case I ever needed to disappear. I have enough money in the account tied with this identity to keep us afloat for a long time, and I’ve always kept the house well stocked with non-perishables for emergencies like this. It’s the perfect place to have taken Evelina. We’re in a quiet, dull town no one really visits, and the most interesting thing that’s likely to happen is a dog biting a mailman.
I find Evelina sitting in the living room by the window, watching the rain falling on the garden, and she looks the calmest I’ve seen her since we arrived here. When I come into the room, she turns to me and smiles, and I’m overwhelmed by the way it transforms her face. Evelina is breathtaking, and I know I’ll never get used to the effect she has on me.
I never thought I’d leave the organization in anything other than a bodybag, or be given the chance of a life that didn’t revolve around death and pain. But then again, I never imagined meeting a woman like Evelina. A damaged, yet strong woman who never gave up fighting, even when hope was nothing more than a whispered prayer in the darkness. She reached into the blackest parts of my soul, and fucking blinded me until I could see nothing but her.
“Luka,” she says, thoughtfully, “I want to stay here, I don’t want to run anymore.”
Lifting my eyebrows in surprise, I stare at Evelina unsure if I heard her correctly.
“I want to stay here,” she repeats firmly, certainty ringing through every word.
“Then I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe here, with me. No more running, beautiful,” I promise, feeling the words down to my fucking soul.
EVELINA
Some days I feel like the darkness inside Luka is going to eclipse me completely, and I’m not always sure if I can be the light he desperately craves or believes me to be. For too long I was kept in the shadows… used and abused by the monsters who made me their toy.
Even now, nearly a year after I escaped the hell beneath Maksim's home, I struggle to find the strength to stop looking back. I'll never be able to fully lay my past to rest. Some scars never fade, and the mental ones always cut the deepest. Nightmares still regularly plague my dreams, but as time passes, they're fewer and farther between.
The hardest thing for me to accept is that I’ll never get to see my mum again. Although the possibility crossed my mind the second time I was taken from her, it never really sank in until I was free. I'm still bound by my fear of the monsters who’d kill us if they ever found out where we're hiding, but as time passes, I’m beginning to believe I may finally be free.
Luka has his own demons to fight, but every day he subdues them in order to be the good man he promised to be for me. Honestly, I don't even know what I want, because I fell for the bad man: the devil in the dark who pulled me from my prison.
Luka hurt me, but he also saved me when I wasn't sure I could carry on. He’s everything I didn't know I needed, he's my knight in black armor, a shadow against the night. He’s my darkness, and I’m his light.
THE END
ABOUT ALLY VANCE
FIND ALLY HERE
Ally has been writing since she was a teenager, and studied Professional Writing at college. It has been a long time dream of hers to finally become a published author. She finally achieved this in 2018 with her Bestselling debut book, Flower in the Dark. Ally writes Dark Romance genre, and also poetry, she is willing to expand into other genres if the inspiration takes her. Ally also co-writes with
her close friend Michelle Brown under the pen name Ally Michelle. Ally lives in Kent, in the United Kingdom with her husband and stepson.
Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed EVELINA. If you could leave an honest review on Amazon and/or Goodreads, I’ll be forever grateful.
Keep turning the pages to read the rest of BLAIRE’S WORLD and the bonus extra: B L A I R E.
OLIVER
by
Anna Edwards
International Bestselling Author
Prologue
OLIVER
Age Eight
“On your knees,” orders the scarred man with the scary-looking weapon pointed at my father’s head. He doesn’t sound like I do. He has a different accent. The emphasis on his words is all different and letters like ‘r’ and ‘v’ are sharper. My papa looks so small. He’s always been a big man, but given I’m eight and only four and half foot in size, every adult looks gigantic to me. I was hidden away in the closet and told to be as silent as a mouse by my father when the strangers broke through the front door. I’m not entirely sure what they did to my mother, but I know it was bad. She screamed so loudly it hurt my eardrums, and I can’t hear right any longer. Three big men took turns to do things to her with the male parts of their bodies. I knew it was wrong just by looking at my father’s face and how sickly he looked. It broke him -- he is no longer the strong, indestructible man I know. For the first time in my life, I'm scared and not just of the monsters under my bed. The enormous roast chicken dinner I ate earlier isn’t sitting right in my tummy. I’m going to be sick.
“I said on your knees.” My father obeys the man with the gun and sinks to his knees with his head bowed low. “They warned you what would happen if you betrayed us. You think trying to hide out in England would stop us from finding you? He’s ours, and we’re here to take him.”
“Please.” The word falls from my father’s tongue in a desperate plea, but the man in charge just smirks. The corners of his mouth turning up into a grin that sends shivers down my spine. Before this night is out, I'll definitely be seeing my chicken dinner again.
Someone pulls my mother to her feet from where she’d been curled up in a ball after the three men had finished with her. Her eyes are glossed over as if she isn’t there anymore. I want to scream at them to leave her alone – she’s my mommy. The woman who tucks me into bed at night and sings me songs. She bakes me cakes and takes me to the park I like with the tall slide. Well, she was that woman, I don’t think she’ll ever be like that again. What they did to her, it wasn’t right. I turn away from the scene in front of me and wipe at the small tear that has tumbled down my cheek. Why is this happening? I try not to sob. I mustn’t give my hiding place away, but when a loud bang fills the room, I scream. My mother falls to the floor, her face looking toward me. Her eyes are lifeless, and there's a hole in the center of her head from which blood is dripping. I’m only eight, but I’m not stupid. She’s gone. Dead.
The door to my sanctuary is ripped open, and one man reaches in and yanks me out by the scruff of my collar. My initial reaction is to fight him as he drags me closer to the man with the gun, but my body is too terrified to even let out a squeak of protest.
“Privet, mal'chik.” The man with the gun addresses me, but I don’t understand what he’s saying. I stare at him with wide-open eyes full of terror.
“He doesn’t know Russian.” My father speaks. His eyes fill with tears as the grief of losing my mother, the woman he loved with all his heart, floods through his body.
“Another insult to our country.” The leader takes his tattooed hand and strikes it in a hard assault across my father’s face. Blood pools on my father’s lip, but he doesn’t try to wipe it away.
“Daddy!” I protest and try to get to my father’s side, but I’m being held tightly by the man who pulled me out of the cupboard.
“He’s no longer your father. You belong to us. We’re your family now,” the scarred man informs me.
“No,” – I spit at him, but he laughs at me – “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Looking down at my feet, I see the blood from my mother flowing around my shoe. I jump back, not wanting it to touch me, knowing it should flow inside her and not across the floor.
“Get used to the sight of blood, mal’chik. It’s been your destiny since the day you were born.”
I shake my head, put my hands over my ears, and screw my eyes shut tight. If I can’t hear and see this man, I wonder whether he'll go away. This will all be just a terrible nightmare. I’ll wake up, and my mommy will be sitting at the end of the bed, singing about mockingbirds buying me diamond rings.
It doesn’t work, though, for my hands are pulled away from my ears and held down at my side.
“You’ve made him weak. How can he be a soldier when he shies away like a coward?” the scarred man spits out at my father.
“I don’t want to be a soldier,” I sulk, but he laughs at me again. “I don’t! I want to be a footballer like the men on the television.” Every Saturday my father and I go to watch our local team play their matches in the Premier League, and then, on Sunday morning, we go to the park where I play for a team called ‘The Red Diamonds’. They’ve told me I could make it as a player. There’s even been talk of getting a scout out to come and watch me. I’d love to play as a professional footballer when I’m older. They are like heroes out on the field of play: glamorous stars who weave magic with a small round ball. I don’t want to be a soldier. I want to be a footballer.
“Well, you're about to learn the harshest lesson of your life then. We don’t always get what we want, not when you're born inside the Russian mafia. Your life is already mapped out for you. It happened to me and your father – except he tried to leave and hide. But nobody ever escapes their destiny, in this world.”
His words sound ominous. Destiny has no meaning to me other than as something that will happen when I grow up, and I’m not ready to do that, yet. But when the man in front of me hits my father, again, I know I won’t have a choice. My childhood has just ended.
“Stop it,” I tell him, my voice coming out as a squeak rather than a commanding demand. “Let my daddy go.”
Scarred man kneels down in front of me.
“Why?” he questions, and it stuns me.
“Why, what?”
“Why let your father go?”
“Because he’s a good man.”
“A good man who watched while his wife was raped and murdered but did nothing. A man who stole a child from the Russian mafia and ran away like a coward. That doesn’t sound like a good man to me.”
I gulp. How am I supposed to answer that? I don’t even understand half of what he’s saying to me.
“He loves me.” I utter weakly to the man in front of me. His eyes scare me the most, even more than the scars or crooked nose. They are dark like the night sky, in fact, almost pure black as if he’s the devil himself and not a real human being.
“Love doesn’t exist in our world.” He shoves the gun into my hand, and I stare, horrified, down at it. It’s heavy for my small wrists, but what shocks me the most is how cold it is. I thought it would be warm given he’d been holding it for a long time, but it isn’t. The weapon is icy to the touch. “Kill him,” scarred man orders.
I jump back, my eyes going so wide they must seem like saucers to those around me.
“No,” I tell him.
He takes another gun from the man standing behind me, and cocking the weapon, he places it at my temple.
“Kill him,” he orders again. My father nods at me, silently acknowledging I must do as I’m told. But I can’t. The weapon is too heavy, and my hands are shaking so much that I’d be a liability if I even tried. I could hold it and shoot scarred man, instead, but I know that will do me little good. I hold the weapon up and point it toward my father. I just want all the pain over with but can’t watch what I’m about to do, so I shut my eyes and pull the trigger. The ferocity of the shot knocks me off my feet and on
to the floor. I drop the weapon like it’s poison and dare to look toward where my father is. He’s still alive, and he doesn’t appear to be bleeding from anywhere he wasn’t before. What happened?
“I think we will need to work on his aim.”
“That will come.” Scarred man picks his gun up, and pointing it directly at my father, he pulls the trigger. I shudder when his blood and other matter splatters all over me. They’re dead: both of my parents. I’m alone. “Bring him. We have a lot of work to do. His father was once one of the best – it will be in his blood. We just have to keep him away from the whores who’ll distract him with their magical pussies. Oliver Volkov, ‘the wolf’ – more like a wimpy little pup. But nothing a good beating won’t solve.”
A big hand wraps itself around the collar of my shirt and drags me and my uncooperative legs across the floor. I turn and take a final look at the bloodbath ending of my parents. One day, I’ll get revenge for this. One day, I’ll become the man my father wanted me to be. Today is not that day, though. For now, I must embrace the darkness and hope I don’t lose my way.
1
OLIVER
Twenty years later
My clenched fist slams hard into scarred man’s face. It’s the most satisfying punch I’ve ever thrown. I vowed I’d get revenge twenty years ago, and today will be that day. I’m sure the emotion coursing through my body should feel bitter, or some crap like that, but it doesn’t. It’s beautiful like one of the picturesque sunsets people rave about over the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean. I might take a little vacation there with my payment from this job. See if what they say is true. Although, I know in my heart nothing will ever be as captivating as watching the sniveling piece of shit in front of me, bleeding and pleading for his life. How the tides have turned. I flex my fingers before balling them again and throwing another punch his way,
