by Lana Sky
Maxim’s shoulders stiffen as he pulls me along, rippling with tension not even his cold, expressionless mask can hide.
I can barely see my hand in front of my face—it’s that dark in here. It’s as if the person who designed this place wanted to make sure that, even on a sunny day, very little light would reach the interior. Dark walls and polished wood create a harsh contrast between light and shadow. Very few items of furniture or decoration add any definition to the rooms we pass, either. Just winding hallways that make each footstep echo for what seems like miles.
Finally, the woman, who I assume is a maid, stops near a doorway and then darts away. I catch only a glimpse of the room from over Maxim’s shoulder before he drags me inside.
It looks like a study. Shelves of leather-bound books frame an open space where a man is sitting behind a mahogany desk. He’s handsome in a harsh way, with stark features framed by blond hair, streaked with gray. Like Maxim, he’s wearing black: a tailored suit with flashing silver cufflinks.
He spares one look in our direction and it suddenly feels colder here than it did outside.
“Maximov…” His voice is raspy, distorted by a heavy accent. “I was wondering when you would finally scurry before me.” He extends his right hand, displaying a silver ring on his thumb.
Maxim says nothing. Does nothing. Frozen in place, he stands at the mouth of the room, still holding me by my wrist. There’s no life in his touch. I might as well be held by a goddamn statue. Looking at his face, I can’t discern anything from his gaze. Not anger. Not even fear.
He’s soulless.
An icy dread washes over me. It is the same feeling I got when he nearly beat me to death with a belt. And when he spilled the dark secrets of his childhood. Like he’s not really here but far away, reliving a horror no one else can see.
“Did you hear me?” The man raises his hand again, reaching out over the surface of the desk this time. Two of his fingers flicker in a silent command. “Show some respect, mal’chik.”
That name cuts through Maxim like a knife. One ragged inhale and he’s alive again. In one smooth motion, he crosses over to the desk, but his grip on me doesn’t let up and he hauls me forward as well. Once he’s close enough, he lowers his head in order to brush the surface of the ring with his lips.
“Grandfather,” he grates out before returning to his full height.
Terror smothers my shock. His grandfather. The one responsible for his stoma.
Anatoli.
Does he hate this man? When the two finally lock gazes, I can’t tell. Maxim seems farther away than ever.
Chilled and distant, his voice rings out. “You called for me?”
Anatoli scoffs. “Men are called. But boys?” He rises to his feet and has to stoop to keep his head from brushing the edge of a hanging chandelier—he’s that tall. “Boys are whipped into submission.” There’s an unexpected grace in the way he moves from behind the desk and advances on our position.
With every step he takes, the tension coiled in Maxim’s grip gets tighter…tighter… Like a fucking powder keg ready to blow. When the man places a hand on his shoulder, the pressure on my wrist intensifies. Fuck, I swear for a second that he might break it.
“It’s been a long time,” the man says softly. “But your current results have disappointed me. Perhaps you need another lesson in how to be a man, mal’chik?”
Maxim’s entire body vibrates. His grip becomes iron, his nails piercing my skin. I can’t swallow my gasp—and then Anatoli finally seems to notice me here.
“You brought a toy.” The disapproving tone cuts through me, but just as quickly, he returns his attention to his grandson. “After all this time, one might think you’d learned your lesson. Are you aiming to insult me?”
The question strikes like a knife. To bear the impact, Maxim grits his teeth, his expression blank.
“Or maybe she’s a toy for Sevastyn?” Anatoli wonders. “A thank-you for cleaning up your mess.”
For a brief second, shock disrupts Maxim’s hardened mask. “Sevastyn?” he says, grating the name between his teeth. “You requested an audience with me—”
“Don’t play the fool, Maxi.” The voice comes from a man who appears in the doorway, and I have to blink just to dispel a sense of déjà vu. With long, wild, blond hair and dark eyes, he is Maxim’s twin—just as massive and just as intimidating. His face is thinner though, bonier, and where Maxim scowls, he smiles. “Don’t pretend that you don’t know what this is about.” He runs a hand along his black suit, flicking away invisible dust. “Or perhaps the rumors are true? All these years have made you soft.”
“Grandfather,” Maxim says, focusing solely on the man near the desk. “If you want to discuss business, you speak to me. In private—”
“Oh?” Sevastyn chuckles. “And what should be private, Maximov? The mess you’ve made within the past month? Or the punishment that awaits should you fail? Again?” His lips pull back from yellowed teeth as he flicks his thumb along the stubble on his chin. “Perhaps my father is right and a lesson may be in order? I still remember a trick or two to bring you to heel—and you certainly need reminding of your place. Rumors have spread. That you’ve made an enemy you shouldn’t have.”
“I have the right to defend my interests,” Maxim says coldly.
“Do you?” Anatoli waves his hand dismissively. “Or are you too busy settling personal scores? Send your toy away. Now.”
Maxim steps forward, nudging me behind him. “Go.”
I don’t think twice before escaping into the hall. The door closes behind me, but my ears pick up noise they shouldn’t: low murmurs dominated by a raspy growl I know to be Maxim’s. Most of the conversation is too distorted to make out—Russian, I think—but I can tell from the insistent tone that it’s an argument. A heated one.
When the door finally opens again, Maxim looms behind it, leaning against the doorway as if for support. His lack of stability isn’t what sends my pulse racing, however. It’s his eyes; they’re fixed ahead of him, hollow and black. Dead.
Behind him strolls Sevastyn, his teeth bared. “I hope you understand, dear nephew,” he says, placing his hand on Maxim’s shoulder. “Blood may be blood, but business is business. Though I’m not averse to mixing it with pleasure.” His gaze cuts to me. “Is this one of the morsels from your club? A bit scrawny—”
“She’s no one,” Maxim replies in haltingly clear English. “And I do understand. But”—a shadow flickers over his face and he stares down at his shoulder and violently shrugs off the hand on it—“Anatoli or not, you touch me again and I will kill you.”
“Is that so?” A mocking laugh chases him over the threshold. “Next time, leave your toys at home, mal’chik. Perhaps then you can face me like a man.”
When Maxim’s gaze finally focuses on me, I tremble. From head to fucking toe. The instinct to run is almost too strong to swallow down, rising up the back of my throat. My legs twitch, my knees knocking together. His expression…
I only saw him like this one other time.
That very first day when, to him, I was nothing more than a nameless whore.
Replaceable.
But I’m not. The pathetic assurance comes from some distant, naive part of my brain as he steps past me and advances down the hallway. His hand shoots out, snatching me forward. Like iron, his grip dominates my wrist, radiating possession and I can breathe again. I’m the only one he’s kept.
The only one to stay.
Despite the contract.
Despite everything.
Chapter Six
He takes me back to his suite. Without a word spoken, he storms into his sculpting room and I linger in the foyer for hours, listening to him work. Hammer. Pound.
Destroy.
Only God knows what set him off this time. Eventually, he calls to me, his voice a rasp. “Come here.”
I step toward him, fighting to keep my fear from showing on my face. Then I fail. My bottom lip tr
embles, and the corner of his mouth flicks down in response: a dangerous frown.
“Do you know what you saw today?”
It takes me three tries to suck in enough air to reply. “No.”
“Of course not.” His eyes lose their hungry gleam as that beautiful mouth straightens into a cold, lethal line. It’s only now that I realize he’s covered in dust. The grayish sheen makes him look frozen in the cold air around us. “My organization was nearly ripped from my fucking hands. My business.” He stares down at his fingers, flexing them in and out of fists. “Everything I’ve worked for. Why?”
He lets the question hang in the air, but in the end, he comes up with his own answer.
“Maybe I’ve been distracted…”
It’s dark in this room, but the glow from the sculpture area gives definition to his body, highlighting the sweat and signs of exertion I didn’t notice before. His hair is damp, his body rippling with tension.
“Look at me.”
I don’t even notice him move until it’s too late. Upon grabbing my chin, he wrenches it back so that I have no choice but to meet his gaze again. His fingers creep down to my throat, tightening. Squeezing.
Choking.
This isn’t a sexual game. His eyes don’t hold a shred of warmth or lust. Just ice.
Alarmed, I use my hands to claw at his grip. “M-Max—”
“I could kill you,” he says, dangerously soft. “I could. Maybe I should?” His grip tightens to cut off my windpipe entirely. “Before they do it for me.”
I wheeze as my pulse surges in a futile rhythm. He’s holding too tight. Too long. Just as spots speckle my vision…
He shoves me back.
Weightless, I crash into the leather chaise on the other side of the room. Air wheezes in and out of my chest as my eyes burn and overflow. My throat is on fire. For what feels like an eternity, I can’t stop gagging until I bring up bile that coats the floor. When I finally get my bearings, he’s gone, slamming the door behind him.
And I’m left alone in hell.
Around me is a mess of disheveled pillows. A lamp was knocked over and is in pieces on the floor. The chaise is askew.
Unease twists my stomach into knots and I have to curl up on my side as I process what happened. Something tells me, even before I reach up to feel the tender skin along my throat, that his grip will leave a mark.
“I could kill you,” he said.
How close did he come to doing just that?
You don’t want to know, a part of me warns as more burning tears spill down my cheeks. You don’t fucking want to know.
We had a cat a few years ago. Some stray Daisy had let in and Ainsley had enough heart to name. Whiskers, or something like that, I think. Something stupid. Forgettable. I only let her stay around for as long as she did because she’d go after the mice or roaches every now and again.
I saw her trap one once. For the longest time, she watched it scuttle around, just out of her reach, before swiping at it with her paw—but she didn’t kill it. Not right then. For what seemed like hours, she wounded it bit by bit, letting the poor thing get just far enough away to tease escape before capturing it again.
It was only when it gave up the fight that she put the poor bastard out of its misery. Sometimes she didn’t even eat it. The game was enough to fulfill her—until it wasn’t. Boredom was her prey’s final sin, and only then would it face the ultimate punishment.
It’s funny how those warning signs witnessed in a wild alley cat can translate over to a much larger beast. A monster with black eyes, golden hair, and maybe half the patience of old Whiskers. A part of me knows the awful truth, even before his fingers roughly graze my inner thigh, jolting me awake.
“Look at me.”
He’s empty when I do, but it’s not like any other time before. Except maybe that first day I met him in his suite… Once again, I’m just a hole, used up without an acknowledgment or foreplay. He sinks into me roughly, grinding my body into the mattress.
His hand grips the back of my throat throughout, like a noose capable of cinching off my windpipe at any moment.
He’s testing me. No, it’s worse than that. He’s testing himself. I can almost trace the twisted trail his mind wanders in the resounding quiet. Fear rides my spine, paralyzing me on sweat-soaked sheets.
But I’m too fucking chicken to run.
How dangerous this man is when he thinks. When he broods. He mulls over his thoughts the way an assassin polishes his weapons. Slowly. Carefully. He can’t let so much as a sliver of metal lose its lethal edge.
So he becomes obsessive in his meticulous routine, wielding sanity like a switchblade.
Flicking it on.
Off.
On.
Night brings out the worst in him, but I’m realizing I fear the day more. It’s the quiet after the storm with no shadows to disguise the damage left behind.
I’m dreading the moment I have to peel my eyes open again, despite the fact that I never slept. Not really. My stomach aches with the threat consciousness brings: clarity. I bury my face into the pillow beneath me, hoping to linger in oblivion for a few seconds longer.
Too late.
His heavy sigh shreds the oppressive silence. Then he stands, still gloriously naked. Uneasy, I watch him, slack-jawed from over the crook of my elbow. The moment his feet hit the floor, he’s untouchable, miles away from me in a world where I don’t exist.
He takes his time reassembling the cold exterior I’ve come to associate him with. His shirt goes on first, and he buttons it the whole way up. The pants are next. Dark eyes gazing at me from behind a fridge of wild hair are the last detail he arranges. They narrow, hardening like winter ice. He heads for the door—but the final look he casts my way might as well be directed at the wall.
And then I know.
Maxim.
Is.
Bored.
He’s a lot less subtle than my cat. He never pretends that escape is an option. If anything, his suite becomes my prison even as he spends most of the time somewhere else. His brief absences become hours. Then days at a time.
By the end of the week, I’m not his kotyonok. I’m not even Francesca. I’m just a slave, beckoned by snapping fingers and the unzipping of his fly. Those brutal, violent fucks become snatches of oral sex.
Until one night…
He doesn’t return to the suite alone.
I smell her first: cheap perfume like the kind Melanie wears. Just enough to hide the scent of sex from other men, but not enough to cloak her desperation. Stumbling in Maxim’s shadow, she’s skinny, wearing cheap high heels and a low-cut dress in a tacky zebra print. A long, tangled wig obscures most of her naturally brown hair, framing a face that’s almost pretty. Her eyes widen when she sees me standing at the mouth of the foyer.
“Double-team is gonna be extra,” she slurs, her voice high-pitched and breathy.
I’d peg her age at a year older than I am. Maybe even two. She’s been around the block more than once. Still, there is something unnerving in her smeared lipstick and unfocused, brown eyes. The desperation reeking from her in waves feels familiar. She even looks familiar. Like me with a bad dye job, viewed through a blurred mirror. A more broken, more fucked-up Francesca.
Without a word, Maxim steers her to the leather chaise in the center of the main room. He sits, and she stands, trying to look sexy while he palms her tiny waists in his hands and hikes her dress up to her hips. Her bare ass is sporting a handprint—some john wasn’t very nice. I wonder if that’s why she’s consented to let someone like Maxim take her back to his private suite. How desperate is she? How much money does she need?
What has he promised her?
Or maybe she’s not doing it for the money at all. Her moan is real as Maxim drags her closer, his head lowering toward her waist. Whatever he does makes her sway on her feet, her back bow…
“What are you doing?” I don’t even sound like myself. That soft, weak whisper could ne
ver come out of the Francesca Marconi I knew.
“Get out.” Maxim doesn’t even look at me. “I said get out!” There’s no mercy contained within the syllables. No lust. Just a command: Go.
I try. I do, taking a step toward the hall. My vision blurs. The hooker becomes a multicolored smear as her moan deepens, and the room starts spinning.
As if from far away, a woman gasps while a man growls, his anger rippling to the farthest corners of the room like thunder. I’m transfixed by my shadow, how it sways back and forth. Back and forth.
“Did you hear me?” He’s practically snarling.
Maybe it’s pathetic, but my mind searches desperately for an explanation. Shaking, I blurt out the first one I can come up with. “Is this because of what that man said?” His creepy, blond doppelganger Sevastyn. His attention still burns, making my skin crawl. “That I’m—”
“Stop.” He shoves the girl aside so hard that she trips into the wall, not that he spares her a passing glance. Like honed missiles, his gaze seeks out mine, ripping through me. “You think you can even question me?”
“I thought you wanted…” I can’t even say it out loud. Trust.
“What I want?” He stands and advances on my position while fastening his slacks. “I want you to learn your place.” He lunges, grabbing my arm.
Before I can react, he turns and marches to the door, dragging me from the suite and into the stairwell. My heart hammers as I stagger down the steps after him, forced into the garage. When we reach the car, he heads straight for the passenger’s side and shoves me in before claiming the driver’s seat for himself.
The moment he closes the door behind him, Maxim takes off, plunging headlong into the thick of traffic. He’s reckless, as if the speed limit is nothing more than a design tacked onto the signs we pass.
He heads deeper into the heart of the city. Far beyond the bars and strip clubs and into the land of icy business and jaw-dropping wealth—all unfamiliar territory to someone like me. This paranoid part of me can’t help thinking the destination is on purpose: Even if you manage to run, you won’t get very far…
