by Cole, Jagger
She stares at me. “You arrogant son of a—”
I close the distance between us, and I kiss her hard. I catch her off guard, but in seconds, she’s moaning desperately into my mouth. Or, at least, she is right up until the moment she pulls back and slaps me hard across the face.
I growl thickly. Zoey’s eyes go wide.
“I—I didn’t… you shouldn’t have kissed—”
I bring my hand up, still holding the garter belt. I smile, and she glares at me. “Don’t you fucking dare—”
She screams as I stuff the garter back between her lips. I grab her wrists, and before she realizes what I’m doing, I’ve wrapped them in the short length of soft rope that’s been stuffed into my jacket pocket.
“Mmphh! Mmmmmphmmmppph!”
Her eyes shoot daggers into mine, but I just grin back as I reach in and click her seatbelt. “Time to go, lastachka,” I grunt.
I stride over to the driver’s side and reach for the door. But suddenly, I pause. It’s like rational thought finally gets a word in, freezing me in my steps.
I mean what the fuck am I doing? This is insanity. Obsession with her or not, I’m literally kidnapping a girl from her own goddamn wedding. And yet, I know I’m not stopping. And I know I’m certainly not bringing her back.
I can’t stop with her. I’m weak with her; at her mercy, though she doesn’t know it. And insane or not, I’m not backing down now, or ever.
I took her. She’s mine now. End of story.
I slip behind the wheel of the Chevelle, gun the engine to life, and shift into drive. Then, we’re gone.
4
Zoey
I say nothing as we drive because, well, because I’ve got a fucking garter belt jammed in my mouth. But I also can’t decide if I’d be talking or not even if he hadn’t gagged me. Half of me wants to say I’d be screaming obscenities at him or screaming out the window for help. The other half decides I’d just stay utterly silent—like some kind of protest. Like I’m giving him the silent treatment.
I roll my eyes at the thought. No, “the silent treatment” is for when your boyfriend is a dick or forgets an anniversary or something. You don’t whip out the silent treatment on a guy who’s literally kidnapping you from your wedding.
Yes, it might be a wedding I was literally dreaming about being taken away from. And the man taking me might be the man I’ve literally been fantasizing about for three weeks. On the surface, I have to wonder why I’m even mad at any of this at all.
My tongue drags over the soggy garter, and my wrists flex against the rope binding them.
Oh, right. That’s why I’m mad. It’s not like my dream fantasy man has swooped in on a horse to rescue me, like a knight in shining armor. He all but kicked down a door, threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and waltzed out. Where he promptly bound and gagged me.
It’s the principle. You can’t just… take people. But when I glance sidelong at the rough, gorgeous, tattooed Russian mobster sitting next to me, I tremble. Something tells me, “you can’t” isn’t a phrase he hears much. Or at all.
My mind whirls, thinking through a hundred different sketchy scenarios of where he’s taking me. I mean where do kidnappers take the people they’re kidnapping? A sketchy warehouse? The lower depths of some Russian tanker ship?
I frown. There’s a small chance I’ve watched too many movies involving Russian gangsters over the last three weeks.
But when I glance out of the tinted windows and realize we’re on Lakeshore Drive—home to some of the ritziest, most expensive residential buildings in the city. He yanks the wheel, and I gasp as the car swings down into the underground garage of a particularly jaw-dropping glass and steel high-rise. A valet smiles and approaches the car, but Lev merely cracks and shakes his head as he drives past the booth.
We drive down to a lower level, and then to a parking spot where Lev kills the engine. And then, it’s silent. He steps out wordlessly, walks over to my side, and opens my door. My pulse races as he pulls me gently out of the car. For a second, I wonder if he’s about to throw me over his shoulder again.
I want to roll my eyes at myself at the flicker of disappointment when he doesn’t. This time, he just walks me to an elevator.
When the doors shut behind us, he turns, looming over me. He reaches for me, and I gasp through the gag before he tugs it out of my mouth. He smirks at me, and it’s that smugness that sets me off again as the elevator starts to rise.
“Are you fucking deranged?!”
He undoes the rope around my wrists. Behind him, as we rise out of the parking garage level, the elevator walls turn to glass. The view is suddenly stunning, with the city and the sunset gleaming behind him.
Lev’s body is still. His cool blue eyes pierce into mine. “Perhaps I am.”
“Perhaps nothing,” I snap. “You’re a fucking lunatic, you know that?”
He says nothing. Those eyes just burn right into mine, making my heart race in the small, glass enclosed space.
“Oh, nothing to say now, hmm?” I mutter.
He still says nothing.
“Okay, you know what?” I spit. “Let me explain something to you, okay?!” I jab a finger at his smug, handsome face. “This isn’t Mother-fucking-Russian, okay?! You can’t just kidnap—”
In one motion, his hand jabs behind him to stop the elevator, and he storms into me. I gasp as his hands grab me, shoving me back and pinning me to the glass wall as he looms over me. My pulse races, and my body pulses and throbs as I look up into his eyes.
“Tell me you want him,” he snarls. “Tell me you want to marry that fuck.”
“I—”
“Say it, lastachka.”
I tremble, and my breath catches. “And if I do?” I whisper.
“Then you go free.”
“Just like that.”
Lev doesn’t say anything. But I can hear the low growl in his broad chest, and I can feel the way his hands tighten on me.
“Say it,” he hisses. It’s almost like he’s asking me to.
“I…”
“Say it, lastachka,” he growls.
He raises one hand, and I tremble when he uses it to cup my jaw delicately. His thumb slowly traces across my lip as I gasp quietly.
“And if I don’t say it?” I whisper breathlessly.
Lev growls as he moves so close to me that his body is practically pressing me to the glass at my back.
“Then you’re mine,” he groans. “But, you already knew that, didn’t you?”
He leans close, lowering his face to mine. I gasp.
“You kiss me again and I’ll scream,” I choke.
He grins, halting himself millimeters from my lips. He reaches back, and I feel the elevator start to rise again. My breath comes rasping and panting, my heart racing. And every inch of me is dying to taste his mouth again.
“Good,” he growls quietly, still millimeters from my lips. He flashes a smug grin. “I look forward to making you scream.”
The elevator doors open behind him.
“This way,” he grunts, taking my hand as he turns. He pulls me after him.
“Where—”
“This is your home now.”
I step out of the elevator, and my jaw almost hits the gorgeously polished hardwood floor. My eyes feel like they’re going got pop out as I stare at the absolutely gorgeous luxury penthouse apartment before me.
“This is your home?” I say breathlessly. I was raised in wealth and opulence. But this place is… wow. It’s absolutely stunning. It makes me realize I know nothing about this man. I mean I know he’s a dangerous criminal—that he’s in the Russian mafia. But this place? This is like a tech billionaire’s home. It’s like I’ve walked into Christian Grey’s penthouse.
Who is this man?
“Yes,” Lev grunts, turning to me. “And yours now, too.”
My lips purse. “My prison, you mean.”
He smirks, glancing around the lavish apart
ment. “If you say so.”
“So what happens now?” I snap.
He smiles, turning to me. “Were you expecting an itinerary?”
I sneer at him. “I meant if this is to be my prison, what happens next? You going to handcuff me?” I mutter sarcastically.
His eyes darken. “I might,” he growls thickly. He steps towards me, and I gasp. “There is just one problem with that.”
“Illegally holding someone as a prisoner?”
“No, lastachka,” he purrs. “It is that you only have the one pair of clothes with you.”
“Yeah, well who’s fault is—”
“And if I handcuff you, well…” he smiles. “When you make your panties all wet from it, you won’t have any dry ones to change into.”
My jaw drops like a freaking rock. My face burns hot as I stare at him with a mix of outrage and desire.
I want him. I want to hate him, too. But also, I just want him.
“Come,” he growls, as if he didn’t just say what he said. He beckons me after him. And for some fucked up reason, I follow him. We head down an elegant, dimly lit hallway with brick walls with gorgeous art hanging on it.
“Your room is here.”
“My room—?”
“Unless you would prefer a cell?” he smirks sarcastically.
“I’m sure it’ll be—” I step in, and my words fail me. The room is fucking gorgeous. The enormous bedroom is gilded as if fit for a princess. Complete with a crystal chandelier hanging from the towering double-height ceiling, elegant furniture including a four-post bed that looks like it’s literally from a palace. And floor-to-ceiling windows that must be twenty-feet high.
It’s stunning is what it is.
“Is it up to your standards, princess?” He grunts when I don’t say anything.
I blush, turning. “I was going to say you have really good taste for—”
I stop. He smirks.
“For what, lastachka? For a criminal?”
I swallow. “Aren’t you?”
“I am.” He takes a slow breath, his eyes narrowing on me. “I will get you something to eat.” He turns suddenly, as if we’re done here.
“What kind of criminal are you?”
He pauses in the doorway. His huge frame stiffens, and I instantly regret asking him.
“The bad kind,” he growls over his shoulder.
“Is there a good kind?”
“Perhaps,” Lev turns slightly, and I tremble when the dim light flickers in his gorgeous, piercing blue eyes as they narrow on me.
“But I am not that kind.”
He steps out, pulling the door shut behind him with a heavy click.
5
Lev
19 years ago:
“You fuck men?”
Bogdan’s voice echoes a little against the corrugated metal walls of his shitty little office. In the corner, the ceiling drips a putrid liquid into a dirty bucket. The place reeks of piss, shit, and probably other bodily fluids. And yet even with all this squalor, I’m still face-to-face with a king.
Or at least, the king of the foulest, roughest, shittiest neighborhood in St. Petersburg.
Thirteen-year-old me blinks at the question. “Excuse me?”
“You fuck men, da?”
My mouth thins. “No,” I growl.
Bogdan is a local crime lord, and a predatory piece of shit. I’ve heard the horror stories of girls my age who fall into his net. The offers of a roof, protection, some food—and probably heroin. And in payment they give him their everything. Their souls, and their bodies.
He’s a piece of shit and deserves to die. But I haven’t eaten in five days, and I’m getting desperate. So here I am, interviewing for a job.
“No to fucking men?”
“No,” I grunt. Given my size even for my age, I thought this job was muscle—carrying a gun or driving a getaway car for his crew. And yet, I get the sense that’s not the job he needs filled.
“I make movies now, you see.”
I nod.
“So, I ask again. You fuck boys?”
“No,” I hiss.
“Hmm…” Bogdan strokes his chin. “You let boys fuck you?”
I roll my yes. “No.”
He frowns. “Twelve-hundred rubles. You let man fuck you for twelve-hundred rubles, yes?”
It’s forty American dollars. I might be starving, but I’ll eat my own fucking thumbs before I do what he wants for forty fucking dollars.
“No,” I spit.
His mouth thins. “Then what the fuck do you want?”
“A job.”
“I offer you a job.”
“I’m not—” I quickly shut my mouth.
Bodgan laughs heavily. “What, a whore? A boy-toy?” He chuckles. “You wait two more days until the hunger is like a fire in your belly, boy. You wait until you are licking the gutters for scraps. Then you come to me and you beg me for this job.”
I shake my head. “That won’t happen.”
“It always happens. So, save us both the bullshit, da? Take the fucking job. You fuck boy, boy fucks you. I don’t care. Take it or leave it.”
My lips curl. Not just at the insult of his offer, but at the unfairness of this whole system. That a predatory fuck like Bogdan can set up shop here in the gutters and prey off of the young and vulnerable.
“Fuck you,” I sneer at him.
It’s a bad move. For a minute, when his mouth thins, I think this might be the end of the line for me. I picture him killing me right here in his disgusting shipping-container office. But instead, Bogdan just laughs a wheezing laugh and looks past me at his men by the doorway.
“His majesty the Tsar here has other appointments,” he smiles. “Get him the fuck out of here.”
The two men laugh as they grab me from behind. I fight and twist as they drag me out of the office and throw me into the street. When they’re back inside with the door closed, I groan and get to my feet. I hug my hollow, aching stomach and trudge through the urban hell of the Murino district of St. Petersburg.
Eventually, I slump between a dumpster and a wall. Across they alley from me, a junky I didn’t see before groans and sinks back in his own hovel, the needle still in his arm. I look up at the bleakness of the world and I slowly exhale.
It would be easy to give up—to give in, and to trade in my hope for a piece of bread. To take the horror show job Bogdan is offering me. Or to turn to the needle like so many others have.
But I don’t know how to quit and give in. If I did, I’d have welcomed death years ago. But I only know how to fight.
Maybe it will be my downfall. Some days, I hope it will be. But I keep moving. I keep swinging. I keep hitting.
Tomorrow is just one more day of telling death to go fuck itself.
Present:
It’s night now, and Zoey’s gone quiet in her room. Earlier, I brought her some dinner. But all she did was take it wordlessly and shut the door in my face. Then came the banging on the door later and her yelling at me to go fuck myself. Now, it’s quiet, though. And I’m just sitting and thinking.
Dark, quiet—just how I like it. I sip the fine vodka in the crystal tumbler, surrounded by wealth. Sometimes, it fucks with me. Sometimes, I think back to sitting in those gutters in the hovels of St. Petersburg, and being where I am now is so surreal, I almost can’t stand it.
But getting here wasn’t a snap of the fingers. I didn’t click my heels three times and say there’s no place like home. I fought. I killed and bled. I ground my way through the horrors and hells of those streets. Viktor and I both did, fighting constantly and always looking for our next job. Our next step up. Our next competitor to break before he broke us.
We did that until we were a force people knew. Eventually, after years, we caught the eye of the Kashenko Bratva. It was like being picked out of the minors by the Yankees. And the rest is history. We kept grinding, kept reaching for more. Until now, here we are; Viktor as the head of the family here in
Chicago, and me as his second.
Believe me, that’s the only way I’d want it. Viktor is the leader; the General. I’m no George Washington. I’ve never wanted to be John Lennon or Paul McCartney. But I make a pretty fucking great George Harrison.
I sip the vodka and look out over a city that I am second only to a king to. It makes me smile when I think about Vikor and I’s journey here. Not a month after turning down the job from Bogdan, I robbed him. Then I got caught, and I almost met death that day.
But that’s the day Viktor Komarov found me. Three years older, just as hopeless and broken. He stumbled upon Bogdan and his men beating me to death in an alley. He didn’t have to, but he jumped in. He pulled them away, giving me the break I needed to fight back. Bodgan and his men didn’t stand a chance at all.
But we did, barely, as brothers. I’d say Viktor’s the reason I’m alive today, and he is. But it goes both ways. I’ve saved his ass a dozen times ever since then, and vice versa.
For a second, I freeze when I think I hear a sound from Zoey’s room. I frown and stand from the chair, walking to the hallway. At her door, I pause and lean close. But I hear nothing.
I shake my head. What the fuck am I doing? What exactly is my plan here? To keep her locked in my penthouse as my captive? My personal little plaything?
The thoughts make me grin. It’s not such a bad sounding idea, actually.
But long term it has some… hiccups. I frown and reach for the knob on her door. I unlock it and twist, pushing the door open a crack as I peer in.
Zoey’s asleep, sprawled across the bed in her wedding dress. I step inside, feeling my pulse quicken. My desire surges as my eyes slide over her.
Fuck, I want her.
Her dress is bunched up, giving me an eyeful of her smooth, tempting thighs. The beast in me snarls, wanting to shove it even higher until I find what I really want.
But I close my eyes, pushing back the desire. Not like this I won’t. Instead, I walk over to the bed and grab the covers, pulling them up over her. I let my eyes move up to her sleeping face, and I groan.
