Fearless III

by Amarie Avant

The fine hairs on my arms ascend. My brain issues various commands for me to take my next breath. Needing oxygen to speak, I suck in a dose of air and murmur, “Anatoly?”

  “That, I am. Sweetheart, you may look back once we leave the parking lot. If it pleases you,” he continues. Every word he says is marred with an erotic tone. He isn’t even saying anything sexual for goodness sake. He sounds like the devil when compelling a woman to the delights that hell offers—first. “If you prefer, once we are away from here, Simeon will stop and allow you to get in the backseat. We are going to your home, so you are aware. Also, your vehicle is waiting for you at home. Please, my beautiful Zariah, don’t worry. Do let me know if you have other questions, I may be able to answer them.”

  “Th-thank you,” I stutter. Rubbing a hand over my forearm in self-comfort, I take a look at my husband’s cousin, Simeon. His sister is Anatoly’s younger sibling, and she has a seat at the table of seven. My breath hitches. He looks nothing like Vassili said!

  Simeon’s face is not the rear end of a dog, not in the slightest. His gaze is dark as sin. His face is chiseled gold. He’s beautiful. Devastatingly handsome . . . just like my Vassili. He has to be a few years younger than my husband. Simeon reminds me of when Vassili and I first met like he’s more beast than man. I almost smile reminiscing on how my fighter for a husband softened for me.

  “Wow. So, you’re family, too?” I ask him.

  Simeon curses under his breath. The exit that he’s attempting to navigate also leads to that dreaded Hot Chili’s drive-thru line. Hungry Los Angelinos still don’t know how to act and as usual multiple patrons are blocking the exit with their cars.

  “You’re going to want to . . .” I gesture with my hand, in a friendly tone. “Yes, that’s how you do it, fam.”

  Simeon grunts more, without acknowledging the help I offered. Hell, maybe he didn’t even get that ‘fam’ was subliminal for him to treat me as such. Although Simeon looks like my husband, he chills me. Almost like when you look into the eyes of a serial killer on a news segment. He scares the fuck out of me.

  Anatoly says, “While we leave this forsaken lot, my Zariah, I must be blunt. You are not to fraternize with Tyrese Nicks outside of work. Do you understand?”

  His voice still sounds like sex. As if he should be having all his conversations with any other woman in this world—not his daughter-in-law, but while in a bed.

  “Oh?” I cringe, offering said daft response.

  “He is what you call a bad man.”

  The lawyer in me shines through, “You know him?”

  “Krasivaya, I’m a very powerful man. I know everything about him. The attorney.” His delicious low voice transforms into a rumble of a laugh. What did he mean by the attorney? Simeon has stopped the car. “Now, please, if you will. Come sit next to your new daddy.”

  I thought my knees would give out when I opened the door the first time. I rely on my hands, they move from the handle to the top of the passenger door, assisting me with standing. My hands go to the backdoor, holding me up. There’s no such thing as a request. He formed his words as such. ‘Now, please if you will,’ were niceties in a world engulfed in darkness. There’s no such thing as me obliging him either. I open the door. In the back seat, right on my side, Anatoly is seated.

  “Oh, I . . .” I start to close the door to move around to the other side, but his hand catches mine. His fingers envelop my hand fully, and again, he doesn’t have to say anything in that sexy tone of his. He’s hardly moved toward the middle seat when I’m pulled in behind the passenger seat. The door is yanked shut. The king of the Bratva’s body is pressed against mine, and he looks almost just like my husband. The car starts again.

  I stare at him for a moment forgetting who he is. Vassili surrounds all my thoughts. I miss him with all of me. Anatoly’s hand is against my cheek, his breath tickling my lips.

  “How did my son throw you away, Krasivaya?” he asks lips a fraction from mine. He begins to call me beautiful in Russian, again and again. One hand dips between my thighs, and the other goes behind my neck, pressing my lips to his.

  A resounding smack sends a hard dose of ice through my veins. I stare at him, his chiseled jaw burning red beneath the skin. My palm is on fire from the blow. The desire in his eyes obliterates.

  Fuck, I’m dead . . .

  “Anatoly,” Simeon grits out. I don’t know if his nephew is warning him from the kiss or urging him to punish me. I stare, wide-eyed, waiting for any retaliation.

  “You still love him?” Anatoly sits back in the chair. His hand clamps between my thighs again. Though my sex responds, I try to push him away. His fingernails chew into the flesh at the inside of my leg, locking on to me. “You still love him, answer me, girl!”

  “What happened to krasivaya?” I cackle, still working at removing his hand. My fingernails dig into his wrists. We’re both on a mission to draw at each other’s life source.

  “Do you still love my blood?” With the question, his hand ascends another notch.

  “Anatoly!” Simeon breaks.

  The car stalls. A flurry of honking and cussing flash toward us.

  “Do you still …” Anatoly repeats his question as I grow nauseated. His palm rises another notch, the inside of his hand brushing against the silk of my panties.

  “Mrs. Resnov, you will have to answer him,” Simeon barks at me. “I will not save you.”

  The beast without a mask confuses me. Save me? Simeon thought of saving me? The other monster, the one in an angel’s disguise, clings to my thigh.

  I growl. “Yes!”

  “Good.” He lets go, his fingers tweaking across my sex before he removes his hand. “Let me know if I should kiss away the hurt, daughter.”

  Anatoly sits back in the chair, undoing the top button of his suit. He places his hand to his nose. I glance at Simeon, whose eyes are shot, with a rage that I don’t understand. Why is he angry? This bastard was a second away from raping me. This bastard is his blood.

  I cross my legs, keeping them as shut as possible. Taking a deep breath, I focus on ceasing the trembling of my spirit. Then I ask, “Do you plan to harm me or my daughter? My-my daughter? How is my car at home? My mother and my daughter are—”

  “Relax, krasivaya,” he mutters. “Your mother and Chak Chak take a walk around this time of day at the park. Next, it’s cupcakes or donuts at the bakery around the block. We have all the time that we need.”

  “All the time we need for what, Mr. Resnov?”

  “For me to know if you are worth my blessing.”

  13

  Vassili

  “Did you touch her?” I growl. My first words are supposed to be for my wife. All my attention should’ve been for her. I am supposed to apologize for following through with our plan and letting her leave in Italy. I am also supposed to kiss her and tell her that I miss her more than any MMA technique I ever learned.

  My gaze tracks from Anatoly to Zariah to Simeon and back again as they trudge down the hallway and into the sitting room. I’d just sat down from an attempt at burning a hole in my wife’s favorite oriental rug. I’d been pacing back and forth. I wanted to go get my wife. She fucking belongs to me. As I paced, a million wild thoughts slammed through my brain like a freight train. Now, I’m up in seconds, her favorite throw coming undone as I tear it apart. “Did you touch my wife!”

  Zariah sighs. “Vassili, stop ruining our furniture.”

  “Listen to your wife, moy syn.” Anatoly winks.

  Zariah moves before him as my fist flies. I stop a fraction from her face. “Don’t. Ever do that,” I growl, fist-shaking.

  Her hand goes to her hip. “We need to talk.”

  Simeon moves toward the coffee table and plucks up a shiny, red apple. He groans, realizing its fake.

  Anatoly seems to be waiting for a fight, but glances at my cousin. The one who saved his life so many times before. The three of us end up fighting, or Simeon wins by default. And fuck no, not because he
’s a big mudak. We all end up bloodied. He usually stops us all with a gun to my head.

  The cunt, who I’ll never call father to his face, shrugs. “Ah, no fun? No anarchy? Well, I had that protein shake for nothing.”

  “So, this is how the two of you say hello?” Zariah glances between the two of us. “Fighting and glaring?”

  “Dah, he’s a disrespectful child.” Anatoly sniffs. “Simeon, you hungry?”

  He nods.

  I glare at Anatoly and order, “Be gone before Zamora returns with my daughter. And if Danushka has someone watching…”

  “Pah, they’re not as equipped as you’re giving them credit for, moy syn.”

  My father’s eyes are all over my wife as we head toward the double staircase. Just his gaze is enough to send venom shooting through my veins. But the two mudaks head toward the garage.

  As we walk up the steps, Zariah’s body calls to me. I reach up and skim the inside of her thigh.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she grits over her shoulder.

  Before I can finish laughing at her warning, I’ve gripped my forearm around her waist and scooped her hips. All that ass spills over my shoulder. She dangles in my arm as I continue to climb the step.

  “Vassili, you asshole! You wanted me to pretend to start divorce proceedings, I should!” She seethes. Her arms flail behind me, and her legs kick the air in front of me. I could’ve held her in my arms, but she’s pissed off.

  “Why the fuck did you wear a skirt today,” I growl.

  “Asshole,” she says, issuing an onslaught of slaps until she feels unbalanced and has to grab my head.

  In the bedroom, I close the door and fling her onto the bed. “Why did you wear a skirt?”

  She starts to rise, but I press her chest until she’s flopping back on the bed. We do that a few times before Zariah comes to an understanding that she’s to stay there.

  “You’re mad about a skirt?” She lifts the edge of the material before pushing it back. “You have nothing to be angry about, Vassili!”

  “Did he—”

  “Want some leftover pussy,” she spits out.

  I stand back, hands at the top of my head. “We had to sound convincing, Zar.”

  “Fuck convincing! You didn’t even give us a chance.” She starts to get up again. Her hand dashes out. A resounding smack slams across my face. I take it, and then I push her back onto the bed.

  She sits straight up. “Not a single chance to work this out together. Vassili, your father was the last case scenario! But you fuck me stupid, give me a plan that may or may not be necessary. After two hours of sleep, you execute that plan—a fail-safe! Hello, it means, try a few tactics first, not dig straight in. I have never been so angry with you, Vassili. Never.”

  “I apologize,” I reply, attempting to stare straight into her eyes.

  “I’m not ready to compromise.” She pings back up, her hands flying. I grab both her wrists, spin her around, and now the two of us are on the bed. My hard cock spearing her ass.

  With her face against the sheets, Zariah screams. “I am so mad at you.”

  “Okay,” I bark. “You have the right to be. Can we talk?”

  Beneath me, my wife has all the pent-up aggression that I once had while waiting to get into the cage. She snaps, “So mad I could—”

  “I’m trying not to be a mudak, Zar.”

  She flies off at the mouth with, “You are! You’re a mo-deck!”

  I smile at Zariah’s mispronunciation of the word. It’s not time for me to correct my wife on the language because her entire attitude needs changing. I clasp my hand at the back of her neck. The fury in her burning the inside of my palms. “Girl, if you make me rise to your level of anger, you will not like it.”

  “You never need me, Vassili…”

  Times like this make me wish I hadn’t shaved my Mohawk. I need something to tug. Something to hit. But I’m lying in a soft bed with the woman who belongs to me. She’s dead-on about one thing. I’m too much of a mudak to tell her that I belong to her too.

  Instead of reassuring her like I’ve done a thousand times before, I roll over and onto my side of the bed. After a few more moments, Zariah lays back onto my chest. I disconnect myself from her sniffles. Looking at her reminds me of my mother.

  Zariah burrows her face into my chest. I’m about to thread my fingers into her hair when she asks me another question that reminds me of my past. “Did you play your part with Danny? Screw all the pieces of ass she had at her disposal for you?”

  “Anatoly, did you fuck her?” My mother growled. “I’m begging you to hit me. Hit me!”

  His hand zipped out faster than I'd ever seen. Blood spurted down her nose.

  I moved in front of my dad. I was so little he almost gave me the kick that was meant for my mother’s stomach. The one that would’ve murdered Sasha before she even had a chance to survive…

  With one hand clinging to her swollen belly and the other was around me, she snapped. “Hit me, Anatoly. Hit me and hit me and then kill me because I’m not in the mood for this.”

  “You’re pregnant,” he growled. Still, I was invisible, and he almost tripped over me to get to her. “You fucking piz’da, you want me to kill you?”

  “Nyet!” I screamed, my cheeks shaking.

  “Dah!” she sneered.

  “All because I have enough love to give to some other piz’das. You want me to kill you?” He seemed to notice me then. Bent down to my level, he pulled out a gun. My three-year-old hands drooped as he offered it to me.

  “This cunt wants to die, Vassili. She’s selfish. You want to stay with your mama? I know you do, moy syn.” He tipped my chin up and down for me.

  “Please,” I cried.

  He stopped forcing me to nod and clawed his fingers into my skin. “I won’t murder your mama. Maybe she’s begging me to kill that little fucker in her womb.”

  “Anatoly,” she spoke. All the animosity had fled from her tone. “I’m—”

  “Too late for apologies. You want to die, and you want the Resnov in your belly to die? You want me to kill my own blood. Or have you been having a little fun too, slut?”

  “This is your child…”

  “Vassili’s my child.” Anatoly moved me around until I faced her. His arm draped over my shoulder. “This is my child. My son. I don’t have daughters, bitch. Who is that in your belly—”

  “You have Danushka. This is Sasha!” I blurted as if reminding him of the name Mom and I chose meant a thing.

  He spun me around. “Like your babushka, Vassili?”

  I nodded. Tears gleamed in my eyes, but my lips pulled in a smile. “Dah. We named her after Grandma Sasha.”

  My father spun me back around, drape an arm over me. He gritted out, “You naming the kid after my mom, slut?”

  “She’s your child, Anatoly.”

  He pressed the barrel of his gun into my hands. I’d wiggled and tried to pull away, but his fingers clawed into my wrists. He forced me forward until the barrel of the gun pressed against her growing stomach.

  “Cock back the hammer, moy syn!”

  I shook my head, a torrent of tears in my eyes, blinding me to the sight of my mother’s fear.

  “Cock the motherfucking hammer, Vassili.” His words rang in my ears. “I’ll have a doctor patch up your mama. She won’t leave you—can’t leave you, even if she wants to. Cock it before you get the spanking of your life!”

  I did as told.

  “You done asking me if I’m cheating on you, slut?” he asked my mother.

  “Did you have fun cheating?” Zariah asked again. Her chortle pulled me away from the worst part. My father had given me the beating of my life. At least, my mom and Sasha were safe for the moment.

  “I played my part,” I mumble, still dazed by the memory. All I know about my mother is pain. Every thought connecting to her is an example of the man I never wanted to be.

  The flashback continues to call to me, but Zaria
h’s entire body tenses. What the fuck did I say? I’d been in a daze. What did I say?

  “What?” I ask, trying not to sound like I don’t give a fuck, though a part of me still clings to the memory of how Sasha never had a chance.

  “You did what you had to. You played the part.” She sits up.

  I grab her to another round of her physically attacking me. “Kisses, Zariah. I kissed a few women. Watched a few more than when we were alone—nothing. I didn’t cheat.”

  “Hello, you kissed women but didn’t cheat! Let me kiss another man, Vassili. You make me insane!” She scampers across the bed.

  The nightmare still clings to me. I glare at her. “Insane, that’s fine. As long as you know who owns you, Zariah, you can go fucking insane!”

  “You are an asshole,” she says, lips trembling.

  “I’ve heard that, girl. The last night I was with you, I asked you a question.” I get out of the bed and go sit on the lounge, facing her. “I’m not fucking you right now, Zariah. So, I’ll ask you the same motherfucking question again.”

  “Oh, does screwing me while inquiring make me prone to lying? Is that what you think! What question, Vassili?” She sits at the edge of the bed, feet dangling. “All I remember was orders and threats during our last night in Italy.”

  “I asked if you could turn back time, would you?” My breath catches. Fuck, I don’t need her noticing that. All she’s ever known was my undisputed confidence. “Would you?” I roar.

  Zariah’s shoulders jolt. With tears streaking down her gorgeous dark skin, she glares at me. “Don’t you ever ask me that, Vassili. The answer will forever be no. We have a baby girl, Vassili. I’m giving you a daughter or a son! There’s a tiny seed growing in my belly,” she grits, clutching at her flat abdomen. “So, ask me this shit again, I will try to fight you myself! There’s no such thing as turning back time because I’d fall for you every time. Our lives are hard right now. I’d still do this over. Do it all over. Every second!”

  My chest broadens with oxygen. I get up from my seat, limbs heavy. In front of Zariah, I move to my knees and press my mouth against hers.