Owned By The Bratva King: A Bratva Captive Romance

by Cole, Jagger

  17

  River

  It’s either been hours or days; I lost track of all time somewhere between the boat, the SUV on the shore, the second SUV they dragged me into, and then the long, bumpy ride to wherever here is.

  I’m shaking. I’m tied to a chair in a huge, vaulted-ceiling bedroom, and I’m trembling from head to toe. I can’t tell if it’s that I’m cold, or if it’s a panic response to everything that’s just happened…

  I close my eyes. Everything that’s just happened. Everything like Yuri being killed in front of me. Everything like my heart being ripped out of my chest and burned right in front of my eyes. Everything like my whole world exploding.

  My head hangs. Even with the trembling, the tears start to flow hot down my cheeks. I sob a wrenching cry, before suddenly I hear footsteps. The door to the bedroom swings open, and Semyon Belsky walks in with a smile on his face, flanked by two guards.

  Suddenly, my sadness turns to rage.

  “You bastard!!” I scream, lurching out of the chair. But the binds hold me fast, digging into my skin. Just the same, I lunge again, screaming at him until my voice is ragged and choked. Semyon chuckles. But then his face turns to a fake-looking concern.

  “Ahh, you are sad about what Yuri, yes?”

  “You killed him!!” I scream. “You son of a bitch!! You fucking killed him!!”

  He shrugs. Not smiling or gloating, just a shrug as if he’s just told me the store was out of milk.

  “This is the way of our world, my pretty girl.”

  A sour feeling curdles in my stomach. “Don’t call me that.”

  “Ahh, but you are so beautiful, my little one,” he gloats as he starts to walk towards me. I tense, recoiling from him. But I’m tied fast. I can’t get away.

  Semyon stops right in front of me and sighs happily. “And you are mine, yes?”

  “Not a fucking chance.”

  He smirks. “It would seem you are, though.”

  “Tied to a chair doesn’t make me yours you sick fuck!” I scream. Emotion chokes my voice. Tears of rage, anguish, and heartbreak flow hotly down my cheeks.

  Semyon frowns. “And yet it was so recently that you were the captive of another, and it seems you are quite broken up about being taken from him.”

  The tears blur my eyes as I seethe, staring hot daggers at the piece of shit in front of me.

  “So sad… so it would seem, him taking you and binding you did in fact make you his.” He smiles thinly. “So, now it is my turn to make you mine, my little one.”

  I choke a sob, turning to look away.

  Semyon grunts as he steps closer. His hand raises, and when his fingers stroke my cheek, I recoil sharply. I want to vomit at his touch, and the sob chokes from my throat.

  “I apologize for the way you were stolen from me, my beauty.”

  My eyes swivel to him, glowering in rage.

  “It should have been me who had you to himself these last two weeks. And then, we could have avoided all of this…” he waves his hand. “Unpleasantness.”

  Another sob chokes deep in my chest.

  “I barely slept, my beauty. Knowing that motherfucker had you in his clutches. Wondering if he…” Semyon’s eyes narrow dangerously, looking crazy. “If he’d touched what was mine.”

  It’s stupid, given that I’m bound to this murderous, psychotic bratva kingpin’s chair. But the hatred I feel for him for taking from me, and twisting a knife into my heart is more than I can hold back.

  “Oh, he touched me,” I hiss. “He touched me all day and all night.”

  When Semyon’s face darkens and his lips curl, I know I’ve touched a nerve.

  “That’s all we did on that boat, you disgusting little troll,” I spit at him through my tears. “So, you’ve lost. I’m not yours, you fucking prick,” I hiss furiously a him. “I’ll never be yours. Because I’m already someone else’s. All of me,” I snarl.

  Semyon looks like he’s about to snap. He’s shaking and red-faced. His eyes look like they’re going to pop out in sheer rage. I smile at him.

  “You wanted me because of all the news about me, didn’t you?”

  His lips purse.

  “You pathetic little man,” I sneer. “You pathetic—”

  The slap comes hard—much, much harder than anything I’ve ever felt before. I gasp, blinking in blinding pain. The whole chair almost falls over, until Semyon grabs me by the front of the robe I’m wearing and yanks me upright. He snarls as he leers into my face, making me seize up in fear as my face pales.

  “Perhaps Yuri let you walk all over him, little whore,” he hisses. His breath reeks of vodka. Sweat trickles down his temples from his thinning hair. “But here, with me, you will learn respect. You will learn a girl’s place with her man. Here, with me, you will learn to thank me for my generosity, and speak when you are spoken to only,” he growls thickly. “Is that understood, you little Volkov bitch?”

  Pure fear grips my heart like an icy claw. I want to spit at him, or hurl more insults at him. At this point, I almost want to scream abuses at him until he snaps and just ends this whole thing. Every part of my heart just hurts. Every part of me is crumbling in the anguish of losing him.

  Yuri.

  Through the pain of the slap, I close my eyes. It hurts like hell, but just same, I replay the memory of that last look on the boat. I’ve done this almost every minute since they took me. It doesn’t hurt any less, but at the same time, it keeps me going. It keeps me breathing.

  “I love you.”

  I try and shake the memory away before the replay of the gunshot hits. But I’m not successful. I start to shatter inside when suddenly Semyon’s meaty, sweaty hand grips my cheek and tilts my head back sharply. He leers down at me, smiling thinly.

  “You were his little whore, da?”

  I sneer right back.

  “Yep.”

  Semyon glowers, his face dark with anger.

  “And did he fuck you?” He snarls quietly.

  I swallow. “Every which way he could,” I hiss. “All day, all night, every single day.”

  Semyon’s teeth bare. He whips his hand back as if to hit me again. I wince, closing my eyes and bracing myself for the pain. But then it doesn’t come. With my eyes still squeezed shut, I hear Semyon chuckling.

  “No, he didn’t.”

  I open my eyes. He’s smirking at me.

  “You are not a good liar, my little beauty.”

  “Yes, he did,” I say quietly.

  Semyon shrugs. “I do not believe you. In any case, I will have my doctor examine you.”

  I stare at him. “What?”

  “My doctor,” he shrugs again. “He will examine you for your virginity.”

  I want to throw up. I almost do, actually. My eyes narrow in horror and fury at him. “You can’t check!!”

  “Of course you can,” he grunt. “And my doctor will assure me that my wife-to-be has not been despoiled by that Volkov piece of shit.”

  My stomach heaves as my face pales. I want to scream at him. But I’m just empty. I’m broken; snapped in two. That is, until his words suddenly hit me again. My eyes harden in horror as I look up at him.

  Semyon smiles. “Ahh, so you did hear me.”

  Wife-to-be. Yeah, I heard that alright. I heard it and I want to scream until my breath fails me. I want to puke until there’s nothing but a husk of me left.

  “You think I wanted to take you just for you to be a little plaything for me? Like Yuri?” He laughs coldly. “No, my little beauty. No…” he reaches out to me. I recoil as much as I can with the binds holding me. But it’s not enough. The backs of his fingers stroke my chin, making my insides knot and the bile rise in my throat.

  “I am not a savage, like him,” he hisses. “I am going to make you my bride. My beautiful, beautiful bride.” He’s still stroking my face horribly as he leans down. “We will be forever each other’s, my love.”

  I choke a sob, wrenching my face away from h
is hand. Semyon’s eyes narrow. But then he grins and shrugs again as he stands.

  “You will learn to love me. Once I burn every single memory of that motherfucker and his motherfucker family to ashes. His business. His life. His friends…” he smiles thinly. “His famous daughter too, da?”

  I sob—ugly, burning tears streaming down my face as my heart breaks for the hundredth time. Semyon sighs.

  “You are emotional, I understand. Maybe it is that time of the month, no?”

  I’m still sobbing and wishing I was dead when he turns and walks with his silent guards back to the door.

  “When you are done with all of your woman emotions,” he grunts, pausing in the doorway to look back at me. “You should sleep. I want my bride looking beautiful on our wedding day tomorrow.”

  The news is like a last slap to the face. I start to cry again as I sag in the chair.

  “And then, we can forget all about that dead motherfucker who laid hands on what is mine, da?”

  The door slams closed, and I start to cry harder than I’ve ever cried before.

  18

  River

  The bedroom is dark, and I’m physically, mentally, and emotionally drained from the horrors of the last few hours. But I can’t sleep. Or, I won’t sleep. I can’t close my eyes without reliving the gunshot that ripped away the only man I ever loved. I can’t shut them without hearing that dead splash of his body hitting the water. Or seeing the eruption of the yacht exploding into flames.

  Tears trickle down the corners of my eyes. Somehow, I still have the capacity to cry more of them. Inside, my heart feels wrenched and run over—broken in a million charred little pieces.

  Yuri, I think quietly to myself. I sob as I turn to press my face to the pillow. The bed is hard, the sheets too stiff. Earlier, a stern, grim-faced older woman who brusquely introduced herself as “Mr. Belsky’s housekeeper” made me change out of my robe and put on the lacy, semi-transparent matching pajama tops and bottoms I’m wearing. They’re awful. And it’s made worse knowing that it’s Semyon who picked these out, imagining me wearing them.

  But even worse, while she was in here, she took my measurements. “For the dress,” she’d snapped in her heavy accent.

  I start to cry harder into the pillow. The man I love is dead. The escape I thought I had, burned to the ground. Now, the horrible piece of shit responsible for destroying everything has me as his prisoner. And tomorrow, he’s going to make me marry him.

  I suddenly hear the door to the room creak open.

  My heart skips as I whirl, my eyes piercing the darkness. I say nothing, but I know someone’s there. I hear footsteps, and then suddenly see a shape emerging from the shadows. When Maksim’s face suddenly appears, I start to scream in rage.

  But instantly, he’s on me, clamping a hand over my mouth.

  “Do not scream,” he growls quietly into my ear. I scream anyways, though his huge hand muffles it entirely. I thrash and kick and punch at him. But he just takes it. I mean the man is a giant, built like a football linebacker. I’m not going to hurt him. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try until it kills me.

  I roar into his hand, kicking and hitting with everything I have left in me. I want to tear him apart with my bare hands—this traitor. This complete piece of shit who betrayed Yuri for a price.

  “Stop it,” he grunts. But when I don’t, he sighs heavily. “I am sorry for this.”

  He yanks out a length of fabric and starts to stuff it into my mouth. I’m screaming at him, hurling swears and calling him a coward and a betrayer. But he doesn’t hear me. He stuffs the fabric into my mouth and then wraps a bandana around my head, gagging me entirely. I sob as he uses another length of fabric to tie my hands together in front of me. Then, he hauls me to my feet.

  I’m screaming at him as he drapes a trench-coat around me. He deftly closes and ties it at the front and then takes my arm.

  “Let’s go.”

  I dig my heels in. Fuck this. If he wants to hurt me or bring me to Semyon so he can hurt me, I’m sure as hell not going to go willingly. Maskim turns to me, his brow furrowing.

  “Ms. Finn—”

  I hurt a string of muffled swears at him. When I tense again when he tries to pull me, Maksim sighs.

  “Sorry, but we need to go.”

  He grabs me, throwing me over his shoulder and turning to storm from the room. I scream, but no one can hear me. And even if they could, so what?

  Maksim moves like a wraith, quickly stepping from shadow to shadow down the dark halls of Semyon’s mansion. We take a winding, gilded staircase down past huge oil-paintings of Russian aristocrats. Then down another hallway lined with various old firearms mounted on plaques on the wall.

  Down another staircase, we exit out into an underground garage. Maksim marches over to black Mercedes SUV with dark tinted windows. When he opens the back, my heart lurches. I scream and yell, but he deftly puts me inside on a blanket in the back and shuts the trunk. I hear him get into the driver’s seat and start the engine. Then we’re off.

  We stop almost right away, and even with it being in Russian, I can tell we’re at the front gates, or a guard post or something. I almost scream. But again, what’s the point? Maksim says something and chuckles, and the guards laugh too. He’s probably telling them that he’s bringing me out to the woods to kill me—that Semyon’s decided he doesn’t want me after Yuri.

  The SUV rumbles away, down a gravel road. Then I can feel the smoothness of tarmac. We drive for a long time. I lose all track of it, but it feels like hours and hours have gone by when I feel Maksim pulling off the main road. In fact, it’s light out. We’ve driven through the whole night.

  The SUV rumbles over gravel again. Through the heavily tinted back window, I can sort of make out trees, like we’re in a forest. The car stops, and I hear his window roll down. I hear beeps, like he’s punching in a security code. Then the window rolls up, and the car keeps driving over the gravel.

  And then, a minute later, the SUV stops, and the engine turns off. Maksim’s door opens and closes. I hear the crunch of his boots before he opens the trunk. We’re in the middle of the woods. And suddenly, I know I’m not going out without a fight.

  I scream and scream through the gag. I lash at him, kicking and fighting. But Maksim isn’t phased by my assault. He reaches for me and pulls me out of the trunk. He sets me on my feet. But when I see the glint of a knife, I quaver. He brings it up, but suddenly, he cuts off the tie on my wrists. He reaches up and pulls the gag off, and the fabric from my mouth

  “You asshole!!” I scream as I lurch at him. My fists rain down on him as the tears stream hot down my face. Fuck this. If Maksim is going to kill me in the fucking woods, I’m going to fight until my last goddamn breath before he does.

  “You fucker!” I roar. “You killed him! You fucking killed—”

  “Ms. Finn, please,” he growls. He reaches for me, but I punch his arm away.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Ms. Finn!!” He roars suddenly. His hands lunge out, grab my shoulders, and turn me around. I gasp as I look up at the huge, stone, castle-like mansion in the middle of a small clearing in the heavy dark woods—like a hunting lodge for a Tsar.

  “What is this place?!” I scream, whirling on him. I snarl as I jab a finger at him. “You couldn’t just kill me at Semyon’s—”

  “I did not bring you here to kill you,” he says gently. He smiles quietly, which infuriates me.

  “Then why?!” I roar. “Then why the fuck am I—”

  “Kiska.”

  My heart lurches. My very soul jars and stutters. Everything goes quiet at the sound of his voice behind me. I don’t want to believe it, because I can’t. It can’t be real, because I watched him die. But slowly, my heart thudding, I turn.

  And right there, walking down the huge front stairs of the forest mansion, is Yuri.

  Real or not, I can’t hold back. With a choking sob, I lurch for him, running across the cleari
ng. He groans as he rushes down the last steps and storms towards me. I crash into him hard, slamming into his arms as I sob into his chest. He’s real. He’s alive. I can touch him and smell him.

  I cry hard, ugly tears into his chest. I cling to him like he might blow away. His huge arms encircle me, his hands stroking my back as I hold him tightly.

  “I’m here, kiska,” he murmurs softly, holding me in his arms. “I am here.”

  “You—I saw you…”

  “I had to, River,” he growls quietly. “For Semyon to believe it, I had to.”

  My heart clenches as I raise my eyes to stare at him in horror. “You…” I balk. “That was a setup?!”

  His face is grim as he gently nods. With a sob, I suddenly slap him, hard. But when his eyes hold mine, I collapse into him. I grip his shirt in a white-knuckle grip, sobbing into his chest again. Then I raise my face to his. He groans, and suddenly, his lips are crushing to mind.

  I just hold him, for what might be forever. I hold him, and I kiss him with all of my heart.

  19

  Yuri

  Letting her watch me die was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Letting her think I was gone, even if was barely for a day, was like torture. But now, she’s here. She’s back in my arms, where she belongs. Where I’m never letting her leave from.

  I hold her close, pressing my face to her neck and inhaling the scent of her. We’re sitting in the huge study of the old hunting lodge that once belonged to Grand Duke George Alexandrovich, brother to Tsar Nicholas the Second. I’m in a huge chair by the enormous fireplace, and the woman I love is back in my arms, snuggled into my lap with a blanket surrounding her.

  She’s clinging to me tightly, like she’s afraid I might blow away. It breaks my heart that I’ve brought her to this state. But my hands stroke her gently. My lips kiss her shoulder as I hold her close.

  Maksim nods firmly. We don’t say a word out loud. But I don’t have to say anything for him to know how grateful I am for him for bringing her back to me. He pulls a thumb drive out his pocket—the latest intel from his playing spy in Semyon’s organization. He sets it on the table near my chair, alongside the gun he “shot” me with back on the boat.