Brutally Broken: A Dark Mafia Romance

by Loki Renard

  “You’re in charge of your own actions,” she tells me, sounding so fucking innocent. She has no idea what Ivan can do to people. She has no concept how malleable the human mind is when you put a person in a cage and control every bit of sensory input, when you beat them and torture them, and program the behaviors you want into them. I wish the conditioning for her assassination was the first time Ivan had hurt me that way, but it wasn’t. It began when I was still a boy. I was beaten before my first kill, and I was praised and treated and given a place to call home afterward. I am not a man. I am as close to a murder machine as it is possible to get. If there is anyone on the planet I could try to beat this urge for, it would be her, but I don’t want to take that risk.

  “You have to go with these men,” I tell her.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Then I will have to be taken somewhere and imprisoned for your safety. I know this house too well. I know you too well. You will never be able to trust me again, Sophie. If you see me on any day after this one, treat me as a mortal enemy, because that is what I will be to you.”

  “Just stay with me, Vadim.”

  “Take her away,” I tell the guard. “Use any force necessary to subdue her.”

  “No!”

  She darts forward and grabs me, holding on so tight I feel her fingernails digging into my skin. She is fighting for me, this soft little woman, my prey. I look down at her, knowing that I cannot allow this, but feeling my heart crack in two as I attempt to push her away.

  * * *

  Sophie

  I don’t care what the Vristok did to Vadim. He’s mine. I’m not letting him go. They might have his mind, but I have his heart. I can tell he doesn’t want to hurt me. He hasn’t so much as laid a finger on me. I can see the tension in his body though; sweat beading on his brow, veins standing out on his neck and forehead. His fists are clenched, not to hit, but to brace himself against the war waging inside himself. He thinks I don’t understand what is happening, but I do. I just don’t intend to let these evil people take another person I love from me.

  “I love you,” I tell him. “I love you, and I think you love me. There is no other reason for you to have done everything you’ve done for me. So I don’t care what they’ve done to you. We’re going to fight it.”

  “If we lose, you die, and so do I.”

  “If we don’t fight, we can’t win,” I tell him simply.

  I’ve known there was something very broken inside Vadim since I met him. It blazed out of his eyes the very first time his gaze met mine. But he resisted whatever urges he had to hurt me then, and he will resist now. Or maybe he won’t. I know how reckless this is, but I have lost everyone, and I have always known my life would be a short one. If it ends with him, then so be it.

  “I want cuffs on me,” he says.

  “Kinky, but okay.”

  He gives me a dark look, one that makes me fizz to the very core. That is not the look of a man who wants to kill me. That is the look of a man who wants to take me, spank me, fuck me. Maybe that’s the key to breaking his conditioning.

  “Cuffs on both of us,” he adds. “You can’t be trusted.”

  “Sure I can be. I’m not the secret assassin,” I smirk.

  “Girl,” he growls. “This is not a joke.”

  “People have wanted to kill me all my life,” I tell him. “Odds were pretty high that I was going to hook up with one of them at some point.”

  “Take this seriously, Sophie!” He snarls the words and the guard comes up from behind me to ensure that he doesn’t lash out with violence. We are going to have to have an audience for our intimacy I suppose, short term anyway.

  “Cuff him,” I say to the guard, who does as he is told. Vadim holds out his big, thick wrists and the steel snaps around them. I’m sure they wouldn’t make a goddamn difference if he wanted to kill me. This is the kind of man who could be deadly with a limp piece of lettuce. But they seem to make him feel better about the situation.

  “So, you’re saying your boss made contact with you. Here.”

  “Yes. He called me on the Skype.”

  “He Skyped you. In my fucking house.”

  “Da,” he nods.

  “Has some nerve, doesn’t he,” I murmur to myself. This is chaos. This is awful. But maybe something can be salvaged from it.

  * * *

  Vadim

  She reaches for my cuffed hands and leads me out of the room. I know where she’s taking me. She wants me back in her bedroom, but I can’t go there. I stop, digging my heels in, letting her tug helplessly at my wrists.

  “Come on, Vadim!”

  “Not your bedroom. That is the place you are safe.”

  “Exactly. And now it will be the place you are safe.”

  She is so fucking sweet. And so innocent. She has no idea the things I have done. She has no idea the images that have been flashing through my mind since Ivan reminded me that everything Sophie and I have together is playacting, that there is a real world out there that will never allow us to be together.

  “Come on,” she insists, giving me another one of those soft tugs. “Please, Vadim. Trust me, even if you don’t trust yourself.”

  Those words sink inside me and touch something I didn’t know I had: a little tiny remnant of faith.

  I give her a step. She smiles and I feel my heart light up. My other foot moves, giving into her female will yet again. Then another. This will end in disaster, but then again, what doesn’t. We may as well enjoy the illusion of happiness for a little while longer, even if it ends in blood, tears, and screams.

  Chapter Ten

  Sophie

  I watch Vadim sleep. This isn’t that bad. He is lying flat on his back, his hands cuffed, a chain running from them to the headboard. He doesn’t need those cuffs. They’re for his peace of mind, not mine. He would never hurt me. I know that, even if he doesn’t.

  For the first time since I met him, I feel lost.

  There is one thing I do when I am lost. I go to my desk and use a key to unlock the top drawer. This is where I keep all my most precious documents, including one well-worn piece of paper that has been folded and unfolded many times, is smudged in places from tears falling onto the words. I know it by heart, but it gives me comfort to read it.

  It is a letter my father wrote to me on the night of my birth. It was given to me among his papers when he and my mother were killed. I first read it on the day of his funeral, and I have read it a hundred times since. Tonight, I need it more than ever. My father’s handwriting is a messy scrawl, but I can read it like computer text.

  My dear Sophie, the day you were born my life was transformed. You will, I hope, know me as a loving father, but prior to your birth I cannot say I was worth much in the moral sense. It is too late for me to redeem myself, but it is not too late for you.

  This is a strange way to open a letter, but I do not have much time. There is so much you need to know, and I do not know what age you will be when you read this for the first time, but whatever age you are, my darling girl, I must implore you to keep this with you so it can be read as the years pass. You will find new knowledge in it over time.

  I am sorry that I cannot protect you. My life was forfeit the day you entered the world. But I hope that this letter can serve as a guide. I write it knowing that you will not read this until I am gone. I intend to stay as long as I can for you, but the lives of the Mortari have always been short. I hope yours will be long and happy, and in this letter I am going to endeavor to give you the tools to make it so. You will find yourself with an abundance of money in your life, though you will often find that money is insufficient to overcome the challenges you face. It won’t hurt, however.

  The Vristok are my enemies, and yours too. They will be the enemies of all our family, no matter how young or how old, until the end of time. They are an ancient lineage. Their roots go back further than the crusades, to still darker times when emerging religious hierarchies foug
ht with blade and steel to dominate the souls of peasants.

  This probably doesn’t seem very relevant to you in a world of cellphones and digital realities, but some things stand the test of time, and the Vristok is one of them. Our family has always been at war with this organization, which has, at its core, our very own blood—because we and the Vristok are family.

  A very long time ago, more generations than I can count, two brothers were born. Twins. It was said that they were born grappling one another, the first born feet first, the second emerging holding his hand. The first of those boys was called Mortari. The second was called Vristok. These are long, strange names and you do not need to remember them aside from this fact: they were both what we would call evil. They were born into power and they gained reputation early in their lives as being fond of inflicting pain. These were in the years before Christ, when man was more like animal than he is today. Civilization protects us all from our true natures, my daughter. You will want to shy away from it, but I implore you to keep some part in it. It will stop you from giving in to any monstrous impulses that inevitably rise when one has all the money and power one needs. I speak from experience.

  These brothers, henceforth referred to as V and M, were allies for a very long time, during which they conquered kingdoms, subjugated peoples, inflicted a reign of terror across what is now known as Eastern Europe and Russia. This may sound like boring history, I know, but it is your history, and you should know it.

  They might have lived in their vicious ways and died without causing any noticeable ripple across the surface of humanity, but for a queen they happened to encounter on their rampages. Her name does not survive, and I must warn you, she did not either. Few women ever survived the lusts of those brutes. This is an indelicate subject, but I want you to understand the roots of this bloody battle that still rages all these hundreds of years later. Though we may not know her name, her story is our story.

  She was young and beautiful, and you will discover that those two traits are burdens as well as blessings in good time. Both men wanted the queen. It did not occur to them to allow her to choose her mate. They had not concerned themselves with the choices of their spoils until that point.

  M, being the elder, laid brutal claim to the queen. He took her and laid with her and decided he would make her his wife. But, unbeknownst to Mortari, Vristok had not accepted his brother’s claim, and had also lain with her on several occasions. This indiscretion might have gone unremarked upon, but for the fact that Vristok decided to tell his brother as much.

  M’s rage was considerable, and in that rage he tried to kill his brother. He found his brother an even match for him, so instead he vented his fury on the queen. He slayed her so brutally that Vristok declared him depraved beyond saving, and vowed to wipe not just Mortari but his entire lineage out of existence. This was no small task, given the number of women Mortari and Vristok had both taken over the years.

  After the queen’s death, Vristok became pious. He no longer waged war on others; instead he saved that vicious fury for his brother and his brother’s offspring. The Vristok were formed as a group of mercenaries and assassins who were allowed to keep the spoils collected from the descendants of Mortari.

  And Mortari, of course, is our ancestor. This is not a proud heritage. It is a burden and a curse. You will think to yourself that such an old feud will surely not affect you, but you would be wrong. There is no anger as powerful as old anger, and the Vristok remain as powerful now as I write this as they were at the time of Vristok and Mortari. We are the last of that line.

  Sophie, you must be strong. You were born strong, so I do not worry for you on that score, but I implore you to stay strong. Do not let the experiences of the world break you. Do not give in to the idea that you are in any way normal. You are not. I am loath to speak in supernatural terms, because this is as base and human a feud as has ever been, but I do believe that there is some force looking after our family, and I do believe that its dwindling fortunes will be restored one day. Perhaps you will bring this matter to an end.

  As I write this, you are lying next to me in your bassinet, beautifully innocent of all that lies ahead of you. You will know pain. All people do. It is unavoidable. But it is my hope that you also know joy.

  Your mother is a brilliant woman, and I think you have inherited her intelligence. She is brave too, being with me, knowing what it entails, being willing to bring you into the world. I must confess, I hesitated to procreate. I thought it better this feud and bloodline die with me, but she insisted that there was hope for us all.

  Love, real love, is still in the world. And the Vristok, vicious and mad as they are, do not make up all of creation. Find your freedom. Find your love. Do what our family has been doing since ancient times, and live in defiance of those who would slay us.

  All my love, in this world and the next,

  Father

  * * *

  Vadim

  I open my eyes to find that Sophie is sitting next to me, a piece of paper clutched in her hand. It looks like a letter. I would be curious, but I can’t concentrate. I do not like how I feel inside my head. There is too much noise, a cacophony of voices, the brutal conditioning of decades fighting against my natural desire to protect her.

  I have never allowed myself to hate Ivan before. He has done cruel things to me over the years, but I always made excuses for him. I thought he was my father, that I owed him everything. That was true, but what I couldn’t see was that I paid him for everything he did for me a hundred times over.

  And now it is too late.

  Now he is inside my head, his finger on the trigger of my mind. I am a bullet that has already been fired.

  Sophie reaches out and touches my arm lightly. I feel my muscles contract as powerfully as if she’d struck me. My senses are on fire after that brief slumber. I thought rest might make things better. It has made them worse. The hours I spent asleep were hours in which Ivan’s message sank ever deeper into my subconscious, overriding my love, desire, goodness, all of which never really developed properly in the first place. I was a broken man long before I met Sophie.

  “Vadim? Are you alright?”

  I’m grunting like an animal, expelling large puffs of air in an attempt to gain control of myself, but it’s not working. I feel like I’m a rocket ship, ready to explode. There’s no stopping this process that was set in motion months ago. This was always going to happen. It was only ever a matter of time.

  Resist, I growl inside my mind. Fight it. You don’t have to do this.

  Those are superficial thoughts. They sit on top of my true nature, sounding good and doing nothing.

  “Vadim, look at me.”

  She speaks again, but her voice is like jagged glass being dragged across my senses. I am so fucking keyed up on adrenaline, I feel like my blood is boiling in my veins.

  “Put more chains on,” I tell her. “Now!”

  “I don’t have more chains,” she says, stammering uselessly. Why isn’t she prepared? I told her what was happening to me, and how much danger she was in. Why didn’t she listen?

  “Get chains! Now!”

  “We don’t have more!”

  “Bullshit! Fucking get them!”

  I am screaming at her like the madman I am, and she is backing away, but not fast enough, and not far enough. And then it is too late.

  I snap the chains off the headboard with one rough motion. Her eyes widen as she realizes that I am free. My strength is far greater than steel. Only the last vestiges of my will are holding me back from outright murder.

  “Vadim...” There’s fear in her voice, in her eyes, and in the contortions of her face. Why didn’t she listen?

  “Do you still have the Taser?” I manage to get the question out between gritted teeth.

  She nods, so fucking frightened. I hate that I am doing this to her. I loathe myself right now. If it were possible to end myself, I would, but everything in my being is focused on ending
her.

  “Use it on me. Now. Highest setting possible. Don’t stop until I do.”

  “Vadim, I don’t...” Her eyes are full of tears.

  “When I’m down, bind me again. Like you know how. And then have one of your men kill me.”

  “No!”

  “It’s the only way. They’re inside my head. They’ve programmed me. You’re not safe with me. Make sure I am dead. Don’t leave me alive.”

  “You’re the only man I have ever been safe with,” she says bravely. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  I am reaching for her. It is as if my body is being controlled by some unseen, unstoppable force. She scrambles backwards to grab the Taser. It’s almost too late. I can see her pulse pounding in her throat, and everything I am wants to make it go still.

  “Stop me, Sophie. Stop me...” The words emerge from me twisted and desperate. It is as if I am losing the power of human speech, turning into a brutal animal.

  The prongs hit me. Electricity charges through me. I fall to the floor, convulsing and grateful. I’m going to die, but she’s going to live, and that is all that matters.

  Chapter Eleven

  One miserable week later...

  Sophie

  I’ve never seen Vadim that way before. His eyes were narrow and dark, two little holes of fury inside his head. I felt the shift in his energy as the man he was disappeared and the man he had been forced to be came roaring out of the same flesh. There was only a sliver of decency left at the end, and that was what stopped him, but we both felt it slipping away over those final seconds before I pulled the trigger.

  And now he is gone.

  I loved him more than even I knew. I have been torn apart by his loss, damaged so deeply I do not know if I will ever recover. I should have known better than to fall in love. True love was never on the cards for me. But I couldn’t help falling for him. He slipped past all my defenses. He made me think that I had chosen him. But I hadn’t chosen anything.