by Cara Wylde
Cara Wylde
Ensnared
Primal Obsessions
Copyright © 2020 by Cara Wylde
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
Cover art by Emma Griffin. Cover is for illustrative purposes only.
First edition
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Contents
Ensnared
Vera
Aryan
Vera
Dev
Navin
Vera
Aryan
Vera
Dev
Vera
Aryan
Vera
Navin
Dev
Vera
Aryan
Vera
Navin
Vera
Aryan
Vera
About the Author
Also by Cara Wylde
Ensnared
My name is Vera, and my only sin is that I’m the daughter of a Russian mob boss. When a rival family slaughters my own, I am taken prisoner and offered as a gift to three dangerous, vile men.
Aryan, Dev, and Navin. Dark, mysterious, exotic. They lock me in their luxurious palace, and they make me sleep in a cage. At night, they visit me one by one, and with each touch and each heated kiss, a piece of my innocence slips away. I can tell they’re hiding something. They’re more than they seem, and when I find out about their true beastly nature, I am bound to them forever.
But the man who killed my family is back. He wishes to destroy me this time, and I don’t know if I have it in me to defend myself and my new life.
Authors’ Note: This is a full, standalone dark romance story with no cliffhangers, and a happily-ever-after. Please be advised that it may contain situations that are triggering to some, profanity, and a lot of steam.
Vera
They came out of nowhere. Men with guns and swords, pouring over the walls of the estate, sneaking behind bushes and trees. My father’s men were not prepared. We were having a barbecue in the yard, like we did every Sunday, and all my father’s friends were gathered around the long table with their wives and children. The women started screaming, the children started running scared, trying to get inside the house, and the men were reaching for anything that could be used as a weapon. My brothers, Alexei and Boris, pulled out the revolvers they always kept in their boots, but my father wasn’t armed at all. Just half an hour ago, he’d been flipping sausages on the grill. He reached for the grill fork with its two sharp tongs and managed to stab one of his attackers in the side. The man howled in pain as he rolled on the grass, away from my father’s wrath. My father lunged for him again but stopped midstep when two bullets hit him in the back. He stayed like that for a long moment, suspended, with his arms spread wide, then the grill fork fell at his feet, and he collapsed to his knees. I ran to him, tears streaming down my cheeks, my vision blurry and my heart beating like the wings of a caged bird.
“Papa? Papa, no…” I leaned over him, my hands cradling his head. “Don’t… don’t leave us…”
His sky-blue eyes turned to me. When he spoke, blood gurgled onto his chin. “Run,” he whispered hoarsely. “Run, Vera. Don’t let them catch you.”
But I couldn’t leave his side. He closed his eyes, ready to give his last breath. I looked around me in shock. Boris was fighting a man that was twice his size. Alexei was lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. His eyes were glassy, and his mouth was slightly open. My mother was nowhere to be seen. The long table had been thrown upside down, and broken glass and porcelain littered the lawn. Our guests were all dead – men, women, and children. They hadn’t spared anyone. Not a single soul. I heard three shots, and then Boris grunted in pain as he collapsed right on top of the grill. I looked down at my father for the last time, and a lump formed in my throat when I saw he wasn’t breathing anymore. Gone. I forced myself to stand up and go looking for my mother. She had to be alive. She had to.
“Where do you think you’re going, sweetheart?”
I froze in place. I knew that voice. Vasily Petrov. My father had been doing business with him. I bit my lower lip, trying to stay calm even as my chin trembled. This was it. He was going to kill me, and I’d never know why. I’d thought Petrov and my father were associates. They each had their own families with their own crews, but they’d always been friendly, they’d always helped each other. Why would Petrov do something like this?
“Come on, sweetheart. You’re braver than this. You’re Anton Kudrin’s daughter. Face me.”
There was a harshness in his voice that made me turn around. I was sure that if I didn’t obey him, he’d just pull out his gun and execute me on the spot. But what did I know? After all, he’d killed almost everyone, and still here I was, standing before him, weak and helpless, and he was trying to make conversation. I faced him, and more tears escaped my eyes when I saw the way he looked at me.
Vasily Petrov was in his late fifties, and always dressed after the latest fashion, unlike my father, who preferred comfortable clothes and thought that spending his hard-earned money on expensive watches was, as he himself put it when he thought I wasn’t around to hear him, small dick energy. He, of course, liked to buy my mom and me all the jewelry and shoes we wanted. He knew how to take care of his favorite girls. So, if Petrov had done this to rob us, he was going to be at least a little bit satisfied. I was pretty sure there was also plenty of cash stored away in the house, in the walls and under the floorboards.
“Why?” I heard myself ask in a trembling voice.
He shook his head. “Sweet, innocent Vera. You don’t know what your father does? I mean… did,” he corrected himself, grinning. I gulped and kept my mouth shut. Of course I knew, but I’d never said it out loud. Not to me, not to anyone. He continued: “He dipped his toe into a lot of businesses over the years. Drugs, cars, electronics, guns… But you see, that last one? Gun export? He should’ve stayed out of that one. My area of expertise, not his. Greedy fellow, your father.” He stepped around me and nudged his dead body with the toe of his boot. “He got what he deserved.”
“Please.”
“Please… what?”
“Please stop.”
He cocked an eyebrow, then looked around. That was when I noticed the deafening silence. I opened my mouth to beg him again, even though I didn’t know exactly why and what for, but he pressed his finger to my lips.
“Shh…”
Thirty seconds passed. One minute. I heard something break inside the house, then a woman screamed in fear. My mother. I dashed toward the d
oor, but Petrov snatched me with one hand and held me in a tight grip as I kicked and thrashed. My mother screamed again, and then there was a gunshot. I went limp in Petrov’s cruel grip. He laughed, hugged me to his chest, and whispered in my ear:
“Sorry about that, sweetheart. I’ll stop now. Promise.”
Of course. There was no one left to kill. Except me. My body went rigid when I suddenly had the realization of all the possibilities unfolding before me, one more horrible than the other. What was Petrov going to do to me? His men emerged from the house, some recharging their guns just in case, others wiping their bloody swords off the bodies on the ground. A few of them had been hurt, but they were alive and high on the smell of blood, sweat, and emptied bladders. They were all looking at me, too. Was Petrov going to give me to them? I was untouched. I wondered if he knew. My father had always been protective of me, and so strict that I’d reached the age of twenty-two without a man sneaking his hand up my skirt. Or my blouse. The only hands that had ever touched my virgin body were mine. I knew he liked to talk about me. He used to tell his friends how proud he was of his little Vera, how excited about my future when I went to college to study Biology, and how he couldn’t wait for me to become a famous researcher that would take the name Kudrin to new heights. Had he talked about me to Petrov as well? To Petrov’s men?
I was spiraling. When Petrov let me go and pushed me away, I started hyperventilating. I took a few steps toward his men, like a broken doll that couldn’t control her own limbs anymore. Not like I ever could… Someone else had always controlled me since I was born. My father, who wanted me to stay pure until the day I died, my mother who couldn’t stand the idea that her baby might wear the same dress twice if she didn’t pay attention, my brothers, who wanted to keep me away from the business, away from the world that had already consumed them and destroyed their lives. And there they were, all of them, lying at my feet, their blood and other fluids seeping into the ground. And my mother… somewhere in the house. I could only hope… My stomach turned at the thought, and I gripped it tightly over the summer dress I was wearing. I could only hope that they hadn’t touched her before they… I doubled over and retched drily. I hadn’t had the chance to eat yet. When they’d invaded our home, my father had just brought the barbecue to the table, and we’d just sat down and started filling our plates. It still smelled of juicy, seasoned meat, and that made me feel even more nauseated.
“Tie her up,” Petrov ordered his men in a cool, detached voice.
All right, so he wasn’t going to kill me. Not yet, at least. Two of his soldiers marched toward me with firm strides, and all I could do was raise my hands in front of me in an attempt to defend myself. One of them grabbed me by the arm and covered my head with a dark bag made of coarse fabric and secured it with a rope tied around my neck. I could breathe through it, but I couldn’t see. I tried to scream, but soon realized my voice had faded. I let the tears roll down my face instead. I couldn’t see them, but at least they couldn’t see how broken I was, either. They bound my hands behind my back, then pushed me, forcing me to walk in front of them. One of my ankles gave in, and I stumbled slightly. They both kept me upright. One of them cursed under his breath and checked to see if I’d twisted my ankle. It was fine, though. Just a little sore. I kept walking, painfully aware that the high-heeled sandals weren’t doing me any favors on the grass, and neither on the gravel that soon started crunching under my soles.
I had no idea where they were taking me. They threw me into the backseat of a car, and from the front seat, I heard Petrov murmur something to the driver. We drove for what could’ve been thirty minutes, an hour, or two hours. Time had no meaning for me anymore. My brain couldn’t process the passage of it properly. When we arrived at our destination, they dragged me out, and my heels drummed loudly on the concrete as I was forced to almost run toward my doom. My foot hit a step, and I fell over. The men cursed again, and I heard Petrov yell at them in Russian. One of them slipped an arm under my knees and the other around my back, lifted me off the ground, and carried me up the few steps. He dropped me unceremoniously onto a leather chair, and from the feel of everything around me, from the way the air smelled and how the space seemed rather cramped, I guessed I was on an airplane.
My heart started racing a hundred miles an hour. Where were they taking me? Outside of the country, for sure. But why? I heard Petrov grunt in satisfaction when he sank in the chair opposite mine.
“Please. I’m thirsty.”
“I’d offer you champagne.” And I heard the clink of glasses and the pop of a bottle as one of his guys opened it. “But I don’t think dear daddy would approve. God rest his soul. He kept you secluded, didn’t he? Made sure his little girl was untouched by…” He paused, pretending like he was trying to find more polite words to express what was really going through his mind. “Untouched by the vices of this world we live in. No alcohol, am I right? Not a single cigarette either. Let’s keep it that way in honor of your father. Anton Kudrin… what a character!” He drank greedily, then asked for his guy to pour him some more.
He was kind of right, though. I’d never smoked a cigarette. The smoke alone made my stomach turn, and that was why my brothers had never smoked in the house while they’d lived with my parents. My father had never smoked. Not once in his life. He’d never taken drugs, as far as I knew. Alexei had told me once. He dealt them, but never consumed them. He’d had his principles. I had drunk, though. It would’ve been stupid of me not to. Behind my parents’ back, of course, and every time they asked me, I said I had no idea what alcohol tasted like. What a strange life I’d led. And to think I was twenty-two… But that was what happened when you were the only daughter of a mafia kingpin and you truly thought, deep down, that your father really did know or found out about everything that moved. When I was a child, and a teenager later, I was convinced that he even knew my most hidden thoughts, my dreams, and my nightmares. I thought he could read things I didn’t even know I felt just by looking into my eyes.
The plane took off, and I had no choice but to settle into my seat and stay quiet. Adrenaline was still rushing through my veins. This must have been Petrov’s personal jet, because it felt small, and I was sure he had only two guys with him. No flight attendant, either. Soon, I felt myself drifting to sleep. I tried to stay awake and alert, but it was hard when I was so scared, so exhausted, and the bag over my head kept me in the dark. Eventually, I gave in, praying that when I opened my eyes, I’d see the light of day and not the darkest pits of hell. Because I was going to hell, wasn’t I? I had to pay for the sins of my family. My only consolation was that I was most likely going to meet them down there.
I woke up with a start. The plane was landing. For a few seconds, I didn’t know where I was and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t see a thing even though my eyes were wide open. I tried to move my arms and realized they were tied behind my back. And then it dawned on me. My family was gone. Petrov had spared my life and taken me with him. I whimpered.
“Finally,” Petrov sighed as he stretched and popped his joints. “I hate long flights.”
How long had the flight been? I had no clue, and also no intention to ask him. As his men grabbed me and lifted me to my feet, I promised myself that I was going to be stronger. I was going to try, at least. No more crying, no more begging. He was right, Petrov… I was Vera Antonova Kudrina. I was the only survivor of my family, and even though I knew he was going to kill me soon, I was going to act the way I knew my father would have wanted me to act in these circumstances. With dignity.
The second we were off the plane, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The air was heavy and damp. It almost smelled like we were in the jungle. And oh, the level of pollution! We weren’t in Russia anymore, that much was certain. We’d flown south. Way south. They didn’t remove the bag, so I tried to walk calmly as they pushed me from behind, hoping I wouldn’t trip on anything. My whole body ached after having spent too many hours on the plane, in the sa
me uncomfortable position. They threw me in the backseat of a car once again, and this time, Petrov climbed next to me.
“Now listen, Vera darling. I have a mission for you.”
“What?” I was confused. Was he messing with me? I strained against my binds, and he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. I tensed up. “What do you mean?”
“Your family is gone, your friends are gone, and when I say friends, I mean your father’s capos and soldiers. I doubt your college peeps will even miss you. You didn’t quite fit in, did you?”
Given where I came from and who my father was, no… I’d never fit in. I was alone, I realized, and my heart ached. I was alone in the world, and this despicable man knew it.
“I know you hate me now, but you’ll come to understand… why I had to do what I did. Vera, I spared you because you’re innocent. I know the men in your family kept you far away from their affairs. And Vera, I will let you live. I will even offer you a brand-new life beside me, adopt you as my own. But you have to prove to me that you’re worthy. You have to do something for me first.”
I gulped. “What do you need me to do?”
What else could I have said? He’d basically just promised me that he wasn’t going to give me to his men to do with me as they pleased, and he wasn’t going to kill me either. I knew I couldn’t trust him, but my instinct of self-preservation was too strong.
He was silent, though, as if he was reconsidering the whole thing. I bit my tongue hard, forcing myself to stay calm. The car stopped, and one of his guys opened the door for me. Before he pushed me out, Petrov leaned in and whispered in my ear:
“Keep your eyes open. Learn as much as you can about them.”
“Who’s them?”
I didn’t have to see his wicked grin. I felt it. He got out of the car, walked around it, and grabbed me by the arm to help me out. As we walked down what seemed to be a stone alley, my designer heels protesting loudly, he whispered in such a low voice that I almost missed it: