Even though I know he is taking me in anger, the feel of him inside me is like being home. I don’t want our coming together to be like this, to be in anger, but there is nothing I can do. My thoughts scatter as he speeds his pace, my body crying for release, but before I can be thrown over the edge, I hear Vlad grunt his release, his body tensing as he lets go of his self-control and deposits his essence deep in my body.
I grunt in disappointment as Vlad pulls out, and then he moves off the bed without even a word or a soft gesture. Before, after coupling, I always used to lie on his chest, listening to his heart, and we would talk or just lie in silence until we fell asleep. Now it seems he can’t get off me quick enough. A tear slips down my cheek, but I quickly rub it away, but it doesn’t matter, as Vlad walks towards the bathroom without a word or a backwards glance.
I guess what he said is true—I will be here for him to use and abuse until he is tired of me. Being close to Vlad and knowing that he hates my very presence will destroy me. He has found the perfect way to torture me. I know that this vengeance he is submitting me to is because he’s hurt, because he believed that what we had was special and then this happened and all he can see is the betrayal.
I won’t and can’t blame him. This is all Paige’s doing, and for that, I will suffer, and she won’t even realize what she has done. I hear the water come on in the bathroom, and once again, my heart tightens in regret. Before, Vlad would always insist on showering with me. Now, he doesn’t want me anywhere near him unless he wants to use me. Sitting up, I look around for the T-shirt and find it lying on the floor next to the bed. Picking it up, I slide it over my body. The boxers I leave off, as I need to go shower before turning in for the night.
I feel lost, alone, and empty inside. The one person who had been able to take me away from the battles of the day-to-day horrors that I see at the hospital, who had boosted my dreams of love, of being cared for and treasured, is now gone. He might be right here in the next room, but it feels like he isn’t even in the same country. I feel a loss I never thought I would feel after only knowing Vlad for such a short period of time, but I gave myself completely to him, and that is what hurts the most—he can’t even tell that I would never have done something like this to him.
VLAD 7
Pulling the phone out of my pocket, I grunt; Andrei is becoming impatient. I think after a week of babysitting a rebellious woman, he is ready to shoot someone. “Da,” I answer, and the first thing I hear is blaring music in the background.
“She’s having a fucking party. The neighbours are bound to complain, and then she will be taken in. Your woman will have to come get her at the station.” This damn kid is really starting to piss me off.
“Switch off the power. I will get Haley to contact her.”
“What do you want me to do with all the fucking kids in the house? I swear that place is going to be trashed.” My anger rises at how irresponsible this kid is. I know that Haley used to work herself to the bone to maintain a decent life for Paige and herself. Many a time I wanted to help her out, but I knew she would have been upset like she was when I got her the car. Haley didn’t have much at home, but what she did have she treasured, as it was bought with hard-earned money.
“Shit,” I mutter, annoyed that I now need to deal with an obnoxious kid. I should just let her destroy the fucking place. “Bring her here. I’ll have one of the apartments downstairs ready and will text you the details. I think it’s time she became a fucking adult.”
“About time,” Andrei mutters before he disconnects the call.
“What’s up?” Alexei asks. We are both looking over the reports from the accountant for the clubs that the Bratva own, something both of us would rather not be doing.
“Haley’s sister is a problem; I’m bringing her in and putting her to work. Just not sure what she’ll be doing yet,” I mutter as I rub my temple. This situation with Haley is working on my last nerve. This last week since bringing her here, I have taken her every night, and even though she fights me, she soon gives in and participates. I know that sexually she wants me; there is no denying the way she comes alive under my touch.
Sometimes I just want to send her back home and forget about this whole situation, but the minute I think of letting her go, my fury rises at what she did. I know that keeping her here isn’t a solution, but until I get this anger out of my system, she will stay and do what I want, when I want.
“Why don’t you have her work in the restaurant? That will keep her busy, and we will have an eye on her at all times.”
At Alexei’s comment, I snap back to the present. That is actually a good idea. She will stay in the building, and the cameras will keep track of what she is up to.
“I think that is a great idea. Like that, Andrei will stop grumbling, as he won’t need to be babysitting any longer.”
Just then, Alexei’s phone rings. He stretches over and picks up his phone from the desk. “What?” I tense at his tone, as I hear the anger in his voice. “I’ll be right down. Keep this quiet.”
“What’s going on?” I ask as Alexei stands; I can sense the anger radiating from his every pore.
“One of our women has been found dead in the laundry room,” Alexei grunts as he starts to make his way towards the door.
“What? What the hell happened?” I ask as I walk after him.
“Don’t know, but Dimitri says that it looks like she was killed.”
Who the hell would kill one of our women inside our own building? I don’t ask anything else, waiting until we get to the laundry room to see what happened. The minute we walk in, I see two of the women who work in the laundry room standing to one side. They are both in a state that leads me to believe they must be the ones who found her.
I don’t see anything at first, and then I see way too much as I walk around the one machine. There is blood all around the ground as if someone was dragged leading to the back of the counter. Dimitri walks towards us from the back of the laundry room. By his set features, I can tell that it’s not good.
“What happened?” Alexei asks as we approach and then stop as we see the woman lying on her back behind the counter. There is some kind of shirt stuffed into her mouth. Her pink top has been torn, the buttons scattered around.
Her skirt is around her waist, her panties are gone, and it is clear she’s been raped. “Cover her,” Alexei orders. His voice is hoarse with the rage that must be coursing through his body. How can anyone do this to a woman? Her eyes are open and glazed in death. I notice that one of her hands is bloody, which seems like she must have broken her nails fighting her assailant.
“We need to call the cops,” Dimitri says, “but first, I want to get my guys on it to see if we can find who has done this.”
“I want this person found,” Alexei orders. “Has her husband been told?” We have a lot of men in the Bratva, and most of them have their families here. I don’t know all of them personally, but I know most of them from seeing them around. This woman I only know from seeing around. She was a pretty little thing in her early thirties, with a radiant smile every time I saw her. Whoever the fucker is who did this to her needs to be castrated.
“I don’t think this was an outsider, Boss,” Dimitri says. “We haven’t had anyone coming in today. There were a couple parcels, but they were left at reception.”
“You are saying that one of us did this?” I ask. I will kill the fucker myself if that is the case.
“Can’t be sure yet, but unless someone got past our security, we didn’t have anyone coming in today.”
“Who found her?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at the crying women by the door.
“Her colleagues. She opened up today, and apparently it was her turn to switch on the machines and get everything prepared for the day. The others only came in an hour later, so this fucker knew her schedule and that he wasn’t going to be interrupted. There is more, though. Come see,” Dimitri says as he inclines his head to the back.
We follow him to the back of the laundry room; the back wall comes into sight, and I see the writing on it in blood. “What the fuck?” I mutter as I read what it says there. Sugar is sweet, blood is more, poke a bear, and watch it roar. Who is better now?
“What the hell does that mean?” Alexei grunts angrily.
“It means that he’s fucking crazy,” I say angrily as I look around. What the hell was this guy thinking? How can he rape one of our women and then leave a message like this for us? The fucker is asking to be lynched.
“Where is she?” Shit, that must be the husband. I turn and hurry to the front but am too late as he comes around the counter and stops. I can see first the shock and then the anguish on his face as he stumbles onto his knees next to his wife. The pain on his face has my stomach knotting. How does someone do this?
“Why?” he whispers as he starts to pull down the sheet that Dimitri covered her with, but I grab his hand to stop him.
“You don’t want to see her like this, Stephan,” I say, but he pulls his arm away and slowly lifts the sheet to see her face. When he sees her glazed eyes, a gasp of pain is wrenched out of him, and a tear slips down his cheek. Stephan is a tough man; it is sad to see someone like him brought down to this pain because of a sick fucker. He riches out and pulls the shirt out of her mouth, throwing it to the side.
“Who did this?” he asks in anguish as he strokes his fingers over her face.
Alexei leans down and places his hand on Stephen’s shoulder in comfort. “We don’t know, but I promise you, Stephen, we will find him.”
“She was a good person. Why would anyone do this to her?” he asks in. I can understand his confusion. Something like this doesn’t happen among us. We see a lot of shit, but nothing as brutal as this.
“Whoever did this is a sick fuck, but we will find him and make him pay,” I say.
“Come, Stephen, let us take care of this,” Dimitri says as he squats down and places his hand over Stephan’s. “Let us deal with this. Think of your wife the way she was, not what this motherfucker did to her. I will walk you back to your apartment. We are going to need a nice dress for her.” I’m impressed at Dimitri’s diplomacy in the face of this situation. Stephen doesn’t want to leave her, but the thought of making her look presentable sways him.
The thought of something like this happening to Haley or Jade has my stomach knotting in fear. Whoever this fucker is, he will be in the building. We need to make sure that all the women are safe until he is found. Hopefully we catch him on one of the cameras and can hang him by his balls.
As soon as Dimitri walks out with Stephen, I walk towards the two women to see if they know anything else that they might have forgotten with the shock. One of them I know quite well, as she is one of the older women in the building. Her husband is one of our captains. “Ladies, I’m so sorry that you had to find something like this,” I say, placing my hand on Tatiana’s shoulder in comfort.
“Oh, Vlad, it’s so sad. She was such a nice, sweet girl,” Tatiana says as she shakes her head in sadness.
“I know, but I promise we will find who did this to her.”
“How can anyone do something like that?” the other one says angrily, her hands fisted at her sides.
“Did you see anything out of the ordinary when you came in, or anything that you can see now that isn’t where it’s supposed to be?” Both women immediately start looking around.
“No, everything looks the same, but the door was closed when we arrived, and we usually leave it open once we have opened and switched on the machines.” I look towards the machines on the one side of the wall and see that they are still switched off.
“Do you mean those machines?” I ask as I point towards them, and both nod in reply. That means that whoever it was came in before she had time to switch the machines on. Maybe he was already here when she arrived and walked in with her. I look towards the door and see that it doesn’t look like it was forced, which means that he might have just walked in with her.
“Thinking about it, that rack shouldn’t be there,” Tatiana says, pointing to a rack standing behind the counter. “We keep all the racks at the back until the clothes get picked up. Then we bring the racks forward and take the clothes off the racks and give them to the owner of the items.”
“Do you have any way of knowing whose clothes were on that rack?” I ask. Maybe it was the killer’s clothes and he came in with the pretext of collecting his items.
“No, we simply place their names in the basket or on the hanging items, but when they collect it, the tags either go with the basket or we throw it away in the bin behind the counter. Maybe if the customer didn’t take his tag, you will find it in the bin.” This could mean that the killer’s excuse to come in was to collect his clothes.
“Has there been anyone who has been less than cordial with any of you?”
They immediately shake their heads in denial. “Most of the men we don’t even see. We drop their clothes by their door, and lots we collect by their door too. You know how it is; most aren’t bothered to come down here. As long as they get what they want, they are happy.” To be honest, I am one of those men. Most of the time, I don’t even know when my clothes have gone to get washed, as the ladies who clean the apartments do that for us.
We are self-sufficient. Everything needed is done by our own people. The cleaning is done by the women who live in the building with their men; the dry cleaning is the same. The restaurant is run by men and women from the Bratva. Reception, maintenance of our cars, delivery services—everything is done by our own people. That’s why it is obvious that whoever did this is one of us.
“Thank you. You can go home and come back tomorrow. Please don’t say anything to anyone until further notice. As you can imagine, we need to try to find who did this, and we don’t need an uproar at the moment. If you do remember anything that you think might help us, give Dimitri or myself a call, or you know where to find me.” Both of them take their leave, which allows me to go verify if there is a note with a name in the bin or anywhere on the ground around the corpse, but there is nothing.
Alexei comes from the back, his face a mask of fury. He looks around to make sure we are alone. “Who the fuck would do something like this?” he mutters.
“This is sick. I can’t think of any of our men who would do something like this.”
“We sometimes kill because we have to or because we are attacked first. This here isn’t that. He is sending us a message. He wants us to take notice.”
“What are we going to do with the police? If we call them in, they are going to be all over everything. They will take this opportunity to investigate everything else they suspect,” I say as I look around.
“We’re not calling them. I have all the faith in Dimitri. He will be able to find the perpetrator easier than any cop can do. He knows our men and all their secrets,” Alexei says just as Sin and Jared walk in. They are two of Dimitri’s men, and from their expressions, they are not having much luck with the investigation so far.
“Anything?” Alexei asks.
“I looked at all the cameras leading here. We have the normal feed, but nothing out of the ordinary. The two cameras on this floor leading here from the lift and the stairs have been tampered with. Instead of pointing down, they have been manipulated and are pointing up towards the wall. I went back and noticed that this was done yesterday,” Jared reports.
“I looked at all the deliveries. No one came inside. There was no one here at the time of the murder. I have spoken to the men on duty. She took the same stairs as she did every day, but no one saw her with anyone,” Sin says.
“What if it’s one of the guards on duty?” I ask.
“They are in pairs at all times. Both confirm what the other said,” Sin reports, confirming that he had thought of the same possibility.
“Well, someone did it, and we better find the fucker before he gets a liking for it and decides to do it again,” Alexei says as he lo
oks at me. I can see the turmoil in his eyes, and I know exactly how he is feeling. We won’t get any rest with an animal like this on the loose, preying on our women.
HALEY 8
It has been a week since I was brought here, and each day that passes, I become more despondent. Vlad comes home every night, but he hardly talks to me. Yesterday, I went to bed earlier and tried to sleep so as not to have to fight with him, but he ignored my efforts and had his way with me anyway. I would like to say that he hurts me or that I don’t want his touch, but the truth is, I crave his touch, and even though he has done nothing to give me pleasure this last week, and instead has taken it all for himself, I love that he wants me.
In the months that we have been together, Vlad has gone out of his way to always give me pleasure, but now he purposefully holds my orgasms at bay. I know that he’s not this person he’s portraying and his anger is driving him. I know that soon, he will get tired of it and send me home. Even though I’m bored out of my mind and want to go home, I don’t want to see Vlad for the last time, and I know that the minute he sends me home, I won’t ever see him again.
Bending forward, I chop the carrot into cubes before placing it in the pot. Two days ago, I was in the kitchen, making coffee, when Vlad came in. He looked at my cup of coffee and then walked to the fridge. I still don’t know what he was going to get, but when he opened it, I saw him tense. He snapped something in Russian and then turned and left without a word to me. The next thing I know, he comes back an hour later.
I was sitting on the couch, looking out at the city, when he opened the front door. He took a step in and then stopped. “Go to the bedroom,” he grunts. I was about to argue, but then I see another man standing just behind him. Instead of rushing, I got up and strolled out. I hear him mutter something in Russian, but I didn’t stop to see his reaction. I know that he wanted me out of there because I was still wearing his T-shirts and boxers, and he didn’t want anyone to see me.
Fury: (Bratva Fury) Page 6