by Ker Dukey
Her resilience and just the simple fact that she’s my monster’s doll is a turn on to the maximum degree.
“Tom Ford.” I raise a brow, ignoring the way my body responds to hers. “And yours?” She’s wearing a pretty dress that stops just above the knee with knee-high socks and plain Mary Janes.
“I make my own clothes. You’ll have to let me make you something when all this is behind us.” Her lashes fall against her cheeks that turn rosy.
Fucking beautiful little doll.
I hope she gets the chance to do just that. “I’d like that,” I tell her honestly. My fingers touch her pouty mouth on their own accord. She doesn’t move away. “But first, let’s find this bitch.”
She smiles against my fingers and her eyes brighten as if it’s the best thing she’s ever heard.
My thoughts flitter to the properties Dillon Scott informed me of. Jessica held our doll at one of those rundown motels, so it makes sense that she would take Benjamin to another property of hers. Although Dillon says he has officers checking them out, if I’ve learned anything from him, it’s that he’s useless. I’ll have a better chance of finding Benjamin before him and won’t have to risk Benjamin being taking into custody…if he’s still alive.
He is. I’d feel it in my soul if anything had happened to him. We’re parts of a whole, and when one part fades, the other parts sense the departure. I’d sense it. She would sense it.
Pulling my cell from my pocket, I call Luke. He can get me the same information Dillon has.
“I need every property listed for Jessica Johnson and her parents too, just in case,” I tell him before ending the call. I find Monster’s doll standing there looking up at me, just waiting for direction. “I need to go to the hospital and get Kami back.”
Her smooth forehead crinkles at my statement.
“Who is Kami to you?”
The same question Dillon asked, and it’s such a loaded question, I don’t even know the answer anymore. But apparently, her curiosity won’t simply go away. This doll wants answers—answers I don’t even know how to explain. My thoughts drift to the past.
Her blood is warm on my knuckles and it looks so perfect smeared across her lips. Vlad will be pissed off that I drew blood, and she will be left with a fat lip before her registration, but the less she’s worth, the more likely she is to survive. I want her to survive. More than that, I want to claim her as my bounty. She will be my perfect pet. Her thirst for violence is the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted. Her labored breath is loud in the cramped cell as her exhausted body lies slumped against the wall. The small confines make the sparring so much more fun. Nowhere to run or hide—four walls to bounce her from.
“I win.” I flash her a smirk and she wipes her hand across her bleeding lip. “This time,” she huffs.
“Every time,” I correct, reaching forward and dragging her onto my lap.
“I’m going to hunt you in The V Games.” Her body goes soft in my arms, as if she wants this every bit as much as I do.
“Not if I find you first.”
Soft fingertips touch my face, jolting me back to the present. Monster’s doll is on her tiptoes, smoothing out my furrowed brow with her delicate caress.
“You don’t have to tell me if it’s upsetting,” she coos.
Taking her hands in mine, I offer her a small smile. “It’s just that I’m not sure anymore, little doll. She saved me once.”
“From who?”
I’ve only been in the arena for an hour and two people have already tried to kill me. It didn’t make sense. Usually people were just finding their place and mapping out their route, the rooms they wished to visit, the fights they paid to fight in, the slaughter rooms they can unload their darkest fantasies within, but I became a target. And the price tag on my head must be substantial for people to bypass the main events at The V Games and come looking for their bounty instead. Usually sex and voyeurism were the starting games of choice, but now I have a night of trying to fend off a hit to look forward to.
Vlad, Vika, and my father will lose their minds over this.
The worst part is a hit ordered in here cannot be avenged outside The V Games. I am now free meat to be carved up by whoever has the biggest knife, and worse, it’s for the person who has the biggest stack of cash. I don’t have enemies, so the risk of a bounty on my head must be small. But not unheard of.
Plans of hunting down Kami and us going on a killing spree before fucking and beating her in front of the spectators is now a distant thought.
The game has changed.
“Someone I loved very much,” I tell the little doll, who studies me with wide eyes as I reminisce. I keep bouncing to the past, like a rubber ball on the pavement.
Bounce. Soar. Bounce. Soar.
“Another woman?” she asks. My thoughts take me hostage with her question.
I’ve made it to the final countdown of the clock. The exit is within reach and the night of pleasure and mayhem is almost over. The time to prove to my father I can uphold his honor, survive, and enjoy in the spoils of the game he created for sinister men like us is coming to an end. Tonight’s evening of hell proves our enemies are trying to invade us from the inside. It also shows our spectators there’s conflict of a huge magnitude. Why else would there be a price on my head and so many vying to claim it? But with me making it to the end, it also proves you can’t take down the Vasiliev clan.
We are monsters.
We are beasts.
We are unbreakable.
Blood layers my skin like a coat. My abs hurt and there are a few slashes deep enough to scar. The fight inside, however, is what is breaking me more than the fight on the outside. This is personal. Twenty-three assassination attempts I’ve managed to survive and one of them came from a member of my father’s staff. The man must have paid to enter The V Games for the sole purpose of doing someone else’s bidding.
And I ended them all.
Our family created these dark games, therefore, we play them the best.
My soul deflates with the realization of whom could be behind this attempt. I saw him. The night before The V Games at our home, leaving Vika’s room, no doubt concocting a plan to betray me.
Every ounce of training I’d had in my eighteen years of being a Vasiliev were put to action to fight off this flurry of new enemies set upon me by those I loved. By those I trusted.
Nothing.
No amount of training and preparation could have prepared me for such treachery, though, or the foreign feeling of intense sorrow that now clings to my soul. Twenty-three deaths to add to my tally—none for just the pleasure of it. And if it were not forbidden, hers would be the twenty-fourth.
My youth made me quick and gave me stamina over my opponents. The blade Vlad recommended was precise and deadly. Each session I’d had with Kami prepared me for brutal hand-to-hand combat, and I became their mistake. When they came for me, they fucking died.
“I’m sorry,” I hear whispered into my ear from behind, a deep baritone of regret. My eyes close in resignation. I didn’t hear anyone approach. I let my guard down so close to the end. I recognize that voice. Niko.
“She knows about us.” Regret tightens his voice. “She will tell your father and mine. We both can’t have that, Viktor. If it’s not me, it will be another. I’m sorry,” Niko breathes, the pain evident in the cracking of his voice.
A humph resounds behind me as I wait to feel the blade pierce my skin, but nothing comes.
Turning, I’m shocked to find Niko on the ground, his blade by his side and Kami standing there with a baton. “Been having fun without me I see.” She quirks a brow. She’s missing her clothes. Blood and bruises decorate her bare skin, and I stare at her dumbfounded. She’s survived, and more than that, she fucking saved me.
“I only knocked him out,” she says with a grin. “Do you want to kill him?”
I look up to the clock and smile. Her eyes follow mine.
“Looks like we both wi
n,” she quips, her eyes dropping to the gates now lifting to signal the end of The V Games and the exit. Others move past us—an array of players carrying with them the loot of their night.
Reaching forward, I tug her toward me and lift her, throwing her over my shoulder. “No, I win, and you’re my prize,” I growl.
Vlad and Vika are waiting for me as I walk out. Vlad rushes toward me and pulls Kami from my shoulder before placing her on her feet. “Get her cleaned up and some medical attention,” he orders to the team waiting to assist the victors. “Scan her code. She’s Viktor Vasiliev’s bounty. His attention turns my way. “Are you injured?” he asks me, but he already knows the answer. He would have been watching and going out of his mind with the need to join me in the fight for my life, otherwise.
“I didn’t expect to be fending off so many attacks. How come Father didn’t know the price on my head beforehand?” I demand, angry I wasn’t informed my bounty would be so high.
“It wasn’t the board,” he assures me, and it confirms what I already assumed. “It was an outside bid sent direct to all assassins on the roster. We didn’t know anything of it, Viktor.”
I grit my teeth and motion with my head behind him. “Why don’t we ask your dear friend and our sister’s boyfriend who put a bounty on my head?”
Vika steps from the shadows like a prowling cat. “Rules of The V Games, brat. Contracts taken from inside the arena are not allowed. Revenge after The V Games ends is not allowed. It’s what the entire foundation is built upon.” She smiles, her eyes devious and dark. “V is not for vengeance.”
“You’ve broken my heart, moya sestra,” I reply, the fabric of who I am un-webbing at the seams.
“What is going on?” Vlad demands, darting his questioning gaze to our sister for answers she clearly has.
“Our brother is fucking what belongs to me,” she hisses, then glares at me. “Thinking I don’t know. That I can’t smell you on him when he comes to me afterward. You’re a disgrace to our father’s name.”
“So you try to have me killed, and worse, let Niko try to do it? I have bad news for you. He failed. You both failed. I’m still here. Now what? Are you just going to let him live and be a happy family knowing it’s me he craves when he’s deep inside you?” I taunt my twin.
Her face contorts, screwing up her pretty features in disgust. “You know me better than that, brat.”
What?
She flicks her eyes to something behind me. Turning, I see Niko getting to his feet, clutching at his side. He’s flanked by two men wearing head-to-toe leather, including masks, every inch covered in razor-sharp spikes. They look like fucking human hedgehogs.
The big ass monsters rush Niko before he can move or escape, spearing him between them. Like a tackle hug between football teammates. Rough. Brutal. Enthusiastic. The motherfucking razor twins laugh, sick and twisted and loud, as Niko is crushed between them. His eyes widen and blood drips from his mouth. The twins release him and have to use force to rip themselves away from his body. Flesh and crimson blood cling from their spikes. Niko lets out a pained groan before collapsing to the ground. His eyes are open and staring vacant up at me.
“I wanted him to see me as they killed him.” Vika smirks, waving toward her dying boyfriend.
My blood boils. If it weren’t for the rules, I’d push my knife right into the side of her throat and cut her wide open.
“Father won’t like this one bit, Vika.” Vlad grabs ahold of her shoulders, shaking her with unmasked fury. Vlad is always calm. Now, he’s anything but. “What have you done?” he roars, his nostrils flaring with anger.
“He’s not here, though, is he, brat?”
She’s right. Why isn’t Father here to congratulate me?
“You told him?” I choke.
This is bad. Fuck, this is bad.
Being gay or bisexual, not only in Russia, but in our family, is a disgrace. Unheard of even. Father knowing my sexual interests is the worst possible scenario.
“That his son fucks men?” she sneers. “Yes, Vik, we can’t have you ruining everything for the rest of us. You’ve disgraced him.”
I blink away the past and swallow down the bile in my throat.
My sister broke my heart when she betrayed me.
Father said I was damaging to the world he created for us. A poison in the veins of his empire. I was banished, stripped of my name, and given a new one.
A new life.
A new country.
A monster created from betrayal.
A master built from my own will to prove to my father he made a mistake forsaking me.
I press a kiss to the pretty doll’s forehead and run my fingers through her silky brown hair as I seek comfort, the haunting memories still lingering. “We’ll have story time for another day. Right now, we have shit to do.”
The hospital is bustling with activity. Nurses and doctors flit around like worker bees while patients fill the waiting room and corridors. Monster’s dolly refused when I tried to make her wait in the car for me. She gripped my hand so tight, her tiny nails marked the flesh. “Please don’t leave me alone. I never want to be alone again.” Her expressive eyes conveyed her conviction.
I agreed and brought her with me knowing it was a huge risk. But she’s over eighteen and free to make her own choices. Even if Dillon finds out she’s free, he can’t take her. She has free will and she wouldn’t want to leave her monster.
Or me.
The thought makes my chest ache.
I don’t want her to leave me either.
Monster and Master are a packaged deal now.
We were from the moment I carried his big ass into my home and nursed him back to life. I breathed air back into the beast they tried to destroy by guns and fire.
You can’t destroy men like Benjamin Stanton.
They destroy you.
“I need to know where a patient would be taken to if brought in by the police,” I say smoothly to the skinny woman in blue scrubs standing behind the nurse station in the ER department.
She raises both brows and just stares at me like I’m an idiot.
When I say nothing else, she exhales heavily. “I can’t tell you that information.”
Fuck. Digging into my pocket, I pull out a stack of cash and push it toward her over the counter.
Her mouth drops open and she pushes it back at me. “You’re kidding, right? This is a hospital. Now, please leave or I’ll call security.”
She will need it if she keeps being difficult. I’ll wring her scrawny fucking neck.
“Viktor, come,” my sweet Elizabeth urges as she ushers me down a corridor and slips into an office. “I know my mother’s entry code and ID number. I can check the patients list from here.” She smiles, her apple cheeks turning bright pink. Sitting down at the desk and booting up the computer, she looks so tiny. It makes me want to pluck her from the seat and have her sit in my lap instead. Naked. Grinding against my cock as I mark her pale flesh with my teeth. “Keep your eye on the door,” she instructs, her tone fierce even though she’s nothing but a little runt.
A smile graces my lips as I obey the demanding doll. Standing guard at the door, my eyes flicker between the entrance and her small hands as she flits them over the keyboard. Tiny hands that would look so good wrapped around my cock.
“Does she have a name that would be known?”
“Kami is all Dillon knows her by,” I tell her, my voice gruff. “And he brought her in.”
A few quiet minutes pass, then she looks up at me. “There is nothing of a Kami or even a patient brought in by a detective.”
“Check for any patient with broken ankles, wrist, or lacerations,” I coach.
My heart ticks along with the clock above the pretty dolly’s head. Benjamin doesn’t have time for us to be hunting down fucking Kami. I should just make Dillon bring her to me. Maybe he took her to a different hospital.
“She’s not in the database. Are you sure it’s this hosp
ital?”
“Check for a Josey, also brought in by a detective.”
She once again taps her fingers over the keys.
“Yes. Josey Manuel. She has cuts and bruises, but has already been discharged.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I grunt.
Her small frame rushes over to me, and when we exit, we almost collide with a doctor.
“Elise, how are you? You’ve changed. Nice outfit.” The woman smiles awkwardly. I’m debating strangling her and stuffing her in the file cabinet inside the office we just left when Elizabeth pipes up.
“Oh, I know, right? I’m just here to visit the kiddies in the sick ward. It looks good on my résumé to do charity work.” She smacks her lips together like she’s chewing on gum and twirls a strand of her hair.
“That’s so selfless of you.” The woman rolls her eyes and hurries off without a goodbye.
“Quite the actress,” I compliment her. Visions of her acting on camera for her site assault my mind.
In her pretty little dress.
With her hand in her pretty frilly panties.
Sweet moans that just beg to be turned into screams.
Fuck, that’s a good image.
Benny
IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME since I’ve slept so deeply. My eyes slowly blink open and I find myself spread-eagle on top of a pool table in some warehouse. It’s cold and damp and I’m naked.
Fucking cunt is going to suffer for this.
Does she not understand who it is she’s goading? She can do whatever she wants and I’ll still survive. Then, I’ll make her pleasure cuts look like papercuts compared to what I will inflict on her. I’ll bleed her out and stitch her back up just to bleed her out again and again and again.
“Jess,” I roar.
My eyes scan the pallets surrounding me. Shoe boxes. No, skate boxes.
“It’s a solid plan, you must admit that,” she croons from somewhere out of sight.