by Shandi Boyes
With the roar of a deranged woman, I bite Vaughn’s hand covering my mouth before stomping down my foot. When I taste blood, I throw my head back with all my might. My skull colliding with Vaughn’s nose sends shockwaves of pain jolting down my spine, but I don’t give in. I told Asher he could trust Vaughn. I gave him my word that his guilt for what had happened to our mother was enough punishment.
I was a fool.
When I jab my elbow into Vaughn’s still recovering ribs, I push off my feet with the speed of a bullet shattering through glass. My first thoughts are to charge for the shadowed figure that had me chasing ghosts down darkened corridors, but my astute brain is overruling my heart. I need to protect myself and Asher. I can’t do that without a weapon.
I’m halfway across the makeshift hospital room Asher had set up for Vaughn, sprinting to snatch up the gun Asher dropped when he was jabbed with a nerve agent, when my ankle is pulled out from beneath me.
As my chin skids across the wooden floor, a memory drifts me from the present to the past...
“Shh, Little Mouse. You’re okay. I’ll never let anyone hurt you.”
This voice doesn’t sound like the one I hear in my dreams every night. It’s too deep and manly.
When I attempt to rise to a half-seated position, someone splays their hand across my chest to push me back down. I turned thirteen two months ago, so the touch fills me with panic—they’re touching my breasts.
“Asher? Is that you?” I swivel my tongue around my mouth, hoping a bit of moisture will make my words less groggy. I’m so dizzy, my woozy head is messing with my voice. I don’t recall ever sounding like this.
A voice inside me screams when a hushed tone drones through my ears, “Hold her arms above her head.”
I groggily slant my head side to side when my arms are raised. They must be moving my limbs because they feel heavier than concrete. And my head—god. It hurts so much.
“Vaughn?”
The hands pinning mine above my head feel tiny and cold. They’re so small, they can’t belong to an adult. I’m sure I could fight them off if I weren’t so tired. I just want to sleep, but the little voice in my head is begging me not to drift off just yet. It’s Asher’s birthday, and I want to give him more than just a present. I want to give him my first kiss... and perhaps more—if he wants me.
My breathing shallows when a second set of hands scrape the skin high on my thighs. These are callused and large—much larger than hands belonging to a sixteen-year-old.
“No!” I think that’s what I shout, but I can’t be sure. My eyelids are drooping as rapidly as my heart rate. I feel seconds from passing out.
Just before I try again to tell the person this isn’t what I want, the voice I expected earlier roars through the room. “What the fuck are you doing?! Get off her!”
A cool breeze wafts over my skin, goosebumps racing to the surface. I hear a commotion like people are fighting... and a faint chuckle.
The laughter is odd. You wouldn’t expect anyone to be amused with how thick the air is with tension. It’s suffocating me as much as my panic is suffocating my heart.
I fight through the darkness swallowing me whole. Asher is here now, so everything will be okay.
It takes me blinking several times in a row before the film coating my eyes clears enough to survey the room. I’m in the bedroom my Uncle Nesti built for me. It’s an exact replica of the room my mother vanished to whenever she wanted peace. It even has her paints and easels in one corner.
“No!”
I’m certain this command comes out because Uncle Nesti momentarily weakens his hold on Asher’s neck to glance back at me. He has Asher pinned to a wall outside of my room. It doesn’t appear to have been an easy struggle. Asher has bloody knuckles, and Uncle Nesti has blood gushing down his face from a cut above his brow. When Asher spots my bloodshot eyes and white face, he whacks into Uncle Nesti with everything he has. He doesn’t care that he’s a good six inches shorter and a hundred pounds lighter.
Uncle Nesti is huge; that’s why we call him ‘Bear.’ He’s just as big and just as hairy.
My head lolls to the side when uncle Nesti gestures to someone behind me. I’m filled with relief when I spot Vaughn standing just to the side of my bed. He’ll help calm Uncle Nesti down. He will tell him Asher would never hurt me. He loves Asher like a brother. He won’t let anything happen to him.
Through blurred vision and a thumping head, I watch the scene unfold. Vaughn follows uncle Nesti’s silent prompts as if this isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this. After pulling a flat, rectangular container off my bedside table, he walks it over to Uncle Nesti.
The chances of me vomiting are already high, but they grow exponentially when Vaughn cracks open the silver tin during his short walk. I’ve never used the products I see inside, but I’ve been around drugs my whole life, so I know what they are, and I’m confident the dose they’re loading into a syringe will be fatal if administered entirely.
“No! He wasn’t going to hurt me. He’d never hurt me.”
My dad would kill Asher if he knew what I had planned to give him tonight, but he didn’t do anything wrong. If anyone should be punished, it should be me.
I gain an immense amount of strength when the needle filled with murky drugs is stabbed into a vein in Asher’s neck. After slapping my feet onto the floor, I drag them across the wooden floorboards. They’re so heavy, I’m surprised by the speed I get. I shouldn’t be. Nothing can stop me when I’m protecting the ones I love.
“Leave him alone!” My words are as slow and drawn out—as bent as the little foot popping out to trip me.
I stumble past Asher and my uncle, my speed picking up since my feet have finally left the ground. I see the railing coming; I stretch out my arms with the hope it will stop me, but nothing slows the inevitable.
In a last-ditch attempt to save myself, I fall to my knees. The stiff cotton nightie I’m wearing reduces my speed, but my body is falling forward at a rate too fast to slow the motion of my head. It smacks into the banister with an almighty crack, splinting the wood into dangerous shards that dig into my body when I fall through the railing.
As the ground closes in on me, I suck in one final breath. I hit the ground with a thud a mere second before blackness engulfs me...
The shock from my memory doesn’t have a chance to be registered. I have a gun in my hand, a dead lover in front of me, and the man responsible for his death firing at me. I’ve never discharged a gun, but once again, I’ve been around them all my life. I know how they work.
After sliding off the safety, I flip onto my back, aim Asher’s gun in the direction I just sprinted from, shut my eyes, then fire—continuously. The noise of a semi-automatic weapon discharging on repeat is near-deafening, even more so when it’s added to the stomping of feet.
Thank god Asher’s men have arrived, because I’m almost out of bullets.
With my heart in my throat, my eyes flutter open. Vaughn is still standing. I don’t know how. He has three bullet holes in his chest, and a sneer that reveals he’s nothing like the little boy I remember from before I was locked in my ivory tower. It’s fortified with darkness and opens a floodgate of memories.
The smile he’s wearing—the sick, sadistic one—is the same one he wore when he tripped me all those years ago. He’s surrounded by a dozen men ready to kill him, yet he feels no fear.
If that doesn’t reveal he didn’t turn evil, he was born this way, nothing will.
His smugness doubles when I line up Asher’s gun to the scowl creasing his forehead. He doesn’t think I have the guts to take him down. I’m not as inclined to believe him. He killed Asher, the only man I’ve ever loved. This is letting him off easy.
Just as my finger starts to yank back the trigger, a cold, sweaty hand darts out to snatch my wrist. I nearly retaliate, until I recognize the frantic quiver of his pulse. I know that rhythm. I’ve heard it under my ear, felt it ghosting over me du
ring intimate activities. I’ve even felt it raging through my body when he weakens my pulse by clutching my throat.
It belongs to Asher.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Asher
Footsteps thumping against the tiled floor add to the pounding of my skull, and my vision is nothing but a blur of colors, but she is right in front of me, as bright and as courageous as ever.
My Little Mouse isn’t as meek and as timid as her nickname suggests. She has my gun braced in front of her, her sight lined up. She’s ready to kill for me, to protect me from anyone who dares to harm me.
Now I must do the same for her.
My hand darts out with only a second to spare. Zariah has the trigger compressed to the halfway mark. One minor move, and she’ll pop a bullet between her baby brother’s eyes. I should let her do it. I should let her kill him. But that would make me a monster.
Trust me when I say you never forget your first kill. It doesn’t matter if they’re the equivalent of sludge on the bottom of the ocean, if you end a life, the death stays with you for eternity.
I don’t want that for Zariah. I don’t want Vaughn’s eyes to be the last thing she sees every night before she goes to sleep, or the first thing she thinks of when she wakes. There’s only one person I want occupying her thoughts. That person is me.
A mangled groan tears from Zariah’s throat when her neck cranks my way. I can barely see through the blackness swamping me, but there’s no way I can miss the sheer relief in her eyes when they land on mine. I’ve been shot, drugged with who-fucking-knows-what, but I’m alive, and that’s all that matters.
“Asher!”
I shouldn’t laugh when she leaps into my arms. It will have my men thinking I’m a madman. I am, but I’d rather it not be circulated by anyone but the men I’m hunting.
“Shh, Little Mouse. You’re okay. I’ll never let anyone hurt you.” My voice sounds weird even to me.
After tugging Zariah close, I scoot back, narrowly avoiding the person’s neck I snapped a mere second before I fell into unconsciousness. Zariah adjusts her head until her ear sits directly above my heart when an unknown brunette’s lifeless eyes stare up at her. She is as unsurprised as I am that I killed a woman.
Who feels remorse when you’re protecting the one you love?
Zariah counts the beats of my heart, letting them drown out a command she knows I have to give. “Take care of it.”
Usually, not even a bullet wound or veins laced with drugs would stop me from executing revenge, but I’ve got more important matters to take care of. The foremost is keeping the silent promise I made to Zariah when she took it upon herself to protect me.
Once my men are done with Vaughn, he’ll have no chance of hurting Zariah—physically. That doesn’t extend to mental capabilities. I want to be the man Zariah seeks comfort from on both bad and good days. The one she will forever look at with love in her eyes. I can’t achieve that by causing her pain. Knowing I killed her brother will cause her pain. For that alone, I’ll step back and let my men do the job I pay them to do.
Zariah’s welfare is more important to me than anything. Drugs. Money. Power. None of it matters when my Little Mouse is safe and in my arms.
Epilogue
Asher
Six months later...
* * *
“You can’t be in here. It’s bad luck.”
My mom whacks me in the arm with her purse, but even she knows she doesn’t have the authority to throw me out. This is my house. My rules. My soon-to-be-wife she’s hogging. I’m not a patient man, so there’s no way in hell I’m waiting for Zariah to walk past all our guests before seeing what she looks like in the one-of-a-kind dress Roderick crafted for her. I’ve always wanted to be Zariah’s first, so it’s not only right I see her in her wedding dress before anyone else, I must also dress her in it.
“Where is she?”
My mom’s glistening blue eyes drift to the open bathroom door. Her eyes aren’t just misty; they’re free.
Free from turmoil.
Free from pain.
Free from him.
My father passed a little over three months ago, meaning she isn’t just working through the stages of grief every widow experiences, she’s finding herself again. She was barely a woman when she was forced to marry a man double her age. She had no clue who she wanted to be or how she’d achieve it. She was simply told what to do and trained how to do it. Not anymore. Those days are now over. The world is now her oyster. I’ve given her a full pardon.
Her wings are no longer clipped, yet here she stands in the very compound that swiped the earth from beneath her feet without a smidge of remorse. I know why she’s here. She’s ensuring the promises she and Ari made during their transition from purchased whores to monarchs of two of the greatest Russian cartels in history are being followed to the letter.
That’s why she initially kept quiet about Zariah’s sale. She was wary it would be more harmful to our relationship than positive. She was wrong. Nothing could change how I feel for Zariah. I’ve always craved a strong-willed, hotheaded woman to stand at my side.
Zariah is that woman.
Over the past seven months, my mother has helped Zariah strengthen the backbone her family’s deceit wilted while showing her that even in the most male-dominated industry, women have a place. My mother’s is anywhere she sees fit. Zariah’s is at my side—although I doubt that would have been the case if Vaughn had his way.
Vaughn saw in Dominique exactly what I did. She was the spitting image of his sister—the woman his father had bequeathed the entire Volkov family legacy to.
Stepanov is the ultimate gangster. His kill count is as high as my father’s, and he ruled his entity with an iron fist, but nothing—not a single fucking thing—could compete with the love he had for his wife. When she gave him a baby girl instead of the firstborn son every man in this industry craves, he rewrote the rulebook. It didn’t matter to him that Zariah was a girl; she was his first descendant, meaning she would not only inherit his fortune when he passed, but she would become the queen of the Volkov monarchy.
Before his death, Vaughn failed to realize it is impossible to duplicate someone’s style and class. He was convinced he could train Dominique to be Zariah, and that they’d rule the Volkov entity together once they tied up loose ends—AKA killing their father while keeping Zariah permanently locked away.
He had no clue looks weren’t the only way Dominique matched Zariah. She was just as strong-willed, too. When she went against Vaughn’s plans, he introduced her to Bear, hoping he could convince her otherwise. She didn’t survive their first meeting. Bear’s nickname wasn’t just because of his size; he was as brutal as a real-life grizzly bear.
With a new woman in his sights, Vaughn redesigned his ruse: he needed to kill both Zariah and their father. He couldn’t kill Zariah, but he was convinced it wouldn’t take long for the man who bought her to. Weak, insolent men can’t see past Zariah’s stubbornness to discover the gem beneath.
Thank fuck my mother is a force to be reckoned with. She altered the paperwork from Zariah’s sale to make it appear as though I bought Zariah, and, as they say, the rest is history.
Speaking of my mother—she’s still lingering like a bad smell.
“Go. We’ll be out in a minute.”
I nudge my head to my bedroom door that’s still missing the lock I drilled out in anger. Its large circular hole forces a ghost of a smile onto my lips. Seven months ago, I thought I was making Zariah my prisoner. Little did I know the only captive in this room would be me.
With a cheeky grin, my mom presses her red-painted lips to my cheek before sauntering out of my room. Her steps are springier than usual; she can finally express herself without fear of prosecution.
Once my door clicks shut, I pace to the bathroom. I prop my shoulder on the wooden doorjamb, happy to take a few moments to drink in a sight for sore eyes. Zariah is leaning over the sink, her hair swept up in a fanc
y ‘do, and she is applying some inky black shit to her eyes she doesn’t need to turn heads. I’d walk straight up and snatch it out of her hand if the curve of her back hadn’t revealed something more noteworthy.
My meek, shy Little Mouse isn’t wearing any panties. The high rise of her silky negligee leaves no doubt of this, much less the way the satin material clings to the generous curves of her ass. She is without a panty line, and any hope of leaving this bathroom without my fingers weaving through her hair first.
Zariah’s eyeliner freezes midair when I murmur, “Where’s Eda? I thought she was supposed to help you get ready?”
Her throat works hard to swallow before she voices the lie I can spot without even hearing it. “She was here most of the day. She just left.”
Her protectiveness of Eda pisses me off, but I also understand it. Eda has been enslaved at the Yury compound so long, I’ve forgotten why she was sentenced to begin with. Although annoyed it would make me appear weak, I had considered giving Eda a pardon. She has served more time than some men get for murder. But after speaking with my mother, I realized that may do Eda more harm than good.
Just like my mother, she doesn’t know life outside of this compound. The whereabouts of her family are unknown, her true heritage taken to the grave along with my father. She may still be ‘the help,’ but she has a roof over her head, food in her stomach, and with both my mother and Zariah on her side, she’ll never be harmed as she was when she was a girl.
Zariah’s eyes stray to mine when I step into the bathroom. “What are the consequences when you lie to me, Zariah? A punishment that’s both fair to you and me?”
The axis of my world tilts when she grins a revealing smile. I just walked straight into her trap. She isn’t scared of me in the physical sense. She’s scared about how I make her feel, how I own her as much as she owns me, and how the world could come between us, but we’ll always find a way back to one another.