“And afterwards?” I grab his arm. The muscles of his biceps are thrumming with tension. “Kostya, be honest with yourself, before you send me off to a fate that will literally be worse than death. Will you be able to sleep at night, knowing what’s being done to me?”
His anguished silence is my answer.
“I can help you figure out the situation with your sister and mother. Hell, if it comes to that, I’d go to Moscow and take your stepfather out myself.”
Kostya barks out a laugh at that. A bitter chuckle. “Come on, Anya. Professional assassins have tried and failed.”
“Because they wanted to escape alive. That wouldn’t be my goal.” His gaze snaps up, and lights on my face. Silently, he shakes his head.
“When I was on the run, one of the things I did to pass the time was study how to improvise my own weapons. I learned how to build a bomb using materials I could buy at the store. I’ve tested it, way out in the woods, several times. I wouldn’t even have to get that close to him. Suicide bomb. Yes, I’d die doing it, but what does it matter anyway?”
“It matters to me,” he says heatedly.
All the pain of what I’ve lost comes crashing down on me. I try to keep it compartmentalized, but sometimes it eats through my emotional walls like acid. “It doesn’t matter to me, anymore. And I’d rather die for a good cause then be sold.”
“I would never send you to do such a thing. If it came to it, I’d do it myself.”
“You’re not going to sell me,” I say, half begging, half asking. “If you can’t stand the thought of me dying, you wouldn’t be able to send me off to be raped by some filthy perverted creep, knowing that it would be the death of me.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he says sourly.
But he didn’t say no. A glimmer of hope blossoms deep inside me.
“Remember my offer, Kostya. If your stepfather was dead, it would solve many problems, and you wouldn’t have to worry about your sister’s future anymore. If you have to choose between me and her, then at least let my death mean something.”
“Stop talking about your death.” His voice is heated and angry.
I shrug. Hopefully I’ve at least got him thinking about assassinating his stepfather. “Fine. When are we doing this video?”
“In an hour or two. I’m waiting for someone to bring some special video equipment.”
“Thank you, Kostya.” My voice is shaky with relief. “I know you’re in a terrible position. I know you’re taking risks for me.”
His dark eyes are bottomless pools of self-hate. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” He draws me to him in a hug, arms wrapped tightly around me. I rest my head on his chest. Every beat of his heart reverberates through my body. I wish we could stay like that forever, but we don’t have forever.
I breathe him in deeply and press my body up against him as if I could sink into his flesh and become one with him. I want to memorize every single second with him, and print it on my soul, so when I die, he’s the last thing I see and smell and feel. Because I know there’s no way this ends well. If Kostya decides to choose me over his family, Yeger will make sure we pay the ultimate price for it.
“Are you hungry?” Kostya’s voice rumbles up from his chest, and my stomach growls at the thought of food.
“Yes. Aleksandr brought in cereal for breakfast and then dumped it on the floor and made me eat it, and I vomited.” I grimace at the memory, and straighten up, moving away from Kostya.
“I’m sorry,” he says, in a clipped, defensive tone. “Let’s go get something to eat. From now on, I will feed you, and he won’t do that to you again. Put on some clothes, first.”
I strip out of my t shirt, and pick a dress from the dress rack. It’s a slinky white gown with cleavage that plunges to my navel, but at least I’m covered. I step into a pair of heels. Then he takes me through the house and into the kitchen. I’ve never been there before. It’s luxurious, with white marble countertops and rich custom cabinetry. There’s an older man in there, cooking, and I scowl at him as Kostya goes to the refrigerator and fetches a bowl of fruit and a bowl of pierogis. He heats the pierogis in the microwave, and we head to the dining room to eat.
“I saw the look on your face. I just want you to know that not all of my servants are bad people. They don’t know the exact ins and outs of what I do, and they don’t feel that they can question it,” he says, as I gulp down my food.
“They could quit.”
“Come on, Anya, you know they couldn’t. They’re the children of servants who also worked for us, and grand-children, and great grandchildren. We pay them very well, and they don’t ask questions, and they don’t leave our employ.” He doesn’t bother saying what would happen if they tried to quit. He doesn’t have to.
After lunch, we return to the photography studio, where a man is setting up some video equipment that points at the bed, replacing the camera that was there before. He’s dark haired and half his face is movie star handsome. He has a thick slash of a scar on the left side of his face, which sags a little.
The man who had straddled me earlier, sits in a chair, scrolling through his phone and looking bored. His lip is puffy where Kostya punched him, and there’s a deep cut.
He glances up as we come in. I glower at him, and he replies with a smirk.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Kostya says. He describes the scenario exactly, as the scarred man adjusts the camera tripod. Then Kostya fetches a hood from a chest of drawers, and puts it on. He looks like the world’s sexiest burglar.
I stand next to the bed in my t-shirt and panties, and cringe as he approaches me. I shake my head pleadingly.
I call out to an imaginary spot next to the camera, pretending it’s Kostya. “Kostya, please don’t make me do this!”
Kostya’s explained that they’ll do some video magic, and make it look as if he’s standing there, next to the camera man, barking orders at me.
I bow my head and call up all my acting skills. When I look up, tears are streaming down my face. I nod at the blank space on the floor where Kostya will be edited in. I gulp sobs as I slowly strip my dress off.
I look at the camera again, and pause. This is the part where they’ll edit in audio of Kostya yelling at me to strip off my panties. I nod, biting my lip and crying harder, and shimmy out of my panties.
Then I manufacture a fearful expression and look up at Kostya, who is standing there, glaring down at me with hooded menace. I don’t understand how they’re going to actually replace him with someone else, make it look as if someone else is assaulting me, but Kostya swears it can be done.
Kostya slaps me on the face, but he does it lightly. I react as if I’m on stage, in exaggerated fashion, snapping my head to the side and crying out.
Then, he grabs me by the arm and forces me to lie face down on the bed.
He’ll be inside me in a minute – that thick, hard cock of his. Wetness seeps between my lips and my nipples harden in anticipation.
He grabs one arm and bends it up behind my back. I groan loudly, for effect. He slaps my butt, first the right cheek, then the left. It’s shockingly erotic. I want to arch my back and raise my butt up in the air to urge him to spank me harder. I have to force myself to remember to play my part, squirming as if I’m in pain.
“Please!” I shriek, as he spanks me again and again. “I’m doing what you say! You don’t have to hurt me! Please!”
He ignores me, and spanks me harder. I clench the mattress with my free hand. My buttocks heat, and the pleasure burns away into pain, but I know that he has to sell it. He warned me that this was going to hurt, and he didn’t lie.
When he finishes, the skin on my butt cheeks stings. I fake-sob into the mattress as he frees his cock from his jeans, and rolls on a condom. Then he climbs on me and shoves his fingers inside me roughly. I stifle a moan of pure pleasure as he finger-fucks me, dragging his thumb across my clit with each thrust.
“Legs open,” he orders me
. “Ass in the air.”
I obey, burying my face in the mattress and heaving out a few more fake sobs. When I feel the head of his cock slide into my entrance, I utter a strangled scream as if in agony.
Kostya grips my hips, and slams into me again and again. It’s raw, violent, ugly, beautiful. I fight the orgasm that’s rising inside me. No. Can’t come on camera. I’m pretending to be raped. Don’t come, don’t come...
As if sensing how near I am to climax, he brings one hand down on my sore ass with an agonizingly hard slap, and I scream in pain. He moves faster, pistoning into me so hard the bed slams against the wall. Then he sucks in a breath, and shudders with his climax. His fingers sink into the flesh of my hips as he holds me there, groaning in pleasure.
Finally he slides out of me, and I curl up in a ball with my back to the camera, and now I don’t have to fake my sobs, because my butt cheeks are on fire, and I’m so sexually frustrated I could scream. It’s absolute agony being left on the precipice like this.
“Hey, thanks, guys. I need a few minutes alone with her. Go to the bar, help yourself to anything.”
I look up, teary-eyed, to see the two men heading out.
Kostya returns to the bed, kneeling. “Open those legs for me, baby. Nice and wide.”
As I obey, he peels the hood off.
“Aww.” I laugh shakily. “I kind of liked it. It was like a sexy burglar rape fantasy, except for the part where I wasn’t allowed to come.”
“Poor baby,” he taunts. Then he bends down and spreads my lips wide open, and runs his tongue along the heated seam of my pussy. He slides his tongue in, lapping at me, and then moves up to suck on my swollen, aching clitoris.
His strong hands move up to spread my thighs wide apart, and I strangle on a sob of pure need. Hot sensation sizzles along my nerves until I finally explode. My body is racked by wave after wave of orgasm, and I lie there limp, sated, and too drained to move.
Chapter Eighteen
Anya
I sleep in Kostya’s bed that night. I wake up in his arms, and he joins me in a quick shower. We’re sweaty and sticky from a night of astoundingly hot sex.
Breakfast is a porridge called kasha, heaps of fried eggs – and hope. In front of his men, Kostya now treats me with a kind of curt formality, rather than barking orders at me. I am not blindfolded or chained. I am allowed to wear jeans and a blouse and sandals; at some point, Kostya bought a dozen outfits for me, and he shows me where they are in his closet.
Aleksandr and Mikhail join us at the dining table after we’ve started eating.
Mikhail can’t look me in the eye. He must know I’m a prisoner; he has a guilty look on his face whenever he even glances in my direction, as if he’s ashamed. I hope he is. I want to believe that there’s some human decency left in the world.
Aleksandr is coldly polite when he asks me to pass the salt. Kostya must have spoken to him. It’s clear Aleksandr isn’t happy with the change. He’s got a sullen look of resentment on his face when he watches us.
When I’m done eating, I pour myself some fresh coffee.
“Tell me,” I say to Kostya. “Did you get the video back yet?”
“They just finished it this morning. I checked it over, and it was perfect, so I sent it to my stepfather. He’s happy with me again, for now anyway.”
I take a sip of coffee, and set it down on the table with a frown. I can’t stop thinking about Raisa, and her friends. Have they even been fed yet? How many times has their new master raped them?
And will Raisa be able to do what needs to be done, if she’s ever presented the opportunity?
Next to a loaf of fresh bread on the table is a sharp knife. If I were here alone with, say, Aleksandr, or Mikhail, I could grab the knife – and cut their throat. Pull their cell phone from their pocket, use their thumb print to unlock it and call 911...but then, how would I ever find out where Raisa was?
Kostya scowls. “I know what you’re thinking about.”
“You say that a lot.” I arch an eyebrow. “And again, I doubt it very much.”
“You’re thinking about Raisa.” Kostya glowers at me with frustration. “I’m risking my life and future, trying to figure a way to get you out of this. Can’t you be satisfied with that?’
I fold my arms across my chest. “You know me well enough to know the answer to that question. I can never be happy as long as she’s being held prisoner. And Raisa’s a good person, she wouldn’t accept just being freed by herself. Those other two girls who you and Aleksandr abused deserve their freedom too.” He winces at my harsh words.
“What difference does it even make?” he says defensively. ‘There will just be more girls after that. Even if I don’t take them, someone else will. It’s a very lucrative operation, and the Bratva won’t give up that profit stream.”
I throw my hands up in frustration. “Why are you such a defeatist? You could figure out a way to replace that profit stream. And I know we can’t save all the girls in the world, but we could save a few, and that would mean everything to those girls, and to their families. You know the parable of the starfish on the beach?” Kostya shakes his head.
“An old man sees that thousands of starfish have been washed up and stranded on the beach, and are drying up in the sun. A young girl is walking along the beach, grabbing the starfish and throwing them back into the sea. The man asks her why she is wasting her time, what difference it makes saving one starfish when thousands more will die. She picks up another starfish, throws the starfish into the sea, looks at him, and says ‘Sir, it made a difference to this one’.”
“I remember it now,” Kostya says. “Yes, yes, the point of the story is that every girl you could save is like that girl on the beach. I get it.”
I flash him a look of annoyance. “No, the point of the story is that the man then abducted the girl on the beach, and human trafficked her, and all the rest of the starfish died.”
Mikhail and Kostya both choke on their coffee at the same time. Mikhail’s coffee spews out onto the table, and Kostya coughs for a good twenty seconds, his face turning red.
Mikhail laughs out loud. “I see what you like about her,” he says. Aleksandr just stares at me with that cold, dead expression.
I stand up and grab the coffee pot and pour more coffee into Kostya’s cup, and then into Mikhail’s. Then I take my seat again. “In my version of the story, the girl fashions a weapon from a plastic knife, stabs her owner in the neck and kills him, and escapes. She informs the police, the man is arrested, and his human trafficking network is shut down, and she lives happily ever after at her starfish sanctuary.”
“Yes, but your version of the story is a dream in your head,” Kostya scoffs. “That’s not real life.”
“It could be.” Aleksandr is a shooting me dark, angry look; how dare I protest against human trafficking?
I ignore him.
“I know why you don’t want to save them, Kostya. Because if you do, you’ll have to start admitting that they are actual human beings with feelings, just like your little sister. You’ll have to acknowledge all those other women you’ve trafficked. What is happening to them right this minute, do you think?”
Kostya looks at me bleakly.
“You could buy some of them back.” I want him to, not just for their sake, but for his. I want him to redeem his soul, to be the man I know he can be. “They wouldn’t dare talk. They’d just be grateful for their freedom. You could undo at least some of the damage that you’ve done.”
“And I’d paint a target on my back the size of Russia.”
“Better that than an eternity roasting in the flames of hell. And there are ways to lessen the risk. Threaten to go public if anyone tries to attack you. Set up a system where if you’re killed, everything is revealed to the press and the police.”
“Sir,” Aleksandr says, with barely restrained anger. “She can’t speak like that.”
“Go,” Kostya tells him. “I’ll deal with her.”
>
Aleksandr stands up, and looks me right in the eye. “I’m going to go call Raisa’s buyer and make sure that he’s enjoying his new purchase, which I am sure he is. Then I’ll report back to your stepfather with the good news.”
With a nasty, triumphant gleam in his eye, he stalks out of the room.
“Mikhail, leave us,” Kostya says, and Mikhail hurries out of the room as well.
I glance at Kostya. “That sounded like a veiled threat.” There’s a snap to my voice. Aleksandr knows that my friend is being abused right now, and he just rubbed my nose in it.
“I will speak to him. But do not ever talk about revealing our operations to the press or the police, in front of my men. It’s not smart.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, sincerely. “But I’m also desperate. If someone you loved was being raped right this minute, like, say, your sister, so would you be. Those girls are someone’s sister, you know. Someone’s daughter.”
“Damn it, Anya!” He shoves his chair back and leaps to his feet. He stalks to the room without looking back.
For the briefest of moments, I consider grabbing the sharp bread knife and tucking it into my pants, but I don’t know if this room is under surveillance. Instead, I wander the house for a little bit. There are a lot of locked doors with alarm pads next to them. I finally give up and go to the living room, where I grab a thriller from the bookcase and sit and read for a while.
Kostya finally comes into the room to join me. He goes over to the bar, pours himself a vodka, and sits next to me.
“Yes, I know I drink too much, and I start too early,” he says.
I grimace. He does, and I worry about him, but I also need to prioritize. “Kostya, tell me everything that you can about the situation with your stepfather,” I say. “Maybe I can figure out something.”
“That’s not your place.” He downs half the glass of vodka. “It’s my place to figure out a solution.”
Frustration wells up inside me. It’s my future, and my best friend’s future, and I might actually be able to suggest something he hasn’t thought of yet. Getting an outsider’s perspective is always helpful – but this stubborn, macho a-hole is too proud to take help from a woman. “Fine. Perhaps I should go back to my room now,” I say coldly. “Aleksandr doesn’t seem to like it when you spend time with me, unless you’re whipping me or making me crawl.”
Kostya A Dark Bratva Hate Story Page 13