Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
“We won’t be staying long, Ax.”
“Hmm.” Ax eyed me up and down again and then nodded. “Am I adding to my list of secrets and favors, Russian?”
“May as well.” Andrei grumbled. “We all die someday.”
“That we do.” Ax sighed. “Blood in, no out.”
“Sangue in non mai fuori,” Andrei repeated.
Blood in, never out. His Italian was flawless, like he’d been born speaking the language.
I gaped and then was pulled through the dark corridor and into a small space with nothing but windows overlooking a huge concrete area. The glass looked super thick, and when I looked to the left and right there were several other boxes that looked like this one, like something you’d see at a theater, with full red curtains ready to pull in front of the window.
“That,” Andrei said in a lethal voice, “is what you get with them.”
He pointed down at the cement looking stage.
“Nobody’s down there.”
He sighed, grabbed a small silver remote with two buttons, and hit the red one twice.
Slowly a curtain was pulled from the back of the stage and a woman hung there by her wrists bound over her head, wearing nothing but a ripped dress. She had a gag in her mouth, and the man in front of her had a cat tail whip in his hand.
Rock music blared in the sound system as the woman struggled, blood streamed from her face, making a trail all the way down her body as it dripped down her toes. Her eyes were wild as the man hit her across the thighs again and again, then dropped the whip and pulled off his blood stained shirt and jerked his pants down.
He had a similar remote to Andrei and hit a button, the woman was suddenly lowered, her hands still tied above her head.
The man walked up to her and flipped her around and started thrusting into her, as her blood caked his hands, the same hands running up and down her body.
“Enough.” My voice shook as tears slid down my cheeks. “Make him stop!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, dorogaya. He’s paid for his time with her, and she’s signed a contract she can’t get out of.”
“But he’s raping her! He’s going to kill her!”
“We have good doctors.”
“That’s what you say?!” I roared. “That you have good doctors? Are those doctors going to sew up her broken heart? Are they going to give her back her decency? Take away her humiliation? Her shame? Are they going to wipe her memory of this, so she doesn’t wake up every night screaming?”
“No.” Andrei pressed the red button as the curtain started moving around the window blanketing us in near darkness. “Our doctor will make her comfortable as she takes her last breath.”
“You’re a monster,” I hissed, hating that I’d enjoyed his kiss and the way I felt in his arms when I’d already seen my fair share of horror at my brother’s hands.
What the hell had I been thinking?
Letting this man touch me?
With blood on his hands.
This man who owned a place where women were sexual objects and looked forward to death!
“Make your choice, six thirty-two.”
“Wh-what?”
“You have three seconds.”
“What are you saying?”
“Monster.” He gritted his teeth and took a step toward me, then pointed at the window. “Or man.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, squeezed my eyes closed and whispered, “Monster.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Andrei
I could feel her trembling next to me even though I wasn’t touching her. I had to show her what her choices were, and yet, I still didn’t give her the third option.
Death at the point of Chase’s gun.
We made it back to my apartment quickly.
I shut the door.
I locked it.
And I watched as she dropped her fur coat on the back of the couch and then leaned over it, visibly trembling, like she needed to catch her breath, maybe say a prayer to a God who clearly wasn’t listening all those times she was being touched by her brother.
A God who never listened when I begged for my own death, for solace every birthday.
We were a pair of souls that were never heard, lost, forgotten.
More in common than not.
As much as she would hate to know that.
“There is one more option…” I walked up to her and rested a gloved hand on her right shoulder slowly turning her body toward mine. “One that I haven’t given you.”
“What?” Her voice was hollow, her eyes dead as she stared down at the floor. That’s when I knew: her brother hadn’t stolen all of her hope. No, I had done that, I had stolen the last piece of hope in her body in order to keep her safe, in order to make her mine.
In order to save a life she seemed to not even want.
“Ask me,” I whispered, my body straining to do something other than rest a fucking leather glove against her skin.