Chapter 23: Mikhail

As the goddess bounces up and down on my cock, I lose my mind all over again.

Water splashes over our bodies and over the side of the hot tub as we have sex for the fourth time tonight.

I told myself when I first took her that I was using her for the distraction I’ve needed all day, but I knew it was a lie.

I also told myself I’d only have her once, but that was a lie, too, and I’m still lying to myself because I want her again.

I need her again, and yet I’m buried deep inside her.

I hate lies. I loathe them, so I’m not in the habit of lying to myself.

When I do, it’s always for a good reason. This is the first time it hasn’t been.

This is the first time I’ve allowed obsession to take me and make me reckless.

I’m buried to the hilt with her riding me with her gorgeous tits bouncing in my face, and still, I’m greedy to take more than I can get. More than what she’s giving me. More than what she wants to give me.

Her mind and her heart. She said I broke her soul. I don’t think I did, though, because I can still feel it. That’s what’s hooking me and luring me to her.

There’s a light in her eyes, a fight to survive that draws me in.

It’s something I never expected to see in her.

Maybe I looked too deep, deeper than I was supposed to, and listened too carefully to the voice that was telling me to pay attention.

I fucking am, and I can’t stop touching her. I can’t stop trying to take more.

That is the thing that’s kept me distracted by her for the last few hours while I’ve digested the intel I learned today and waited for my men to get Tony.

I went to work after I met with Eric and tried my best to focus on what I should be doing next. Warning my family is the first obvious thing, but I need more information. I need to be able to give them some direction of who we should suspect if there’s a fucking rat amongst us.

And to add to the shit, I need to think of her, too.

If the problem is still at large, she’s in danger for being with me. She is the key to the Alvarez Cartel. Another bastard just like me will know that. He’ll try to take her from me, and I can’t allow that.

Not when I want her.

She moans as she comes hard, and I cup the back of her head to drink in the glorious sound I want to steal.

She kisses me back, and I love her submission to my dominance. She’s not fighting anymore, and it doesn’t look like she wants to. She’s under the same fucking spell that holds me, and I don’t want the enchantment to break.

We move from the hot tub back to the bed, where I take more, and she gives it to me.

We take until we’re drunk on greed and can’t move. I have no idea what time it is, but I’m not tired, and neither is she.

She lies in my arms, pressed up against me like we’re lovers and this is how we usually end our night. I have the lamp on so I can see her, and she can see me.

Her head is resting on my chest, but I can tell she’s looking at my knuckles, at my tattoos.

In my world, you’re not fully part of the Bratva unless you’ve done time. I did four years of my twenty-five-year sentence for murder at Southport Correctional Facility.

When we ink ourselves in the Bratva, it’s meaningful and a sign to others of who we are. All my tattoos are meaningful. Some for honor, others are reminders so I’ll never forget.

Such is the case with my prison tattoos.

“I killed three men,” I say, cutting into the silence.

Adriana lifts her head and looks at me with her beautiful eyes.

“Why?” Her voice is barely audible.

“They tried to rape my sister. One of them was a motherfucking serial killer. It was his idea to drug her with a date rape drug after he met her at a club. He and his friends stalked her for weeks.” At the time, I thought that was the worst thing that was going to happen to Talia. “If she wasn’t who she was, she wouldn’t have had the street smarts to escape them when they took her. She managed to get away and get herself to a hospital. The drug was poison and would have killed her. Which was their intention. They were going to rape and kill her. When I got the call and learned what happened, I went ape shit and hunted them down. I didn’t care who saw me finish them. That’s exactly what happened. Someone saw me.”

“What happened after?”

“I went to prison. When the right people witness your actions, there’s little you can do to avoid going to the big house, but I didn’t care about that.” I smirk, then my smile falls. “To me, the men who tried to hurt my sister were dead.”

I got out early because my father pulled some strings when he offered up information on some names on the fed’s hitlist. I’ll keep that to myself, though.

“Now she’s gone and none of that matters. I slayed her demons after she died, but it won’t bring her back.”

We stare at each other for a few beats, then her eyes turn glassy.

“I’m sorry.”

I stare at her and remember how she watched me kill Raul and never begged for his life. Since then, little things have cropped up to make me think her life wasn’t as rosy as people said it was.

She’s different from what I expected, and no one has ever managed to stump me for as long as she has.

“He hurt you, too, didn’t he? Raul?” I gaze at her head on, and when she nods, some small part of the mystery that’s her falls into place. If he hurt her in the way I think he did, then it’s no wonder she never begged for his life. “The marks on your back… you didn’t fall, did you?”

“No,” she whispers.

“He whipped you?”

She stares at me for a long moment before she nods.

“Why?”

Why the fuck would Raul do that to her?

She shakes her head, and when a tear drifts down her cheek, I know whatever Raul did to her must have been bad.

“I can’t. I can’t talk about it.”

That’s the second thing she’s told me she couldn’t talk about. Both things had to do with her parents. Mother and father alike.

Any thought to prod or demand she tell me what happened to her is interrupted when my phone rings. We both look at it buzzing on the nightstand.

The message this morning was important enough. When my phone rings at minutes to midnight, I know I have to leave the house because this is the call I am waiting for.

I get up. Adriana sits up, too, pulling the sheet over her breasts.

It’s Sebastian calling, and I answer the phone.

“Yes,” I say.

“We got Tony, boss. I’m at the old meat locker near Main Street. José is with me, and so is Eric.”

Perfect.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I hang up and look at my bride-to-be. The call is a reminder of the emblem she represents, but I’m prevented from thinking of her as such when I detect the worry in her eyes for me.

“You’re going out at this time?”

“I have to.”

“What’s happening?”

“Go to sleep, Malyshka. This is where my world and yours don’t cross.”

I walk away but look back at her this time and wish I’d gotten to finish our conversation.

The old meat locker is the perfect place to interrogate a motherfucker because it has all the equipment ready for torture.

I’ve been using it for years for my own purposes. My father and brother use the standard dungeons under the building in the city that look more like police cells. I’m a little rawer than that, and old school.

I’d like my next victim to suffer in every sense, and I don’t think they deserve the benefit of a cell.

I walk inside. It looks like a scene from the movie Saw.

When I see my men standing around a battered-looking Tony sitting on a chair, I’m reminded I’m here for something much more sinister than a psychological horror. I’m the nightmare.

Eric is leaning against the wall near my senior team of guards with a phone in his hands he is looking through. José stands opposite him with that uncertain look on his face.

Sebastian looks like he’s been keeping my seat warm and moves away when I approach.

Tony lifts his head and looks at me. He knows who I am and knows I’m alive, so I decide to skip past all that icebreaker shit and get to the point.

I have very specific questions I need to ask him, and I’ve had all day to prepare myself.

“Tony, I’m going to spare you the grief of the bullshit and get to the point,” I begin. “Tell me who you’re working for.”

“I don’t know anything about who’s in charge.”

This is exactly what I hate about fuckers like these. I land a punch straight to his gut, and he doubles over, only to receive another punch to his face.

I pull my gun out next so he understands I’m fucking serious, that I’ll kill his ass if he doesn’t tell me what I need to know.

“Fool, you are a fool. You really expect me to believe that?” I roar.

“It’s… true.” He coughs. “I swear to you I don’t know anything.”

I glance at Eric, who is staring at him with keen eyes.

“You met with Barabbas Ponteix this morning about the Dmitriyev Ltd. contract. What the fuck is that about?”

His eyes go wide, and I know I’ve struck a nerve. I’ve touched something I shouldn’t know about.

“The company. It’s about the shares in the company and the agreement on who gets what once the takeover happens.”

I grab his hair and hold his head up. “What fucking takeover? I never heard of any takeover, so, please, enlighten me.”

He starts shaking. “Barabbas belongs to a crime syndicate.”

“I know that part. What do they want?”

“They all banded together with Raul,” he sputters. “The plan was to take over the company so they can have control over the uranium production. That’s still the plan. I’m just writing the contracts. Barabbas brought his signed this morning, and I took it.”

So, that’s what’s happening. Motherfuckers.

“Who’s in charge, Tony?”

“That’s not how it works. It was all set up in secret, so neither Barabbas nor I know who’s in charge. We just meet to discuss the contracts. A message is delivered to my office with instructions, and I get my payment after the meeting. The last message informed me of Raul’s death, and I was to continue my work as normal.”

This is shit, but it’s the kind of sophisticated shit I’ll admit I expected. It’s just worse because it’s about me. I return my focus to Eric. He’s looking at me now.

This isn’t over just because this prick can’t give me what I need.

I look back at Tony, who’s shuddering now.

“How long has this been going on?” I demand.

“November. The end of November last year.”

Right when my father announced his illness and his retirement. I believe even more now it has to be someone in our brotherhood. Maybe one of the Brigadiers. They were the first to find out. But so were all our subordinates.

“Who else is involved, Tony?”

“Only Raul knew that, Mikhail. He never even told Felipe or his other lieutenants. He told no one because he signed an oath in blood and the price if he went against them was his daughter’s life. He would never risk Adriana’s life for anything.”

Now I glance at José. He nods at me as if to say he is telling the truth about Raul. I trust no one, though, until I have facts in my hands.

Fucking Raul.

That motherfucking dog. He would never risk his daughter’s life, yet he hurt her. It’s like I’m always talking about two different people.

“Let me go, please. I have told you all you need to know.”

“Let you go so you can run back and squeal bloody murder?” I taunt.

Eric steps forward and hands me the phone. “That’s his phone. I hacked it. I found the same code hiding some pictures. Nothing more.” He shakes his head in disgust. “You need to look at them. You’re not going to want to let him go after.”

Tony looks like death in that moment, and I’m almost afraid of what I’m going to see.

“I didn’t know she was your sister,” Tony blurts before I can even look at the phone.

I don’t meet Eric’s eyes. I just take the phone. The first image shatters my soul. It’s of Talia, naked and bound with ropes around her wrists and feet with five naked men surrounding her.

They’re smiling while she’s crying.

My sister went through all of this before they killed her, while I lay in a hospital bed.

I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t stop them from taking her.

This is what they did to my sister.

“She was a present—”

I cut off Tony’s words with a bullet to his head, then another, and another.

And another.

I don’t stop until I empty my gun.

And still, it won’t bring her back.