Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96714 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96714 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Away from the shit and chaos of my work, there was something I enjoyed doing. I liked to draw and paint. I hid it away and I kept it locked. No one, not even my guards knew what I did there. Whenever I went to my studio, no one was to come near me. It was one of the few places I had in this world that took me away from all the shit and allowed me to think. No one, not Hubert, not Vlad, and I don’t think even Ivan was aware of my secret.
“You will not be moving out of our home. Work has dominated my life the last month, which is why I’ve been needed here.”
“Oh,” Charlotte said. “So it’s not because I’m there.”
“No.” It wasn’t a total lie. Dealing with the Ivan death fallout had come with a great cost. I know we were all feeling it. Me, Victor, Peter, Slavik, and Andrei. Not to mention the knock-on effect of Oleg’s territory.
Threats to our lives came with the territory of being the six brigadiers in Ivan Volkov’s Bratva. We dealt with death every day, and those who would like to overthrow him. There were many who would like to see Ivan fall.
The bastard son, the one that was fucking stupid and incapable, the one that was thrown away, shouldn’t be able to rise up the ranks. Not only had Ivan become strong, he’d taken everything from his father, claimed the Bratva as his own, and changed it.
No one really knew what Ivan was capable of.
Some believed he was immortal. Some kind of super-being for what he did. I knew Ivan could bleed. I’d seen it, but I also knew when it came to pain, he rarely felt it. The man was a machine, a monster, and he feared nothing and no one.
The waiter brought our food over, and Charlotte gave me a smile. I liked her smile. I didn’t want to like her smiles, but I did.
****
Lottie
One Week Later
I was still in his penthouse apartment. Ive hadn’t made the decision to go back to his country home. Now, I liked boredom, I really did, but this was a little too much. I’d wake up and Ive wouldn’t be there. We didn’t share a bedroom. Even though I had filled the closet opposite where his clothes were, he’d taken the second bedroom, and I slept in this one. Even though I knew it was his bedroom. So, every morning I woke up alone.
Hubert was always in the apartment. There was always a package from the local bakery with a fresh cinnamon roll and a hot coffee. They were nice, but I wasn’t a big fan of cinnamon. By the end of the seventh day, I looked at the cinnamon roll and knew I was going to be sick if I ate it again.
“Do you want it?” I asked Hubert.
“It’s your breakfast.”
“But I don’t like it and if you don’t eat it, then I’m going to throw it in the trash.” Which sounded like a perfectly good waste of food.
“You’ve eaten it every single day.”
“Because the first day it was sweet of him to do so, and then the second. But I can’t eat that much cinnamon. I’m going to throw up.”
He chuckled.
“Fine.”
“You’re laughing.”
“Mr. Yahontov thought you liked cinnamon rolls, which is why he kept buying them for you.”
“Is there any food in the kitchen?” I handed the wrapped package to Hubert.
“What about the coffee?” he asked.
“I’ll drink the coffee.” I took a sip of the liquid and it was so good. So, so, so good. Walking through to the kitchen, I started to open cupboards and there was nothing there. “No food?”
“Mr. Yahontov eats out.”
I groan. I’m starving.
“Then I guess we’re eating out.” I’d not left the apartment without Ive since we got here. I missed Michael. I missed his country home. I hated the city. I hated sitting all day watching television with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs. It wasn’t fun.
Stepping past Hubert, I reached for my jacket and he suddenly stepped in front of me, a cell phone in his hand.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“We don’t have permission to leave.”
“What?” Hubert put the cell phone to his ear. I couldn’t believe this. “Am I a prisoner here?”
I shouldn’t be surprised. I’d been kidnapped by the Volkov Bratva and now I was pissed off. I thought the prisoner status left when I was married to one of them. I wasn’t stupid. There was no way I was going to run off to the police. Even though I’d been kidnapped, thrown in a cell, drugged, and well, moved to another cell, the irony was they had been nice to me. How crazy was that?
Back home with my father and his MC club, I had all the freedom in the world. I could come and go as I pleased. Even after he’d beaten me, no one did anything. They all feared him. Did I actually have more freedom back then? I know I’m messed up. The beatings, the constant abuse, but I had locked it all in a box. A slap from my father got pushed into a box. The beatings, each one got pushed into that box. It made life a lot easier to keep everything locked away. None of those memories or time with the Volkov Bratva had been placed in my protective box.