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“Look, it’s none of my business. This is your life, not mine. You took my life. Now, all I have is your revenge and this island. Vik, you were right earlier, everything I have now is at your liberty. Right down to the air I breathe.” She lifts her hand and touches her neck. “But there are a few things that I still have a choice about, so I’m going to choose to be a prisoner. I don’t want to be a part of whatever you’re trying to pretend this is. So, I’m going to go back upstairs to my cell, feel free to lock the door.”
Standing, she strides out of the room, back straight, head up. She doesn’t look like a prisoner; she looks like a goddamn queen.
CHAPTER 16
vik
“What the fuck did you do to her?” Lev demands the moment she leaves.
“Nothing.” I shrug, refusing to allow him to see all of the anger that’s festering beneath my calm facade.
“She has bruises all over her neck,” he snaps.
“I barely squeezed; she just bruises like a fucking peach.”
“And all the rape talk? She was talking to you,” Dimi says.
“I found her in the kitchen earlier talking to Tanya and Roza.”
“Was she asking them to help her escape?” Dimi asks.
“No. She was asking for a drink. I took her out onto the patio and we were talking, I was asking questions, she was too,” I admit. “She told me she wasn’t a virgin, but wouldn’t tell me the name of the guy who popped her cherry. She told me she hated us, so I kissed her and reminded her that we brought her here and that she’s ours.”
“And her throat?” Lev snaps.
“I thought she’d be into it.” I shrug again.
“She came downstairs, she was in our clothes. She was coming round and you fucked it for all of us,” Lev snarls, glaring at me.
“Fuck you, Lev. Did you really think she was going to wake up from the sedative we pumped her body full of and look at you with hearts in her eyes, ready to spread her legs and ride your dick? We kidnapped her, she was always going to hate us,” I cry, stomping across to the liquor cabinet and small wet bar we have set up in here. Pouring myself a whiskey, I down it, then pour a second, bringing it to my lips and drinking, letting the burn numb my throat.
“I told you we should have infiltrated her life, if we’d given her a chance to get to know us, she would have come willingly and then she wouldn’t be talking about us raping her and preferring to be a prisoner over being ours,” Lev hisses, his eyes flaring with hurt.
He’d never admit it, but Lev fell for Alabama the first time he saw her. She was almost eighteen, but still a kid, and he was a man who was old enough to know better than to lust over a girl nearly half his age. When we found her again, he wanted to befriend her, to convince her to date one of us, or maybe even move into the loft we tricked her into visiting, then drugged and stole her from.
He pushed again and again to get to know her, but both Dimi and I shot him down. What we’ve done is fucked up enough, it would only have been worse, if we’d had been fucking her, knowing all along we only planned to use her.
Although he’ll never admit it, Dimi is almost as obsessed as Lev is. He didn’t need to force the paperwork and marry her either. We could have used her as bait, rather than spending time laying legal groundwork to claim Polakoff’s estate. But he wanted her to have his name. Alena Belova. It’s not even her real name for fuck’s sake. The woman upstairs is Alabama Delany, and as much as Dimi and Lev are trying to pretend she’s not, she is our fucking prisoner.
Do I want her to be our girl and our prisoner? Honestly, I don’t know anymore. Sharing with my brothers is everything I’ve ever wanted. I don’t have the attention span to have a woman of my own, I’m too easily distracted. But having just a third of the woman I’ve compulsively watched 24/7 for the last 365 days, yeah, I want that.
Seeing my marks on her neck, feeling her claw at my hands, desperate for me to allow her to breath, my dick was so hard I thought I might come in my pants. But watching the anger and pain in her eyes, listening to her say she’ll never want my touch, that if I take her, it’ll have to be by force. That’s not what I want.
When I’d watched her get dressed into our clothes, I thought she was giving us the green light. I’d thought the push and pull, and the banter on the patio was just a game. Knowing it wasn’t, just pisses me off.
Polakoff and the new Mafia might have forced our families out of Russia when we were only small children, but our parents and grandparents didn’t leave the Bratva way of life behind just because we left the country. I was raised in a patriarchal household. My grandfather ruled my grandmother with a literal firm hand, and my father handled my mother in the exact same way. Now I’m an adult, I recognize that domestic discipline was a part of their lives. The men were in charge and when their wives stepped out of line, they were quickly brought back to heel with corporal punishment.
My mother and grandmother weren’t abused, or at least I don’t think they were. But bruises weren’t uncommon, either. I assumed it was a system that worked for all of them on both a physical and mental level, but now I’m wondering if it was a sex thing, or just a fucked-up control thing. A part of me always assumed I’d have a similar relationship with whoever Lev, Dimi, and I shared, now I have no fucking clue.
I’m thirty-one years old and although I’ve fucked a lot of women, I’ve never had a relationship that lasted longer than the fifth date. Alabama was the first woman we’d all agreed we wanted to share, and I might have fucked it up before we even got a chance to start.
“What are we going to do?” Lev asks, his expression downtrodden and sad.
“Nothing,” Dimi says.
“What?” Lev argues.
“If she wants to feel like a prisoner, then we let her feel like a prisoner. The plan remains the same. We let the lawyers do their thing, and wait for Orlov to figure out all the illegal money is gone and all the legal money is Alena’s. When he tries to bargain for her, we strike.”
