With that, he turns around to leave, giving me his back as if to make me feel smaller, dismissed. “Dominik made me a promise,” he says over his shoulder. “A week. Seven days for two million dollars and a shipment of guns. I gave him the time because he’s never failed me, and because I wanted to see whether his loyalties are changing.” He pauses then adds, “I told him I wanted an update on Archer’s location today, and he’s failed to deliver that to me. I want to see the guns and money before the end of this week. I don’t like counting at the last second.”
“What happens if Dominik doesn’t… if he can’t…”
Gavriil watches me. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. The silence says it all: he’ll lose his brother’s trust.
“You should pray to whatever god you worship that he succeeds.”
Anger flares, hot and reckless. “You don’t have to keep threatening me. I know what you’ll try to do.”
His eyes soften by a millimeter. “I’m threatening your brother. I suppose it’s the same thing right now. And I don’t have totryto do anything. I always succeed.”
We stand in the quiet kitchen, the coffee going cold in my mug. He glances toward the bedroom one more time, and for a heartbeat he’s not thePakhan; he’s a man with a younger brother in a bed. It makes me hate him a tiny bit less.
“I will come back to check on him if I don’t receive an update on his progress soon,” he says. “Nurse him back to health fast, Alina, because if he fails me, you will pay the consequences.”
Gavriil may love his brother, but from the way he talks, it almost sounds like he wants him to fail so he can prove a point. So he can claim me just to teach him a lesson? Out of jealousy he flat out denied way too fast?
“I understand,” I whisper. I glance over at the necklace on the counter. What it could mean if I chose to wear it, knowing I won’t.
Despite how determined Dominik may be to keep me from his brother’s grasp, I won’t let him enter a fight he can’t win over me. I’d rather be thrown in a cage than see Dominik lose another drop of blood. He’s given enough. Suffered enough.
“Do you really?” Gavriil asks as he moves forward, his blue eyes darkening as the distance between us closes too quickly. “I don’t think you understand our world yet, Alina, but you will. I’ll claim every part of you—body, heart, and soul—in ways you can’t begin to fathom. And I will enjoy every single second that you refuse to surrender until you finally break. You may last just a little bit longer than the others.”
My mouth goes dry as I stare up at him, his intoxicating cologne washing over me. Why does he have to smell delicious and look so good when he terrifies me? Is that why his prisoners supposedly beg him for pleasure?
“You’re not going to claim me,” I tell him, my voice coming out weaker than I wish.
A faint smirk plays out on his lips. His eyes then sweep over me, lingering on my curves and my lips without an ounce of shame. “I will, and you’ll fuckingloveit…until I get bored and discard you.”
With that proclamation, a threat that sounds like he wants to ruin me, he finally leaves the apartment. I hear the elevator door open for him before the door shuts, as if it was waiting for him, holding its breath.
Gavriil could try to take those things from me, but he would fail. My body, heart, and soul are mine to give. There’s nothing Gavriil could do to convince me to give anything to him. Not while I still remember what it feels like to choose for myself.
17
Alina
I stand there lostin my thoughts until one of Dominik’s men clears his throat.
“What?” I turn around to ask.
“You may think you’ve won the battle, but Gavriil will always win the war,” Viktor remarks.
“Of course he will,” I mutter, as if I expected anything less.
“You’re playing with fire speaking to him in that way. Dominik wouldn’t approve,” Petrov adds.
I purse my lips at them, not liking how accurate their words are. “Well, Dominik is temporarily out of commission right now. I wasn’t going to let Gavriil barge in and make him feel even worse—even if I was terrified while doing it. And I would hope that you two have enough of a spine to do the same.”
That makes them shut up and look visibly defeated.
After placing my mug in the sink, I walk back to the bedroom to check on Dominik, to see if our voices woke him.
Thankfully, he hasn’t moved. A frown, though, has creased the skin between his brows like whatever he’s dreaming is something he intends to obliterate when he wakes. His long black eyelashes lying on his cheeks make him look angelic in his sleep.
He’d hate if I said that to him.
My fingers twitch with the stupid impulse to caress his scruffy jaw. In a few more days, will it be as soft as Gavriil’s looks?
