“That’s it, wife. Do you feel the way you soften for me? How wet you are, even when I’ve barely gotten started with you?” He talks while he’s working me over—two fingers inside, a thumb on my clit. The magic combination.
The whimpers I let out are weak things, but I don’t want his men to hear us. This is private. Just for us.
His stubble scrapes my cheek a little just before he whispers in my ear, “Your body is mine. The next orgasm you have, the one my fingers will give you… that’s mine too. Your body knows it. Has known it for a long time. I will give you anything you desire, because it’s the same as giving it to myself.”
“You will?” I gasp, climbing to something unstoppable on his fingers.
“Of course. The thing is, our bodies knew we were married before I ever proposed. That’s why I was always hard around you, and you were always wet around me. We were destined to end up here, pet. And now, you’re shaking. Your pussy throbs on my fingers. Once you’ve come for me like this, I’m going to ravish you on my desk.”
“Yes—”
“And tonight, in our bed, I’m going to take your ass.”
The thought startles me from my orgasm, then throws me straight into it. I cling to him, coming hard on his fingers, and I bury my face into his shoulder so my scream doesn’t reach other ears. I’m completely and uselessly lost in it?—
The door opens.
Igor comes through it, anger and something else twisting his face. “Vlad—shit.” He turns away. “I am?—”
“Say it,” Pavel says, in the voice that is entirely the pakhan, assembled from nothing in the space of a single breath.
“Vladimir is dead. He has been hanged in the open rock garden.”
“Fuck.” Pavel removes himself from me, and I straighten my clothes. “Lockdown?—”
“Already did. No one in or out. But they’ve already escaped, or they’re one of ours. We did a sweep.”
Pavel moves immediately toward the door, and I move with him, and he turns to me. “Stay inside.”
“No.”
“Molly—”
“No!” I meet his eyes. “This is the world my children will grow up in. I won’t look away from it.”
He looks at me for a long moment, but then he nods once, and we go.
I don’t remember night falling, but the courtyard is lit by the security lights that have come on with the darkness. They are very bright against the white and gray stone, and several of his men are already there, standing in the solemn moment. The rock garden is at the center—carefully maintained, the stones pale and arranged with an aesthetic intention that the man who tends them takes seriously.
Vladimir dangles above it.
I look, because I said I would, and I meant it. But I’m regretting that now. It’s not like the movies. He is—he’s gone, in the way that is unmistakable and final. His eyes stare at nothing, and his face is a little purple, and his neck is weirdly fat from the rope around it.
There’s nothing around that he would have willingly kicked away, were this self-inflicted. Which means either he did it by jumping down from the branch that the rope hangs from, or someone did this to him. My money’s on the latter.
Every part of this sends a message. Fedor knows who Pavel suspected, and he killed him here to show us we are not safe in our own home. Not even in the well-lit, well-watched courtyard.
Whether he was actually Fedor’s spy, we will never know.
I stand in the courtyard light and look at what has been done and think about two heartbeats inside me. This is the world they will inherit.
It is not the world they must inherit.
I’m not showing yet, but I will be soon. It’d be easy enough to dye my hair and get on a bus and go somewhere no one knows me. I don’t think anyone gets out of a twin pregnancy without gaining a lot of weight. Getting fat could be a great disguise, and I’m not skinny to begin with, so it’ll be quick.
But then Pavel’s hand finds mine in the dark, and we stay silent, taking in the sight of what happened to Vladimir.
I can’t tell him what I’m thinking, because I don’t know if he’d beg me to stay or shove a bus ticket in my hand. Instead, I mutter, “He didn’t deserve this.”
