Page 35 of Bratva Sacrifice

I laugh. “There is no one to stop me.” I stretch out in my chair, satisfied. “Now we discuss your consequence, koshechka. For making extra work for my employees, who had to scrub your dinner off of my floor and remake it for you.” And now I can be glad for Anatoli’s interference, because this will be much more satisfying now that the heat of my anger has fled. “Maybe you are more like your brother than you know. You steal from me also,” I tell her, and I lift my chin to indicate her pilfered clothing. The shirt and sweatpants taken from my drawers.

Katya stills to a deadly quiet, her face paling, her appetite abruptly deserting her. Probably she thinks I will hurt her. Kill her.

I want none of those things. But a lesson must be learned. “You will be allowed clothing when you can be trusted with it. Until then”—I lean forward, stretch my hand out to her expectantly—“I will have mine back.”

∞∞∞

I keep her naked for three days. Predictably, Katya is furious. My clothing has been removed from my room. Not so much as a shirt remains for Katya to make use of. She has no recourse—no easy weapons at her disposal that she might throw at my head—but this does not mean she has nothing to use against me.

Instead, she uses her silence. Clever Katya has determined, correctly, that I covet her attention and so refuses to give it to me. If she deigns to respond at all to anything I say to her, it is only to offer a bland Fuck off, Alexei, and nothing more.

But even that is rare. More often than not, she retreats to the bathroom and locks herself in when she hears me coming. I have considered removing the lock, but probably that will not endear me to her.

Her nakedness keeps her confined to my bedroom for less than a full day. It is against her nature to sit passively with nothing to do for so long, against her nature to cower and hide. In early afternoon the day after I stripped her of the clothes she stole, she makes her first bid for freedom.

She has chosen a moment she was left alone, when I am attending to matters of business elsewhere in the house. But Anatoli spotted her traipsing down a corridor and calls me immediately.

Most times, he is a man of few words. He tells me only, “Your pet is loose,” before he hangs up. Probably he expects I will end my business to manage Katya—which I will.

It’s a short distance to the security room, where I run back the feed to see her strolling out of my bedroom wrapped in a towel left over from the two hour shower she has indulged herself in taking. Exasperation vies with amusement. Clever Katya, finding ways to wriggle out of her confinement.

I track her progression as she picks up where she left off in searching my house for weaknesses. The staff is small today; she crosses paths with few people. Eventually she disappears into a room on the lower floor and does not emerge.

She will find nothing of use there. Any room where she could cause damage to herself or to someone else has already been locked against her in preparation for her eventual release. But she will try, nonetheless, as a trapped creature must.

The room where she picks up her search is only a spare office. Not the one I use; not even the one Anatoli uses, when he is here. Just a room that is made available for my employees to use, if they have a need for it. There is not even a computer which she might use to contact anyone.

There are, however, random bits of decoration, and when I enter, I see Katya struggling beneath the weight of a heavy bronze bust. Her towel is tucked between her breasts; her wet hair is dripping on the floor.

She heaves the bust with every ounce of strength she can summon toward the window. It strikes true, produces a reverberating crash that echoes through the house. The bust bounces off the window and lands upon the floor with a resounding thud. Probably the marble tile is chipped.

“Katya,” I tell her. “You have one minute to go back to where you are meant to be, or I will tear that towel off of you.”

She jumps, startled—and then she is furious all over again that I have disrupted her hunt. But she goes, and her feet squeaking across wet floors she leaves in her wake sounds like shrill recriminations of my character.

I have all the towels removed, but it doesn’t help. The next day is more of the same.

In the morning, I catch her in the foyer wrapped in a bed sheet and dragging the excess length behind her like the train of a gown. She is trying to figure out how to work the front door, with its interior lock that functions only with a fingerprint.

I send her fleeing again. And I remove all the bed clothes from my bedroom.

In the afternoon I catch her sneaking toward the kitchen, where she no doubt hopes to get her hands on a knife or some other such weapon. She has torn down the curtains on the windows and draped them around herself like a toga.

I send her back once more. And I strip my room of anything she might use to clothe herself, down to the smallest thread.

The third day brings with it an end to Katya’s even begrudging obedience, and a sharp blow to my sanity besides. At last she can find nothing to clothe herself—and probably she decides she no longer cares. Perhaps half an hour after I leave her to her breakfast in the morning, she casts open my bedroom door and strides out entirely naked.

And it is this moment, when she happens upon me meeting with several of my enforcers, that I realize I have been foolish. Katya does not know the workings of my house or the people there are to be found within it. She could not possibly have known what she would be interrupting or who would be with me.

She freezes there in the doorway like a startled doe, attracting every eye at once.

I bark out, “Close your fucking eyes if you want to keep them in your head.”

Every man present save for myself has already done this. Nobody wants to risk my wrath. Katya jolts at the snap of my voice, her arms jerking up to cover her bare breasts.

My voice is thick with irritation as I vault out of my chair, tearing off my shirt. “You want me to kill them?” I ask of her, with a cutting gesture of my fingers to indicate the men at my table sharing vodka with me. Good, loyal enforcers. “You want to fucking watch them die?”

A sharp shake of her head. Katya’s eyes are wide, pupils receded to pinpricks. A shudder careens down her spine at the suggestion.