“Why haven’t you let the girl shower?” he muses as he looks at me.
I glare at Brit. She smiles in return, no shame about her lie being discovered. “I wanted to see what it would take to make her beauty wilt.”
“My jealous little kitten.” Belov laughs and then licks the side of her face like an affectionate cat. “You wanted to see if you could make her repulsive to me.”
She shrugs again. “Do you still want to fuck her?”
He eyes me carefully. “As badly as ever.”
She stiffens, but her expression is detached. I wonder if it’s all just an act. She seems too good for this man. Like she could swallow him whole and spit out his bones if she wanted.
“Is it because she’s beautiful?” Brit asks. “Or because she’s the Mikhailov princess?”
“Do I need to choose?”
Brit wriggles out of his grip. He lets her go. Mostly because he’s focused on me. When he takes one predatory step in my direction, I scurry backwards. My skin is already crawling, my stomach churning. I don’t know what I’ll do if he touches me.
“She’s got some new scars,” Belov remarks with an appraising eye.
Brit rolls her eyes. “A few scratches. Nothing significant. If she’s going to be a part of this life, she’d better grow a thicker skin.”
“I want no part of this life,” I croak.
Belov’s mouth tips up in an amused smirk. “You don’t have a choice, darling.” He sidles closer and runs two fingers down the side of my face.
A scream lodges in my throat. I want to fight back.
But I wasn’t meant to fight back. It wouldn’t help, anyway. My life has prepared me for this. I’m made to survive. To endure and take pain lying down. To swallow my screams.
Belov’s fingers flutter from my face to my chest, and I tense. But even when he curls his hand around my sore right breast, I don’t do anything.
“If you want to fuck someone, choose me,” Brit blurts. She’d never do something as pedestrian as blushing, but her eyes do churn like she regrets having spoken up.
“Jealous, my beauty?” Spartak asks her, even as he never takes his eyes off me.
“She’s nothing,” Brit says. “You need a real woman.”
Finally, he releases me. I’d be relieved, if it weren’t for the anger narrowing his eyes.
“Your husband made a bold move in taking down two of my buildings,” he snarls. “It was reckless, considering everything I could do to you in retaliation.”
I shiver. But it has nothing to do with Belov this time. Leo doesn’t care about me. He never did. My suffering means nothing to him.
So if Spartak wants to take out his anger on me?
Well, Leo won’t lift a finger to stop him.
“He knows I need you alive, pretty princess,” he says. “But I don’t need you whole.”
Suddenly, I twist away from him and dry heave. If there was anything in my stomach, it would have come out all over his shoes.
Belov lunges backwards. “Leo Solovev is going to pay for his hubris.”
“You’re the one with hubris.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, looking up at him from the floor. I’m in the weaker position, but I can’t hold back anymore. “You should have known that Leo makes good on his promises. If you’d given me back to him, you wouldn’t have lost half your men.”
“Men can be replaced,” Belov snaps. “And I can rebuild.”
“But how long will it take? And at what cost?”
I know I’ve gone a step too far when his eyes grow cold. He reaches under the hem of his shirt and pulls out a blade.
Brit says something, but I don’t know what. The sight of the knife has stolen all my other senses.
Is he going to kill me now?
Is he going to cut my baby out of me?
Why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut?
Snarling, Spartak grabs my hair and forces me onto my knees. He dances the knife over my jaw and down my exposed throat like he’s looking for the best place to start carving.
The blade is cold, but I fear that if I shudder, it’ll tear into my flesh. I squeeze my eyes closed.
This is not my world.
This is not my life.
He pulls the knife away from my skin, and I wait for the sting of pain. For the warm drip of blood down my neck.
Instead, I feel a rush of air against my cheek as he slashes downward. There is no pain, though, just a distant slicing sound.
When he’s done, he drops me to the floor again. I open my eyes and see the dark strands of hair littering the floor. I look up and see the same dark tresses in his hand.