The Player (Chicago Bratva 8)

“Gospodi, that must have been hard. I’m sorry.”

I feel him shrug beneath my head. “It was all right. There was a lot of love. Our family was crazy and chaotic, but we took good care of each other. Story took care of me and Dahlia when our mom couldn’t function.”

“Dahlia is the sister in Wisconsin?”

“Yes. She and her high school boyfriend went together and are still making it work. She turned out the most normal of all of us.”

Hearing Flynn’s warm rumble sloughs away more of the residual trauma in my body.

“Adrian had to look out for me, too. Our mom died of cancer, and our dad became an alcoholic.”

“That’s why it’s hard for him to take a step back now.”

“Da. Also…My kidnapping changed him. A lot. It made him feel helpless, and now he overcompensates. He had to become something else in order to get me back.”

“A member of the Russian mafiya.”

“Da. He has blood on his hands now.”

“Yeah. I’m sure Oleg does, too. Probably way more.”

“Does it bother you? Your sister being engaged to a bratva member?”

“Honestly? No. That guy is one hundred percent a teddy bear with her. I guess my only worry would be that something bad would happen to him, and she’d be left alone.”

We’re quiet a while longer. The mechanical gear sounds stop completely. The anxiety of trying to make it all go away isn’t here, either. For the first time, I actually feel brave enough to try to look at what triggered me.

Forced oral sex. That was it.

“There was a guy who came every night. The same guy,” I tell Flynn. I feel like puking, but it’s not worth holding it in. Keeping these stories inside me is what makes them too much to manage.

Flynn goes still.

“He smelled like cigars and liked the rape thing. Even though I was chained, he still had to hold me down or choke me. And he always used me. I was his… don’t know–preferred slave. He liked to gag me with his…” I trail off because now I really don’t want to finish the story.

Flynn says nothing, but there’s more tension in him than usual. I don’t sense the same spacious allowance he usually offers.

After a moment, he says, “I get why Adrian is the way he is. I’m not violent, but I would definitely kill that guy if I had the chance.”

“Me too,” I murmur. And it’s true.

Adrian was hunting the leader of the sex trafficking ring–Kat’s father. I didn’t care about him. I never met him.

The man I want dead is the mudak who haunts my nightmares. Maybe in the law’s eyes, he’s the least culpable. He wasn’t selling me. He was just buying. I don’t care–he’s the one I remember most. He’s the one who actually raped me—over and over again. And after what he did to me, he doesn’t deserve to live.

“So he’s still alive? Adrian didn’t get to him?”

The whirring gears start up, but I don’t resist. I let them play in my head. A soundtrack to my torment. Except this time, I recognize the torment as something different than victimhood. This time it feels like rage.

“Nyet. I would like to find him. And if I did, I would put gun to his head and pull the trigger myself.” I feel sick saying it, but there’s also something steadying about admitting my desire for violence.

“I’d bury the body for you,” Flynn says.

I feel laughter somewhere in my chest. It doesn’t come out. It feels far away, and yet it registers enough to lighten my mood. I throw my leg over Adrian’s hips. “Would you?”

I suspect we’re playing Flynn’s storyteller game right now. Concocting a story that would never happen but is fun to imagine. It’s strange pillow talk, yet I’ve never felt closer to another person in my life. This conversation is exactly what I needed.

“I’d drive the getaway car. I’d tie him up and hold him in place. But only if you’re a good shot.” There’s teasing in Flynn’s voice, as if he sensed my shift in mood.

“I’m not,” I admit. “I actually don’t know how to shoot a gun. So you’d better not hold him in place in case I screw it up.”

“I would beat the shit out of him first, so he was incapable of moving, and then you could shoot him.”

I try to picture it. It’s really too absurd to imagine. I could see Adrian doing it. Or any of his bratva brothers, but me and Flynn? It feels as fantastical as it sounds. I like to pretend, though. “I would like to pull the trigger. I think I could.”

“If you couldn’t, I would finish it for you.”

Pressure lifts off me in rolling waves. I’m me again. Not that lost, broken me, but the real me. Solid. Grounded. Built of sturdy bones and covered in peaches and cream skin.