“I could go to the police.”
His laugh was cruel. “And tell them what? I rescued you from becoming a sex slave? Yeah, I’m a monster.” He was both sarcastic and not. “You think my family doesn’t own the police? So, you’ll stay here until I’m tired of you, or realize what a stupid idea this is.”
“Stay here?” An invisible hand squeezed my entire body. “In your house? With you?”
He turned off the lamp and flopped his head down on the pillow. “I always wanted a pet.”
My mouth fell open. Anxiety was tempered by success, and I chewed back the need to tell the stupid boy I wasn’t his dog.
“Lie down,” he ordered. I couldn’t see because the room was dark, but I could hear the smile in his voice, and rage turned everything red for a long moment.
I took a breath. Get over this and play your part. When it was done, if Vasilije was still standing, I’d make him heel like my fucking dog. The thought was enough to keep me quiet. I mashed the pillow and set my head on it, rolling away from him.
“Don’t get any ideas about killing me.” The mattress rocked gently as he shifted closer. “If you do, my family will make you beg for death, and then keep you alive for weeks while you do it.”
“Lovely,” I bit out.
He gave a humorless laugh. “You think I’m fucking with you? I’m not.”
“I don’t want to kill you, Vasilije.” He was no good to me dead. How could I use him to kill my father then?
“Good. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, either.”
I gritted my teeth and choked on the desire to tell him to go fuck himself. I jammed my eyes shut and focused on the pattern of the rain hitting the window. The rhythm was its own kind of music. I wished I had my notebook so I could jot down the percussion line. It was only across the room.
Fingers made of ice traced a line down my spine, and I flinched away.
“Tell me why you don’t like being touched.”
I scooted to the edge of the bed, as far away from him as I could get, but it made no difference. A hand locked on my hip, and the cool skin of his chest pressed against my back. He was freezing, which shouldn’t have been surprising. I’d been told he was cold blooded.
“I just don’t.” My voice was small.
His hand tightened, driving his fingers into my skin like blunt icicles stabbing at me. “Why don’t you like being touched? You’re not going to want me to ask a third time.”
Should I reveal the truth? I didn’t know how he’d react. “When I was seventeen, a man . . . touched me when I didn’t want him to.”
Vasilije’s hand was gone instantly, like I was damaged goods. Shit. The silence between us hung heavy, and only the rain tapping at the window let me know we weren’t frozen forever in this painful moment.
His tone was strained. “Who was he?”
“Just some guy who worked for my father.”
A lie. Ilia had been a rising star, poised to become one of the main figures in our business. He was young, but his family had vouched for him, and my father had welcomed him into the inner circle. Ilia had something I never would—my father’s respect.
“What happened?” Vasilije’s tone was sharp, as if angry, yet I had the strange feeling he wasn’t upset with me.
“I told my father, and he had the guy . . . sent away. Please don’t make me talk about it.”
He exhaled, as if reluctant. “Tell me how your parents died.”
Wow. He switched from one awful memory to another. “My mother was killed in a plane crash when I was fifteen. It was a regional flight between Kazan and Kirov.” This was true. I’d been instructed to stay as close to my real story as possible, to avoid crafting a web of lies I couldn’t keep up with. “It made it very hard to want to get on a plane.”
Also true, except my flight to the United States had come only a few months after she’d died. I’d been heavily sedated most of the journey, scared of falling out of the sky, and terrified of meeting the man who was my father if we didn’t happen to crash.
“My parents weren’t together. After she passed, I went to live with my father. Last year, one of his business deals,” I weighted the word so Vasilije would know what I was alluding to, “ended badly, and my father was shot.”
There’d been a delicate truce between us and the Serbians for several months last year, and when it fell apart, everything went to shit and my father took a bullet in his right arm. He lost some mobility permanently, but he’d survived. I’d let Vasilije believe otherwise.