Thirty Days of Pain Read online

  Now I am about to find out.

  I steal a final glance at the house. Aunt Anastasia moves through life in a medicated haze. She’s so out of it these days, she bumps into walls and trips over her own feet. How will the children make it without me?

  I’ve done everything I can to prepare them. I’ve already printed out a schedule of all their activities – French lessons and piano lessons for both of them, fencing class for Yuri, ballet for Helenka – and given it to the nanny who’s been hired from an agency known for their discretion.

  I swallow hard and tear my gaze from the window. From the crying children.

  I’ve told Helenka that she’ll have to make sure her mother remembers her medication. Will she get it right, the dosage, the days? So much responsibility for a little girl. It’s not fair that I have to dump this on her.

  Life’s not fair.

  A couple of other men slide out of the car and tower over me. Holy hell. Karl and Mikhail – my uncle’s former bodyguards. I wondered where they’d gotten too lately.

  Their gazes rove over me in a way that makes me sick.

  I swallow my rage and contempt. You bastards. You backstabbing weasels. I hope you’re every bit as loyal to Sergei as you were to my uncle.

  The big man grabs my suitcase from my hand and tosses it onto the lawn. What does that mean? Am I going to wear the same outfit for thirty days straight, or are they going to kill me on the way to Sergei’s house?

  “Well? Are you waiting for an invitation?” he snaps. He gestures at the open rear door.

  My uncle glances sullenly at Karl and Mikhail, and they meet his gaze coolly, smirking. How much lower can Vilyat sink, without drowning?

  The two of them clamber into the front seat, and I get in the back. The big man gets in next to Karl and Mikhail. As I slide in next to Sergei, my uncle leans in close and says, “This is a gesture of my intent to carry out the terms—”

  Sergei yanks the door shut in my uncle’s face, and the car pulls away with a screech of burning rubber before my uncle can finish his words.

  We drive away, and Sergei is silent. He’s wearing a dark suit today, and I can’t help but think of undertakers. He stares straight ahead, ignoring me completely.

  My nerves are humming with terror.

  “Where are we going?” I blurt out. “Where do you live?”

  He glances at me and shakes his head in disapproval.

  “Who are you to question me?” he says coldly. He speaks perfect English, but his accent still reveals his Russian countryside roots. I’ve been on enough summer vacations to know the difference between the speech patterns of the upper class and the peasant. Sergei’s way of speaking reveals that he grew up poor. That’s even more frightening – only a brutal killer could start out at the bottom and muscle his way to the top.

  He’s staring at me now, with no expression at all on his face. The look in his eyes…like a shark slashing its way through icy waters, toward its prey.

  I’m nervous; I can’t stop babbling. “My uncle said I’m just going to work as an assistant to you. For one month.” I’m wringing my hands, clenching them together in my lap. I’m trying to reassure myself.

  Sergei throws his head back and roars with laughter. “One month is correct. That is all the time I could stand to have a Toporov in my home. As for being my assistant, he lied to you. But then, he does that. The words ‘honor’ and ‘Vilyat’ can never be spoken in the same sentence.”

  If he doesn’t want me for an assistant, then what does he want? Panic seizes me, squeezes my heart. “But…”

  He pulls a tiny silver tape recorder out of his pocket and presses a button.

  I hear my uncle’s voice. He’s practically sobbing. “I swear to God, do whatever you want to her, as long as you want. She’s young, she’s gorgeous, she’s a virgin.”

  Ice-water rushes through my veins.

  I’m not a virgin. And my uncle has just sold me into sexual slavery.

  No, no, no. This cannot be happening to me.

  “That isn’t what I agreed to.” My voice is shaking.

  He shrugs. “Your uncle made a deal, and you will honor it.”

  Tears burn in my eyes, and my throat threatens to swell closed. “You’re vile. How can you ask this of me?”

  “I’m vile?” he scoffs. “How do you like that, Feodyr? A Toporov just called me vile.”

  Feodyr, the big man who held the door open for me, barks out a harsh laugh. “I don’t think you could sink much lower. Sir.”

  I’ve just mouthed off to a living nightmare. In a daze of fear and sorrow, I brace myself for him to hit me.

  He does something much worse. He plays some more of the recording. My uncle, babbling, his voice pitched high with fear. “For ten percent of my take, you could have Helenka, too. Thirteen years old. She’s beautiful.”

  I suck in my breath, horrified.

  Sergei spits his contempt at me. “Your family. Your blood. Your uncle thinks I want to fuck children. Is that what you people do, Willow?”

  “No. Oh, God, no.” It comes out in a whisper.

  Just when I think my uncle couldn’t sink any lower… I know that he’s a pig who only sees women as sexual objects. I know that he only values boys – even though he thinks Yuri isn’t hard enough, and he’s trying to beat that into his son, toughen him up, no matter how much my aunt weeps and pleads. My uncle is a monster. He’s the reason that Yuri is hand-shy – like a dog. Yuri flinches now when anyone raises their hand too quickly.

  But Helenka. He’s offering to sell her.

  And I realize something terrible.

  Helenka is a beautiful little girl. And her father’s already made the first offer. The idea’s in his head now. If Sergei doesn’t want her, then someone else will. She’ll be lucky if the worst that happens is being married off to a brutal, abusive, much older husband, like my mother was married to my father. Like my aunt was married to Vilyat.

  As my uncle’s power slips away, he’ll be looking for objects of value to trade or sell. And there will be Helenka.

  Right then, I make a decision. I will do whatever it takes to survive this. I will let them do anything they want to me. I will live to go home, and I will tell my aunt what her husband was going to do to their daughter, and we’ll all go on the run together.

  She’d run away with me to save her daughter, wouldn’t she? Or is she too beaten down?

  I realize something else.

  If she won’t come with me, I’m taking the kids and going on my own. Before this life, this world of ours, chews them up and spits them out. It’s too late for me, but they’re still good. Still pure. I can save them.

  I have a backup plan. A hideaway, a secret between me and my late mother. She researched it carefully. It’s in Columbus, Ohio, a city where none of our family operates, so remote that nobody would think to look for us there, but big enough to hide and disappear. She swapped out some of her jewelry with fakes and sold the real jewelry without my father’s knowledge, in case she or I ever needed to bolt, and the money bought the little apartment. It’s been sitting empty all these years. It’s a desperate last measure, but it’s there.

  I glance at Sergei. Is there any way I could get Sergei to reject me and send me back home? Maybe I’d have time to grab Helenka and Yuri before Sergei sank his claws into them?

  I’ve got to get those kids the hell out of there while I still can.

  “Sorry to tell you, you’ve been had. I’m not a virgin,” I say, my cheeks flushing.

  “Good.”

  “Good?” My voice rises in a squeak.

  “Virgins are boring.”

  I’m struggling not to hyperventilate as we glide down the road. What the hell has just happened to me? This can’t be. It’s the twenty-first century. I’m a college graduate. I’m an American citizen. People aren’t traded like commodities.

  But the laws that protect everyone else aren’t there for me. I come from a family of shadowy people who
make their fortunes outside the boundaries of civilized society. They sell drugs and weapons without serial numbers. It’s a brutal business and there are bound to be casualties.

  Rivals greedy for territory and money. People who won’t pay protection.

  Me.

  Sergei turns to me and cups my chin in his hand and turns my head to look at him, and lightning bolts of sensation jolt my body. His touch is firm and commanding, a little rough.

  “Here are the rules,” he says, looking right into my eyes. His gaze holds me prisoner.

  “You address me as sir. You do not speak until spoken to. You do as you are told, immediately, and every time that you fail to obey, you will be punished. I decide when I want to take you, and how I want to take you. You are here for my pleasure, and I will take my pleasure any way I see fit. For instance, inflicting pain on my enemies gives me pleasure, and you are most certainly my enemy. Do you understand, Willow?”

  I feel as if I’ve been hurled into a swimming pool of ice water. “Yes. Sir,” I add quickly. I almost forget to say sir, and I see the warning flash in his eyes. I want to scream. I’m not your enemy! I’m not, I’m not! I hate my uncle as much as you do!

  I stay silent.

  “Or,” he added, “I can tell my driver to pull over and let you out right here. Last chance.”

  There is a hint of menace behind the words, and my insides go liquid with terror at the thought of what would happen if I demanded to be set free.

  He’d kick me out and make me walk home. By the time I got back, he’d have snatched up Yuri or Helenka, or both of them. I am sure that he wouldn’t molest them – I saw the genuine disgust in his gaze at the mention of it, and for that matter if he’d wanted them, he could have had them – but he’d crush their spirits until the light leaked from their souls.

  And furthermore, who am I to say I’m too good to be punished? I’m complicit in all of this. I let my family spend their blood money to drape me in designer clothes, send me to etiquette school and boarding school and an exclusive women’s college, and now it’s time for me to pay.

  It’s not your fault, a voice in my head protests. By the time you knew the true cost of those clothes, you were halfway through college. And you couldn’t leave Helenka and Yuri behind. You stayed for them, not for the fancy life.

  Tell that to everyone who was ever hurt by a Toporov, I think grimly.

  I close my eyes and shudder. I open them and surrender my fate to the man who is beaming hatred and contempt at me from his stone-cold gaze. He will not be kind to me. He will not be merciful.

  “I will do what my uncle promised, sir,” I say, my voice stiff and formal.

  Chapter Three

  We are gliding up the highway, and the ride is so smooth and quiet I feel weightless, as if I am floating in the clouds. It is not a soothing sensation. It makes me feel disconnected from the Earth, as if I am floating away without a tether.

  “Raise your hands over your head and touch the ceiling,” he says. “Do not move them until I give you permission.”

  I obey him quickly.

  He stares at me for a long, long moment, his gaze roving over my body. Then he reaches over and places his huge hand on my throat, and I let out a tiny gasp of panic but stifle it quickly. He stares into my eyes as he runs his hand slowly downward, stopping to cup my breast.

  A strange, unfamiliar heat rushes through my body. I squirm in my seat, partly in protest, partly in arousal.

  I look away, mortified. He barks, “Look at me,” and I jerk my head back, reluctantly meeting his gaze.

  He runs his thumb over my nipple, which is swollen and hard.

  “The truth is, Willow, that you want this badly. You have ever since you first saw me. I saw the way you looked at me. And I feel how your body is responding to me now. You have permission to answer.”

  His thumb rubs back and forth, stroking me, tormenting me. I press my legs together hard, but wetness is seeping through my panties. Will I leave a damp spot on the leather seats? Please, no, not that, I pray.

  “I do not, sir. You’re a violent, sadistic sociopath. You’re forcing me into an arrangement that I never made, and I did not look at you in any particular way when you come to visit us, except with fear and hatred.”

  That is a lie. I felt that strange pulse of desire throbbing through my body the first time I laid eyes on him. What is it about him? The very things that terrify me also draw me to him. His brutality. His strength. Nobody could ever hurt this man. Maybe on some level, I’m imagining what it would be like to have a man like that care about me, want to protect me.

  But there is no mistake here. The only thing he cares about is using me to humiliate my family.

  He is still rubbing his thumb across my nipple, which is swollen and aching to be sucked. Where did that thought come from?

  “You want me. And you will come to crave what I do to you, more than breath. And when I am done with you and have cast you aside, you’ll beg for more, and your pleas will fall on deaf ears.”

  Me, beg for this? Has he gone insane? My body may be burning for him, but my heart and my mind know what he is.

  “Never gonna happen,” I spit at him.

  “Did you forget a word, Pussy Willow?”

  The men in the front seat laugh at me. Filth. Bastards.

  My face flames red. “Sir.”

  He pinches my nipple hard, and I flinch and let out a squeal of pain.

  “That is the mildest punishment I’ll ever dole out,” he assures me.

  “Yes, sir,” I choke out.

  I bite my lip. I can’t do that again. I have to get used to the new rules, my new life, if I want to make it through the next thirty days. I have to swallow my pride. Keep my head down and survive.

  His hand moves to my other breast, cupping and massaging it. My arms are still raised over my head. My pinched nipple throbs, but there’s a strange kind of pleasure in it that I’ve never experienced before.

  My heart hammers against my ribcage as strange, unfamiliar sensations wash over me.

  “Do you know what I felt when I first saw you, Willow?”

  “What, sir?” I bite down on the gasp that wants to escape.

  “Nothing.” His blue eyes have darkened to the color of a stormy sea. “You’re a pawn, and I’m using you to destroy your family. To expose their soft underbelly to the world, then tear that underbelly open.” As he slices into me with his cruel worlds, his hand continues its slow, tormenting caress.

  Hot tears burn my eyes and spill down my cheeks.

  “Weak,” he scoffs at my tears. “Typical of you people.”

  I look away again, hyperventilating.

  “Look at me,” he snarls again. When I look back at him now, I’m glaring through lashes made spiky with my tears.

  A brutal smile quirks his lips. “I want you to know, Willow, that this is just the beginning. It will only get worse.” How can his hands give me such pleasure while his words hammer into me and bruise my soul?

  And why does he hate me so much? It’s clearly my uncle he’s angry at – so why is he taking it out on me? I’m not a threat to him, not a business rival, I’m just a girl with no parents and no home of her own. They draped me in designer clothes and sent me off to that fancy college because that was expected of a Toporov, not because they cared about me.

  I’m nobody. I’m not worth noticing, much less torturing.

  But he doesn’t seem to know that.

  He moves his hand away from my breast. His hand slips down between my legs, forcing its way between them, and at that I gasp and shift in my seat. The throbbing between my legs is almost painful; he’s stoked a roaring bonfire of arousal in my body.

  Instead of commanding me to part my legs, he stops caressing my breast and reaches down with his other hand, and with one hand on each thigh, he forces them open. Wide. Wider. I am fighting him, legs struggling to close. It’s not because I don’t want him. It’s because I don’t want to want him.
He’ll make me orgasm just with his touch, and I will be mortified.

  “Do not close your legs.” He barks the order.

  Karl and Mikhail have twisted around in their seats, and they’re watching avidly, eyes shining. Feodyr is doing something with his cell phone. He’s not interested in the show. Just another day sitting in a car with his boss torturing someone.

  Crying silently, I shut my eyes as Sergei slides one hand into my panties, and I pretend we’re alone in the car. My arms are starting to burn and shake with the effort of holding them over my head, but I don’t dare lower them.

  I can’t stifle my gasp of shock when he begins slowly stroking me, starting at my clit and moving along my labia with each stroke.

  “I like my women bare. We will take care of that as soon as we get home.”

  Sensation is pouring over me now, burning me from the inside. Without meaning to, I move against his hand. I want more. The realization disgusts me.

  “Do you like how I’m touching you, Willow?” His deep, rich voice is smug. He already knows the answer.

  “Yes. Sir,” I choke out. I can hardly lie, with the juices of my arousal soaking his fingers.

  “Do you want me to make you come?”

  I squirm harder and moan. The men in the front seat are watching us.

  “No, sir,” I mumble. I am desperate to come, the need for release is burning and raging like a fever, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. And I don’t want it to happen with those pigs devouring me with their hungry, scornful gazes.

  His fingers slip out of my panties, and I open my eyes with a gasp. He’s staring into my eyes again, with that cruel twist of a smirk distorting his smile.

  “What you want isn’t important. You will come for me, but not now. You will come when I say you can, and only then. Understood?”

  Now my face is flaming red with embarrassment. “Yes, sir,” I mutter.

  “You may lower your arms.”

  I do so.

  He directs his limo driver to pull over to the side of the road, and he climbs into the front seat and I ride the rest of the way in silence, wondering, Do I disgust him? Is that why he stopped? And why do I care?