Chicago Bratva

Chapter 3

Sasha

Sasha“Where are you going with that? Stop! That’s my mom’s,” I snap at Viktor, one of my father’s men. He’s one of four jerks who just barged into the one-bedroom apartment I’ve lived in for the last year with boxes and started packing everything up today. Right now, he’s boxing up the salad bowl I borrowed from my mom last week.

“I’m just following orders,” he tells me.

Maxim’s orders. Funny how Maxim doesn’t even have a position in the organization, but these guys obey him.

Maxim also gave me orders via text this morning: say your goodbyes and pack two suitcases because we’re leaving this afternoon.

say your goodbyes and pack two suitcases because we’re leaving this afternoon.Unlike Viktor and Alexei and the other two soldiers, I didn’t obey.

I’m not going anywhere with Maxim. I don’t know what kind of twisted game of poetic justice my father was playing with our lives, but marrying me to a man who hates me tops the cake.

My mom, whose apartment—the one I grew up in—is next door, comes in without knocking, taking in the chaos. “Today you leave,” she says. A statement, not a question.

I shake my head. “No. Help me—they won’t listen. Tell them to stop packing my stuff. I’m not going anywhere.”

My mom grabs my hand and pulls me into my half-packed bedroom. When she finds there’s a guy in there, too, she pulls me into the bathroom and shuts the door.

“Listen to me, Sasha,” she whisper-snaps.

I shake off her hand. “What?”

“You will go. Your father left me nothing. Nothing. He left it all to Vladimir and to you, in care of your former lover.”

willNothing“He wasn’t my—”

My mom waves an impatient hand. “Whatever. Maxim controls it now. So you need to go with him, make nice and ensure that money stays where it’s supposed to stay—with us.”

with usI stare at her. I’m surprised to discover this side of her. She was always so passive, so compliant with my father. She took what he gave us and never asked for more.

But I suppose with him gone, she’s discovering her vulnerability to losing it all. We both are.

The rebel in me wants to tell her hell no. I have principles, and they don’t allow me to be sold off to another member of my father’s organization.

hell noBut I have no livelihood and neither does she. My American acting degree is useless both here and there. The only job I worked was a side gig in college that involved me dressing sexy and handing out whatever product we were pushing. And I only did it for fun—not for the money.

Honestly? I shouldn’t have to work. My father’s money was intended for us, he just was an asshole about the way he gave it to us.

“What about Vladimir? He’s supposed to provide for you.” I hadn’t brought myself to ask about him before because I knew I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about how wrong this all is.

My mother clenches her teeth. “Vladimir is supposed to provide for me, yes. But you get everything. And I have no guarantees Vladimir will hold up his end of the bargain. You will not give up our inheritance because you’re being a stubborn cow.”

You will not give up our inheritance because you’re being a stubborn cow.”I draw back, surprised at how mean and desperate she sounds. Like she’s inches from a nervous breakdown. Or doing something crazy.

“I won’t give it up,” I promise her. “Maxim and I will come to an arrangement.” That was my plan from the start. He doesn’t want to be saddled with me any more than I want to be his devoted wifey. All we have to do is acknowledge that, and we can forego the whole moving in together and pretending. I’ll stay here. He’ll send me a check every month. Or better yet, direct deposit.

I head back out to the kitchen where Viktor’s nearly packed up everything. He looks over, but his gaze goes past me to my mother. “You okay, Galina? Anything I can do for you?”

He’s been our bodyguard for as long as I can remember. He and Alexei, the other guard, live here in the same building and rotate their time babysitting us. I suppose they’re happy to be rid of me. But it suddenly occurs to me that Viktor may not feel the same about my mother. The way he looks at her...

How did I never notice that before?

“You can help my mom by leaving my s**t alone,” I tell him. “Put that down!” I snap, when he tosses my expensive blender in a box.

“Take it easy.” Maxim walks in my front door like he owns the place. Maybe he does—who knows?

He’s impeccably dressed, as always, in a crisp blue button-down and tailored slacks. His hands are in his pockets in that GQ-casual way he has of standing. Like nothing ever ruffles him.

The past week has been a nightmarish blur with the funeral and interment. I’ve been numb, trying to help my mom bear her grief. Too angry to even examine my own. Maxim kept his distance, and I was hoping it meant he had as little interest in maintaining this sham marriage as I do.

But it appears I was wrong. And now I regret not trying to talk to him yesterday before he set all this into motion. To talk him out of this insanity.

“All your things get shipped to Chicago. If there’s something you want to leave for your mom, just tell them, and they’ll separate it out.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “I’m not going to Chicago.”

“It’s not up for discussion,” he says easily, almost like he expected that response but gives it no credence. His gaze dips to my breasts, which are pushed up and framed by my folded arms. I wore a skin-tight, pink-gold minidress today, which I’ve been using to fluster all the men swarming around my apartment this morning.

I’m way more satisfied than I should be to find Maxim is also affected by it.

“Listen.” I switch into English since we both speak it, and my father’s men don’t. “I understand you control the money now. I’m fine with that. I’ll be a good girl and do what you tell me. But we don’t have to pretend to be husband and wife. I know you don’t want me, and I obviously don’t want you.”

“The marriage isn’t about what we want, caxapok.”

caxapokHis old endearment for me—sugar—rolls off his tongue too glibly and sends a riot of the shame and longing he once incited blasting through me again as if I were still seventeen.

sugar“Your father wanted you safe, and he chose me to be your protector.”

I gesture toward the men dismantling my apartment. “Viktor and Alexei will keep me safe, as they always have.”

Even though we’re speaking English, Maxim takes a step closer and drops his voice. “Think about it, caxapok. If your father thought you were safe with them, he wouldn’t have arranged to have you shipped off to America. He wouldn’t have brought me in.”

caxapok.I want to scoff. My mom and I practically own Viktor and Alexei.

After I got Maxim banished, I realized how much power I could wield with my sexuality. And since it’s the only power I wielded in my life, I used it. I played games with my father’s men. Baiting them, getting on my knees for them. Sucking their c***s. Then threatening to tell my father to get whatever I needed from them—usually my freedom.

But a whisper of foreboding runs through me at Maxim’s words. He’s right. With my father dead, everything’s changed. I don’t hold any power anymore.

“Go and pack your personal things. Our flight is in a couple of hours.”

I shake my head mulishly. “I’m not going.”

Maxim goes still and warning bells go off in my head. There’s a dangerous air to him. “Pack now or you travel with what I bring for you.”

“Just leave me here,” I try again. “You can have the money—that’s why I’d be in danger, right? So you keep it. Just give me enough to live on, and I’ll stay out of your hair. Just leave me here.”

“Do you think I married you for the f*****g money?” he snarls. Maxim’s upper lip curls. He shouldn’t look so beautiful when he looks down his nose scornfully at me. “Believe me, caxapok, I don’t want it. It—and you—are definitely more trouble than you’re worth.”

caxapokand youI spread my hands. “Then go. I’m letting you off the hook. Vladimir will protect me here.”

go“I made a promise to your father, Sasha. I won’t dishonor him by forsaking it.”

I roll my eyes.

He looks at his watch. “We’re running out of time, sugar. Looks like you’re traveling with what’s already packed. Go and get in the car that’s waiting outside.”

I don’t know why I have to push. Stubbornness has always been my downfall. I fold my arms across my chest, lift my chin and dare to say, “f**k you.”

He c***s his head. I half expect a slap, like my father sometimes issued, but he appears completely unruffled. “If I have to make you, there will be consequences, Sasha.”

“Go ahead—make me,” I challenge.

Maxim isn’t amused. He loses the relaxed posture and launches into motion, like the sleeping lion that suddenly springs into a pounce. In one swift movement, he tosses me over his shoulder and carries me to the door, barking an order at one of the men to get my suitcases and bring them down to the car.

His hand claps down on my ass when we’re out in the hall. “There are consequences for your disobedience, caxapok.”

caxapokSurprisingly, he doesn’t sound angry. His voice is relaxed and even, despite the exertion of carrying me. I wriggle on his shoulder, which sends my microskirt bunching up around my waist. He slaps my ass again, kicking open the door to the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. “Stop squirming, or we’ll both break our necks,” he advises as he starts swiftly down the steps.

I find the back of his belt and hang onto it. His muscular ass fills his slacks, flexing as he takes each stair. Heat swirls in my lower belly as my old attraction to this man flares to life. I remember what he looked like on the deck of my father’s yacht. His shirt off, skin bronzed in the sun. He was an Adonis, sculpted muscle and perfect lines, in the prime of his youth.

He’s no less appealing now, at thirty.

He exits the building, and I reach back to tug my hemline down, fuming that he’s giving a show to his driver and the men outside. He tips me down to my feet, and when the driver opens the back door of the waiting car, hustles me inside the roomy Towncar.

Maxim says something to the driver before he climbs in beside me and shuts the door, then snaps the window between the front seat and back closed. The way he looks at me makes everything inside me squirm. There’s a dark promise in his gaze. Like he’s going to enjoy punishing me.

There will be consequences.

There will be consequences.I try to control my blush—one of the downsides of being a redhead. “So what? You’re going to punish me, as my father suggested?” I’m a fool to keep pushing. But it’s Maxim, and I never recovered from him spurning me as a teen.

I swear I see the corners of his lips twitch right before he tugs me down across his knees.

I’m simultaneously thrilled and horrified. My body’s already a live wire from being ignominiously manhandled by him out of the building. Now, with the promise of punishment, electricity zings everywhere.

He gives me several hard s****s—five, to be exact—then he squeezes my ass roughly. My minidress rides up my hips, exposing the lower portion of my ass. I’m wearing a thong since the dress shows everything, so Maxim now has a full view of my cheeks.

I don’t make a sound. I’m breathing hard, but it’s more from shock than pain although a tingle and burn start to set in as he continues to knead and massage my ass.

It feels good. Humiliating, but hot. And when his fingers stroke between my legs, over the thong, I realize just how much Maxim is still my ideal man.

I fell in love—or maybe it was just lust—with him on that yacht in Croatia, and even though things went terribly wrong, it seems the attraction never died. Heat pulses between my legs. Maxim rubs along the seam of my panties, tracing the string up between my ass cheeks and back down again. I soak the little triangle of fabric, impossibly excited.

The moment he slides a finger under my panties, though, my internal alarms come back online. I buck on his lap.

The truth is, I’ve never let a man touch me there. I flaunted and bluffed my s****l experience to rebel against my father, but in the end, I actually was that good little girl he wanted me to be.

And Maxim may think he can do whatever he wants with me, that he has rights to my body because we stood in front of a clerk and he gave me my father’s ring, but it’s not going to happen.

I lurch my legs toward the floor of the car, and he lets me go. I land on my knees at his feet. “I’m not having s*x with you,” I declare, my mussed hair falling across my face.

Maxim gives me an unfathomable look. He was always hard to read. “I hope you’re good at satisfying yourself, then, because no other man will be getting between those legs.”

I flush with indignation—probably to a darker red than my hair, but before I can think of a response, Maxim’s door opens, and one of the men hands in my purse. “I’ll put the suitcases in the trunk,” he tells Maxim then steals a glance at me kneeling at my husband’s feet and smirks.

“Don’t look at her,” Maxim orders, slamming the door in the guy’s face. He grips my elbow and helps me back onto the seat beside him. “I’m sorry for that,” he surprises me by saying. “He should have knocked first.”

“I guess you think you own me,” I seethe, still hung up on the claim he’s made on my body.

“I think you’re my wife,” Maxim says flatly, somehow conveying what a pain in the ass that is to him. “And I promise I’ll kill any man who touches you.”