Page 5 of Lethal Saint

His daughter.

It’s Vasilisa, his daughter.

How old is she? Fifteen? Sixteen.

I was nineteen, but I supposed I should be grateful Dad didn’t make me do this three years ago. The age of consent in Great Britain was sixteen, after all. Not that laws mattered much to killers, thieves, and gangs. Dad could call thembusinessmenall he liked. I knew what business they did. The hands that helped themselves to my body had blood on them.

“What a pretty bow,” a man with a gravelly voice said on my left.

I ducked my head in acknowledgement, smiling like I’d been taught. It didn’t matter that my stomach roiled and I wanted to run. There was no escape in this den of snakes anyway.

“What a pretty pair of tits,” another man remarked on my right, his voice silk-smooth and smiling.

I performed the same smiling routine even as his rough hand pawed at my right boob, painfully pinching my nipple. A gasp tore free without my permission.

“Vasilisa!” Dad snapped. I froze automatically when he spun, looking from me to the man who’d spoken—a man in his fifties with greying blonde hair and a face made ugly by the leer on it. “Say thank you.”

“Thank you,” I parroted, upping the wattage of my smile and looking at the man head-on. I hated the look in his eye, loathed the smile on his face.

“Good,” Dad grunted. “Like what you see, Gent?”

It took everything I had not to react to that name. So the man who touched me was a Marshall. I didn’t flinch, didn’t evenbreatheas the Gent pulled on my nipple until it hurt, until tears stung my eyes. Eventually, he released me, giving Dad a grin.

“She’s pretty enough.”

“You really sold your own daughter?” a soft, husky voice asked, and I couldn’t stop my eyes darting to the man beside the Gent, survival instinctshowlingat me to run. This man was younger than the Gent, but with the same burnished gold hair, only without the grey, and similar rugged, handsome features. Without the oily smile, he was less ugly than the Gent. I still couldn’t stand to look at him.

Dad shrugged, uncannily at ease around a family that had killed a whole house-full of people. My heart slammed rapidly against my ribs. The man in his thirties, whose raspy voice and intense stare made goosebumps race all the way down my body… that had to be the Saint. There was something lethal in the way he held himself, in the way his eyes shifted from Dad to me, snaring me in a moment of eye contact before I dropped my gaze like the look burned me.

Shit.Shit,I’d looked him in the eye. I shouldn’t have done that. Would he kill me, like he’d killed all those other people?

“It’s good for business,” Dad replied, oblivious to my panic. “Fresh meat keeps investors and partners in a good mood, and this event’s been the talk of the city ever since I announced it. She’s going to make me proud, aren’t you, Vasilisa?”

“Yes,” I breathed, fighting back the bile.

“And a lot of money,” Dad joked, making the Gent laugh, along with eavesdroppers all around us.

The Saint didn’t laugh. Neither did the scowling, black-haired man at his side.

“She’s going to be married off anyway,” Dad added with a greedy smile, probably thinking of all the money he’d made from selling me three times over—as a wife, a pussy, and a spectacle. “What difference does selling her innocence make? She’s bought and sold either way.”

He shrugged again. I hated that shrug, hated the carelessness and callousness in it. He was talking aboutmylife,my misery, my suffering, my entire existence. And he fuckingshrugged.Rage built behind my ribs; I forced it down. Let it erupt and he’d shoot me. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to go on like this either, but death didn’t just terrify me. Itenragedme.

I’d been through too much to die now.

“She’s definitely going to make you a rich man, Ivanov,” the Gent agreed, his stare crawling down my body. “I want her after the lucky bastard who got her virginity.”

Dad clapped him on the shoulder. “Of course, my friend.”

I was going to throw up. I wished they’d stop chatting and just deliver me to the fucking bed so I could get this over with, crawl back to my room, and sob into my pillow.

“You can have her third fuck, Saint,” Dad said generously.

I wanted to swallow the saliva in my throat but didn’t dare show the sign of fear. His eyes were on me. The Saint’s. I felt them trailing across my face, and my heart beat so fast I worried it would crash. Or maybe I should have been hoping for it; Dad couldn’t make me do this if I needed to be rushed to hospital.

Or he’d just shoot me if I failed him. Cold doused my blood, strengthening my resolve. I could do this. I could get through it and—then what? Be shoved down the aisle towards a man a thousand times worse than Olivier? One every bit as bad as the Saint?

I want to live,I reminded myself.

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