Page 47 of Bears Not Included

“Kirill Yenin.”

“What?” I whisper. Intuitively, I know Callen is telling me the truth. I’m just having a hard time believing my father wanted me to marry a man like that.

“Yenin is a dangerous man, Livia, with an army and an ambition to rule the world.”

My mind spins nonstop. They’ve told me Kirill Yenin, who is supposed to be my father’s new partner at the law firm, is the head of a Russian mafia outfit, while I believed he was a lawyer. They told me my father works for Kirill Yenin, which essentially means he’s working for a crime boss. A sick, depraved crime boss by the sounds of it.

And yet, the three men who have kidnapped me are heads of a crime syndicate themselves. How am I embroiled in this world now?

“And you’re not dangerous? How are you any different from him? You’re the heads of the Ursid Syndicate. Celine says you’re the most dangerous men on the planet. How different are you from throwing a woman in a cage with a bear?” I demand as a bubble of fury bursts inside me, daring to look at Callen until he takes his eyes off the road to look back at me.

“The difference between us is that the woman would have had to have done something really wrong for us to feed her to a bear. Like, hurt you,” he says before he turns his attention back on the road. The edge in his voice when he delivered those words sticks with me.

At once, I also understand that he speaks for Deacon and Mason as well when it comes to me, making it clear that I’m their property. I belong to the three of them, never mind how much I hate it. Or how much I hate them.

“The woman Kirill had killed was for entertainment. She was nothing but a crack addict, and he controlled her with a bag of coke.”

I swallow at the information Callen has given me, but I’m not given much time to ingest it before we stop at a building—probably once a block of apartments—that is so dilapidated it looks scary. Graffiti covers parts of the walls that are still standing. Most of the windows are boarded up with cardboard.

Callen exits the car and opens the passenger door for me. I climb out confidently before I realize I should be feeling very scared to be in this area, yet I’m not… because I’m with Callen.

He gets my jacket and puts it on for me as a group of men come toward us, flicking their knives and laughing. One of them is carrying a gun and making it known.

Callen puts his hand on my lower back; his touch burns through the thickness of my coat right down to my skin. For a moment, I wonder if I’m going to die here or, worse, get raped, but as soon as the men start to get closer, they immediately start to stall. Before I know it, they’ve bowed their heads and stepped aside.

I whip my gaze up to Callen, and his expression hasn’t so much as changed one bit to warrant that kind of behavior from those thugs. Does his mafia reputation precede him? That is the only answer.

He takes my hand, but as I follow him into the building, a sickening feeling washes over me. I try not to gag as a rancid smell starts to suffocate me. It smells like soiled mattresses, smoke, and sickness.

We pass people huddled together in the cold, all their belongings in the world scattered around them. Some are so drugged they look demented. A man barks at me, and I instinctively curl myself into Callen’s body. He holds me tighter as we walk through what looks like the basement of the building, where people have made their homes in small sections.

Callen stops when we come to an older woman; her face is so haggard that her eyes and lips are hidden under hanging skin. She notices us and backs away toward a baby cot behind her. I look over her shoulder and see a little girl with eyes so big and blue and sad, my heart breaks, standing in the cot, holding the bars with her little hands.

“Please don’t, Mister. I beg you. Take me. I’ll do anything you want.” The old woman comes toward Callen, drops to her frail knees, and looks as if she wants to open his pants. “Please take me instead.”

I’m shocked by the scene unfolding before me, and I immediately bend down to help the woman up, but Callen beats me to it and sets her back on her feet.

“Please don’t take her. I beg you. She’s just a child. Please,” she says, and she starts to wail with so much agony in her voice that tears fill my eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Livia

I’m so confused as to what is happening right now.

“Why is she saying that?” I ask Callen with an accusatory tone in my voice. What is going on?

“She thinks we’re going to take her granddaughter away.”

“Why would she think that?” I am outraged now as I go toward the woman who is sobbing so much that her whole body jerks.

“Because the mother sold her five-year-old daughter to a sex trafficker so she could get her next fix just before she was killed by the bear. And they’re coming to collect her. This is the little girl’s grandmother, Mrs. Peters.”

Ice spreads over my skin and into my veins. I look at the little girl in the cot; she's so tiny that she doesn’t even look like she’s five years old. I’m wrecked with rage and sorrow, and I want to scream and cry that a mother could do that to her own daughter.

I don’t even feel guilt that she was eaten by a bear; I don’t think she deserved less, and the intensity of my thoughts adds to my fury.

“Mrs. Peters. My name is Livia.” I put my arm around her, and all I feel are bones as she quivers. I take off my jacket and put it on her shoulders, and she’s looks at me with sad suspicion. “We’re not going to take your granddaughter. I want to help you. Please, trust me,” I say softly.

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