Page 10 of Tarnished Reign

She shakes her head. “I’ve felt sick ever since they put the cloth over my face when they took me.”

I’ll get Alexis to call our private doctor and ask him to come take a look at her and make sure she’s okay.

I study her and frown. She’s dirty, and it must feel horrible. “You need cleaning. Let’s get you ready for your starring role, Littleblue.”

She lets out a small sob.

I take hold of her hand. “Don’t cry. You can get cleaned up, and you’ll feel better. I’ll find you some clothes. You can’t go, not yet. It isn’t safe for you out there because some of Dorian’s gang are still at large. I promise you; no one will hurt you, okay?”

She looks at me, those huge pools of her eyes clearly showing her lack of belief in my statement. There’s a battle raging inside her. I can see it in the depths of her gaze.

I tamp down the urge to brush her hair again from where it has fallen over her face. To do so would be another uninvited touch, and it might seem like nothing for me, but to her? Traumatized. Terrified. Taken against her will. Every time someone breaches her autonomy it is huge. No matter how small the transgression.

“I know you don’t believe me, but I need to keep you here for a few days because I need to make sure it’s safe to set you free. Who sold you?” I ask.

She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again, and then she speaks.

“I think, I um, I think my stepmother did.”

And just like that. This heir to the tarnished Bratva throne has a moral quest.

4

ADRIANA

The man’s face tightens into a mask of rage the moment I tell him that my stepmother sold me to Dorian to settle a debt. His fury distorts the handsome lines into something terrifyingly hard.

Does he care?

He reacts as if he’s angry on my behalf, and yet he doesn’t know me. This man is scarier than any of the others. It isn’t anything he’s done; it's his aura. It screams don’t fuck with me. Not in a false bravado way either, but in a deadly quiet one.

He’s also strikingly handsome, and even though I’m so damn scared, I can’t help but to glance at the perfection that is his face.

The man could be a model except for the fact there’s blood on his shirt, his knuckles are busted, and his eyes are beautiful but jaded as fuck. He’s also far too big. He looks like he’s made from huge slabs of muscle packed onto an already large frame. His eyes are his most striking feature though. Beautiful but so damn weary. Tired, I think. Soul-deep tired. I wonder what those eyes of his have seen. What he’s done to earn such jadedness.

I’m tired, too. Scared. Sad. I’m so unutterably, irredeemably sad.

How could my stepmother, Hana, do this to me? She sold me to the mob. It’s like a bad movie, but it’s my life. She sold me to clear her debts. And worse, it seems they wanted me because I am, in their disgusting words, untouched.

I’m deeply concerned for my little stepbrother, Cade. He’s vulnerable because Hana is not the best mother, and in recent weeks, she’s become markedly worse. She drinks more, forgets to feed him, and sometimes even forgets to pick him up from preschool. My father would hopefully stop anything too terrible from happening but he has to travel for work, and hell, look what happened to me. Hana clearly can’t be trusted.

I thought she was a neglectful, spoiled cow. It seems she’s way worse than that. She gave me to her mobster cousin in return for her debts being cleared, so what might she do to Cade?

My stomach churns, and I ache to know he’s okay. He’s so young, so damn innocent. I’ve only known him the few months I’ve been living with my father and Hana, but I love the little tyke. He’s the reason I was still living in that toxic house. After all, how could I leave him there? I also had no job, so I’ve been trying to find work that pays enough to give me the chance of somehow helping Cade. I stayed in their toxic den, and look where that got me. Here. The floating mobster hotel.

My body hurts as if I’m ninety and I’ve just run a marathon.

All I want is my bed and Netflix. I need to chill out before I keel over from a damn heart attack.

Here in this room, without the other men, and without the fighting and noise, all of which has faded, I try to calm myself.

“What size are you?” the boss asks. The question confuses me for a moment, until I realize why he’s asking.

“Between an eight and a ten,” I reply. Then I remember in the US the sizes are different. “A six here, I think. So six or eight. Six on the bottom and eight on the top.”

He shouts to one of the men, who answers with a yes, Dimitri. Dimitri orders him to call a woman named Janice and ask her to bring some clothes to the yacht in my size. Then he leaves me sitting on the bed. He walks into the bathroom to check it out. I look around the room, confused.

I’m not guarded. He’s in the bathroom, and the bedroom door is wide open.

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