Page 4 of Vasily the Nail

Her nostrils flare indignantly as she shakes her head. I believe her.

“You are virgin?”

“Please don’t do this.”

“Answer me, Analiese. Virgin?”

Her voice crumbles again. “I am,” she whimpers, her knees wobbling. “Please don’t do this.”

I catch her easily with one hand around her tiny frame. She feels good against me, even with her elbows jamming into my chest, the chains of the cuffs digging into my shoulder and pinning me to the stripper pole. Her head drops to her wrists, and I give her a moment to cry there as I rub her back and hush her gently. “I take care of you, Ana,” I promise her. “You brave for me.”

The sound she makes is raw. “I’m not brave.”

“You are. I’ll uncuff you.”

“Thank you!” She looks so hopeful, her chest rising and her spine straightening, that I feel bad that she’s misunderstood me.

I have to be man enough to look her in the eye despite those octopus tentacles whipping into a frenzy. “And then I blindfold you. Is for best.”

“No!” she wails, and suddenly her entire body attempts to kick and claw and flee but accomplishes none of it. “Please, please, please, no! Please, I’ll do any—we’ll pay you! However much you want! I’m sure Tony’s good for it. Take your–your hurt that way.”

I have a choice here. What I would enjoy most would be to tell her exactly how much money her brother isnotgood for. How small a price tag he put on her virginity. Not only that but her future. All she’ll ever be is someone’s wife then someoneelse’s mother, and then she’ll be left to dry up in her kitchen. I’m taking away her nice kitchen.

She should know it’s her brother doing it.

But her brother will be in her life going forward, and any ill feelings she has toward him will have nowhere to go. I’ll be a memory soon enough. No, it’s better for her if she doesn’t know just how shitty her brother is.

“We are tools of brothers,” I tell her again. “Hammer, no more able to hold back from striking than nail from being struck. But I keep you safe. I bring you pleasure, Ana.”

“How can you possibly?” she says with a sniffle as I pull the keys from my pants pocket and uncuff her. She is a smart girl. She doesn’t bother to try to escape.

I pull the handkerchief from my back pocket and fold it into a strip just wide enough to blind her without irritating her. “Because you’ll let me.”

Analiese

I won’t let him.What a terrible thing for him to assume.

Vasily.

He’s an ogre of a man, at least a foot taller than my admittedly petite five-two and probably twice as wide. His goons were all menacing in their own right, but he is . . .

Impossible.

I do my best to keep from hyperventilating as he robs me of my sight. My entire life, I’ve dreaded how I might one day be the consequence of my brother’s actions. I’ve always lived in his shadow, have always been told that he would one day decide my fate. The words were always sugar-coated by lofty speeches about family and pride and loyalty andpurity, but I knew what that all really meant.

My bile tastes like regret. My opportunities to escape or at least defy my brother have been rare, but I should have taken advantage of them. I was always too afraid of how my brother— or, if I did escape, God— would punish me.

Once more, I pray to God, hoping He’ll ignore the errant thought that I should have had sex with Alonso that time he sneaked into my bedroom at my brother’s twenty-fourth birthday party. I’m sure He’ll understand, though, and I make a note to confess that tomorrow at church.

But what will be the point?

I take one last look at the mountain of a man before me, with his pale skin and white-blond hair, his bloodshot eyes and face so angular it could be chiseled out of marble, before he covers my eyes, just so I can commit the monster’s face to my memory. But honestly?

They’re all monsters. They’re all demons. I’ll never escape. How can you escape the devil?

He lifts my coverup over my head once I’m blinded. His fingers trace the band of my top around to my back, to the clip. I shiver at the rough pads of his fingertips.

“Shhh,” he murmurs, and now there’s a finger on my lips as though to silence me.

---