Page 70 of Vasily the Hammer

But I don’t want to stop watching.

“I’ll keep an eye on Artom for you if you want to take that outside,” Maria offers.

I thank her before pausing it and rushing out, finding a secluded spot between parking lots where I can listen to the video at fullvolume without worrying about getting put on a list for lewd acts in public— although that does seem to be my thing.

I can’t stop watching. I can’t help but absorb every second of it. I can’t keep my body from responding with flutters in my core. I watch myself playing with Vasily’s cock, and I wish I could be somewhere private so I could let it swirl in my head as I touch myself. I feel acutely jealous of Vasily for having the last six years with this video to rub one out to, pretending his hand is mine, that it’s my fingers splayed between the bars on the underside of his cock, clearly visible in single frames that I freeze on to count.

Seven bars, but only one remains to this day. Six years gone, six bars gone.

Vasily’s insane enough to keep time that way.

Over and over, he declares that I’m his in the video. He makes me declare it, too. He tells the world that we’re trying for a baby. I beg him to give me a baby. Everything he says is so incredibly, deliciously crass, and every single thing he says, he does so with love.

Vasily loved me in this video every bit as much as I loved him. And I don’t know that anyone else would see it the way I do, but he’s not nearly so concerned about camera angles or dominance or shock value as he is that I’m safe. I’m comfortable. I’m enthusiastically consenting to everything he does.

He loves me so much.

I can’t help but pull up the other video after I finish this one. I force myself to get past my begging him to stop, his cruel words and manhandling, I get to a point where he forces me to perform oral sex on him and then tips my head up when he finishes so he can spit in my mouth and I can drool the mess all over myself, and it’s impossible to ignore the truth when I see my eyes.

I was excited. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but I tremble as though on the verge of orgasm as he degrades me. Conversely, he seems far less sure of himself than I initially thought and every bit as surprised as I am by his own actions. I think I made him do this. I think that for all the lies he told me in Los Angeles, he was dead serious when he told me exhibitionism is my thing, not his.

It takes me some time to steady myself before I return to the McDonald’s, and my brain is filled with so many questions that, unfortunately, I don’t think a single person in the world can answer except Vasily. My eyes go to the table we were at, which only has what’s left of my meal on it, and I panic for a second that this was all some terrible trick and Maria’s run off with my son.

But no, a peek around the corner has me spotting them both sitting on the edge of the ball pit with their legs dangling in it as though poolside. Maria is saying something to Artom, but the restaurant is too loud for me to hear anything. Whatever she says, he laughs loudly, cracking up at the joke. Maria is a confusing person. I don’t understand who she is or where she exists in the world between Vasily and me, but my instincts feel positively about her. I know she won’t be able to answer all my questions, but I don’t think she’ll intentionally guide me in the wrong direction.

Instead of sitting next to Artom, I sit next to Maria. “Are you a threat to Vasily?” I ask with a gesture to where I know her gun is.

“No. My job is more about managing than ending his career.”

“How can I trust that? You’re law enforcement! He’s—” Not going to say it, not to her. It doesn’t matter that she knows his crimes far better than I do or that I don’t actually have spousal privilege because I’m not actually his spouse.

“A crime lord? Who’s murdered at least thirteen people in the last decade and is responsible for countless others? Who’s a leading contributor to the ghost gun industry?”

I grimace. I didn’t need a body count.

“I provided the equipment necessary for those guns.”

I pan slowly to her, then look around to see if there’s some hidden cameras somewhere. But nope, just screaming kids and tired parents. “So... you’re a... rogue ATF agent?”

“Again, I’m more of a manager. He was going to produce them whether ATF was involved or not, and if we shut him down, someone else would take over. Vasily’s been incredibly effective at dominating the market and is about as ethical as we can hope for, so we’d rather him in business and monitored than whoever would take his place.”

“And Tony? Are you a threat to him?”

She’s slower to answer that one. She hums thoughtfully before going with, “Not through my job.”

“So if it came down to a fight between Vasily and Tony?”

“I would never side with Tony,” she says honestly, with a grimace that tells me she’s painfully aware that Tony is my brother and my loyalty is currently in question.

But no, I need this honesty. “You don’t say you would side with Vasily,” I point out.

She gives me a half smile. “I tell myself I would remove myself from the situation. That’s the right thing to do. But the longer I’m in this game, the harder it is to do the right thing. My entire life is trying to figure out if the wrong thing is justified, and I just keep justifying it. So I don’t know.”

“Does he know what you are?”

A shrug to that. “I’ve never told him. But he’s a smart man. And Janson—have you met Janson?—is former FBI. It’s a dancewe all do. So maybe he does, but I keep going like he doesn’t, just in case.”

“Are you in love with him?” I ask, knowing we’ve already gone over this but needing the assurance.

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