Page 8 of Reaper
I never really thought about how my actions will affect my family. I never really thought about how anything happening in my life affects them. They’ve got their own shit going on. Gavin and Oya are married. Gavin is obsessed with the professor. She’s beautiful, intelligent, a sweetheart, and she adores my brother. He’s got all he can ever want.
Dylan is married to Alana, and they have two kids, Grace, and Rory. King wasted no time asking Alana to marry him after finding out about Grace. Although it took a while for her to say yes, she finally did. He’s also got everything he can want out of this shit life.
What do I have? A fucking tombstone.
“It doesn’t matter little brother because nothing’s going to happen to me.” I strip out of my clothes and wrap the white towel around my waist, then throw my sweaty clothes inside my gym bag. “If you don’t want to watch me jack off in the shower, I suggest you get going.”
One more thing I have to do to release the extra pent-up energy since he interrupted my workout.
“I’m not going to keep this from Dylan, Logan. I can’t.”
“You do what you feel you need to do.”
He tosses his hands in the air, cursing under his breath as he storms out of the locker room. What did he expect? For me to say,oh no, please don’t tell King. He can do whatever the hell he wants. No one’s going to keep me from doing what the fuck I need to do for me, including my brothers. Right now, what I need to do for me to make it through to the next day without killing someone is to fight.
Paris
It’slikeI’mwalkingthrough life like a zombie. How in the hell did I end up here? It’s a question I ask myself over and over again from the time I get up in the morning until I go to sleep at night.
It’s been six excruciating months of being treated and paraded around like a whore just so I can pay off my brother’s debt. Three hundred thousand dollars he owes to the Petrov Bratva. Three fucking hundred thousand dollars I’m paying for in ways that aren’t even imaginable.
I’ve come to terms with the type of man my older brother is. Or half-brother I should say. He’s a drunk, a gambler, and everything in between, who also doesn’t have enough money to pay his own way because he lives above his means nor does he have the common sense to keep me out of his business. So, when he owes the Petrov’s, of course he can’t pay it back. Instead of killing him, Oleg Petrov, the Pakhandecides to take me as payment. And to top it all off, my brother didn’t even fight to save me, relief covering his face when Oleg ordered his debt cleared after I’m forced to serve them.
I’ve concluded he more than likely offered me as payment and told them where they could find me. How else could they have known where I went to school, worked, and what would be the easiest way to take me?
Bastard.
Three years of my life is what the Pakhan decided will be sufficient payment for my brother’s debt. One year for each hundred thousand he owes him. But I’ve given a shit ton more than what my brother could ever owe.
My body, my dignity, and my freedom have been taken by force.
I’m standing in front of the vanity mirror in what has been my bedroom for the last six months, smearing black lipstick across my lips to finish off my look for tonight’s fight.
I hate this place. While most people think it’s elegant with its large king bed, satin sheets with a thread count larger than anything I’ve ever slept on, it’s all a façade for what actually happens in this house of horrors. It’s all a mask. A gilded cage.
A gilded prison.
However, no matter how dire my situation is, I seek positivity in my circumstances. It’s the only way I’ve survived this long. It’s the only way I’ve been able to keep my sanity while enduring the sexual, mental, and physical abuse of a psychopath.
The one positive thing about everything that’s happened is I haven’t slept in the same bed as my captor. He stays in a bedroom a few doors down from me where he can keep an eye on me but still bring other women home to fuck when he doesn’t force me to join.
He comes to me when he’s drunk or high, does what he wants, then leaves. My body and mind are scarred for life, but I’m thankful for that little bit of mercy no matter how small it is.
The day they snatched me off the street in between school and where I worked at a nearby coffee shop, my old life ended, andI was thrusted into my new existence. Now I’m in a twenty-five thousand square foot mansion, living as some Russian’s live-in whore. Just trying to survive until these three miserable years are up and I can go back to my life. Or until I can kill him which is what I’d rather do.
I pull on the hem of the short ass silver sequin cocktail dress he demanded I wear without underwear, hoping I can keep my shit covered from eyes that will no doubt be on me when I walk into the building where he holds these underground fights. Their eyes are always on me.
The plunging neckline of the form fitting dress stops just above my navel and barely covers my breasts. And the silver, strappy stiletto heels with red bottoms he insists I wear everywhere are going to be a nightmare to walk in; I can already feel the blisters forming on my feet.
But what choice do I have? I can’t even piss in peace because he assumes I’m up to something. The bathroom door is no longer on the hinges and bars are on the windows because he thinks I’m planning my escape. It wouldn’t shock me if there are hidden cameras somewhere in here to see my every move.
Granted, he has reason not to trust me because I’ve tried to run in the past. I’ve tried to be defiant, and it has always ended with me getting the crap beat out of me or worse. Now the only way to survive is to do what he wants, when he wants it, or he’ll start doping me up with that stuff I’ve seen his men give the girls at the Bratva’s strip club to make them more compliant to their demands. I refuse to become hooked on drugs too, even though the thought has entered my mind a time a two.
“It can make all this go away at least for a while.”
My bedroom door swings open, and I jump from the loud thud of it hitting the wall. I watch through the vanity mirror as the man I hate with everything in me saunters into my room like shit can’t touch him.
He doesn’t knock. He doesn’t ask for permission to enter my space. Just like he doesn’t ask permission for anything he takes from me. According to him, he doesn’t have to ask me for shit because I’m nothing more than his property and because of who he is, he can do whatever the hell he wants.
