Page 8 of The Bratva's Forced Kidnapped Bride
She glared at me and turned, holding her arms away from her. “These are cutting into my skin.”
She dared to show impatience? She was lucky I didn’t leave her in the shack for a few days before bringing her here. But she would have expected that. My aim was to shake her equilibrium, not give her what she expected.
Without a word, I unlocked the cuffs and took them off, keeping a firm grip on her arms before sliding my fingertips overthe red marks on her wrists. As soon as I let her go, she whirled around and was all over me.
And not in a good way.
She was a damn good fighter, and it was difficult to put up a defense without throwing any punches myself. Before I could restrain those flailing arms of hers, she managed to grab a rather large decorative paperweight from the table in the entry hall and smashed it against my face.
I heard my nose crack and felt a gush of blood. “Enough,” I roared, encircling her in my arms and holding her in a vice grip. As blood dripped onto one of my best shirts, I lifted her off the floor and carried her with her legs dangling and kicking my shins. “Stop it now or find out what happens,” I said.
The tone of my voice would have stopped anyone else in their tracks. Masha kept kicking. I squeezed her until she was gasping for breath and finally went still by the time we were up the stairs and in front of the room I had prepared to hold her.
Shoving the door open, I flung her onto the waiting bed. She coughed, trying to get the air back in her lungs. Just as she was about to lunge at me again, I stepped outside and slammed her in, locking the door.
“You’ll get very hungry in there if you don’t learn to act civilized,” I called.
No answer. Good, maybe she was learning. Swearing under my breath, I found a first aid kit in the bathroom of my suite down the hall. Grimacing, I wrenched my nose back into place and stuffed it with tissue before taping it firmly across the bridge. It wasn’t the first time I’d had it broken, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but it was still fucking painful and annoying. Even now that she was mine, she was still making me bleed.
Before I started on the business that had been piling up while I planned all this, I headed down to the kitchen, then outside, where I found one of the guards strolling back and forth along a stone wall surrounding the pool area. I’d have to arrange for house staff, but it might take some time to find people who would be accustomed to such unique circumstances.
“Take her some food in about an hour,” I told the guard.
The order had nothing to do with the fact that she hadn’t eaten anything since I abducted her early that morning. It was only to keep her on her toes and guessing what came next.
The pool looked inviting, large and kidney-shaped, surrounded by potted plants to make it seem like an oasis in the otherwise austere surroundings. Leaning down, I swept my hand through the crystal water, but if the pool was heated, it wasn’t turned on, and the temperatures plummeted alarmingly fast at night in the desert.
Shaking the chilly water off my fingertips, I discarded the idea of a quick dip to clear my head. I may have been born and raised in Russia, but I had lived in California long enough to appreciate the temperate climate. I had become accustomed to the steamy weather in Mexico during my stay, and lost the polar bear ability to plunge into icy water.
Finding my office at the back of the ground floor, I rearranged a few things before settling down to work. I was avoiding checking my messages and emails, certain my uncles had been bombarding me ever since I put my full attention to this new operation.
Masha was mine now, and I wanted her to simmer for a bit. There was time to deal with everything I had inherited now that Konstantin was out of the picture. A year or two ago, I would have been thrilled to have what was rightfully mine returned tome. But despite what Uncle Leonid had said to me on the phone about my American experiment being a bust, and although it had stung, he was wrong.
There were highs and lows in every business. In life itself. I had found myself on soaring heights, with money flowing like water and people eager to do my bidding. At the moment, I still had the money from my Russian holdings, but my people were in the wind. It was going to be a long and arduous process finding new men I could trust, but giving up wasn’t in my blood.
Fighting was. Winning was. A loss only remained a loss if I stayed down, and that wasn’t going to happen. First, I’d deal with Masha and get the Fokins under control, then regain my place here in California.
Thinking about Masha was too much of a distraction. Even with my resolve to let her worry and wonder about my next moves, I longed to go see her. To taunt her? Perhaps. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t get those whiskey colored eyes out of my mind, whether they were flashing with anger or fear. As long as they were flashing at me, since she belonged to me now, fully mine to tease and taunt and torture at my whims.
“Just not now,” I said with a sigh.
Turning on my laptop, I read the barrage of messages from my panicking uncles. I was already aware of this new, international organization calling itself the Collective. They’d been on my radar since they tried to give my people in Volgograd a run for their money a month ago. It hadn’t been too much trouble to deal with them, but it seemed they were gaining in power, consolidating smaller organizations to add to their ranks.
So now they were trying to scoop up what was left of my family while they were in the power vacuum created by Konstantin’s death. And Leonid didn’t seem to think this wasa bad idea. It was true that there was safety in numbers, but I wasn’t sure that the Collective could withstand so many different factions trying to work together. There’d be infighting over too many different ideals and too many people thinking they should be the one in charge.
Still, with nothing else to do besides keeping myself from playing with my shiny new toy, I settled in to do some further research on the Collective.
Chapter 7 - Masha
Anatoli was as strong as a boa constrictor. By the time I was able to take a full breath after he nearly squeezed the life out of me, he slammed me in and left with the clear threat of imminent starvation.
I stalked the room, blinded by anger. He hadn’t lifted a finger against me, and it pissed me off. I probably should have been glad I wasn’t bleeding, but I hated being underestimated. I’d been training since I could walk and had reached expert levels in several forms of martial arts. My poor parents had to start taking family photos off the walls when I was a kid in order to make room for all my awards. Street fighting was harder because no one wanted to let me in on a battle that didn’t have judges and referees. But I still jumped in and took the hits while doling out my own, and I’d saved a few asses along the way. Eventually, my cousins and the members of our organization stopped trying to keep me out of the fray because I was damn good with my fists.
No matter that I hit Anatoli full in the face with a big chunk of glass that had to weigh three pounds, he still never took a swing at me. He just used his massive size advantage to hold me off before hauling me into this new prison cell. I hoped his nose was broken, and I only wished it was his skull that I heard cracking.
After wasting energy pacing and swearing under my breath, I finally took a look around. The room was nice, too nice. The bed I’d been tossed on was comfortable when I sat on the edge, finally stretching out on the soft, cream colored spread. It was a big space, and there was a cozy seating area around a fireplace that was fronted with rustic wood.
The walls were textured to look like the house was much older than it probably was, and had a rusty adobe color. A few examples of the modern art that Anatoli didn’t care for hung on the walls, and there were cream linen curtains at the windows. Hopping up, I tried to open them, but wasn’t surprised to learn they were locked from the outside. Just like the door was when I rattled the handle.
