Page 34 of The Bratva's Forced Kidnapped Bride
That obnoxious stab of compassion hit me again, seeing her fight not to show her humiliation. Wasn’t this what she deserved after trying to escape again? Or had she been punished enough after the ordeal with Diego?
Damn it. How was I considering not cuffing her? I would be dead the moment I closed my eyes. I hauled her over my shoulder, feeling her hot skin against my arm as the shirt rose over her taut little ass. Dumping her on the bed, I gripped her flailing arm before she socked me in the face and had her wrist snapped in place before she could say more than six swear words at me.
She kept swearing as I backed away. “If you need to get up during the night, just call out. I’ll have a guard stationed at the door. One I trust with my life.”
Her stream of insults stopped as I continued out of the room. “Wait,” she called. “You’re not sleeping here tonight?”
I stiffened. My cock twitched with anticipation and need. My hands curled into fists at my sides. Did she sound disappointed that I wouldn’t be joining her in my bed?
I stormed out without answering. Another second in the room with her, cuffed to the bed and wearing only my t-shirt, with that look on her face that could only be disappointment, and I would have been on her, losing control all over again.
I only returned to my room hours later when she was fast asleep, and lay on the far side of the bed, barely drifting off before dawn to the sounds of her gentle breathing. The next day was my scheduled meeting with one of the Los Angeles leaders of the Collective, and there was nothing I could do but take her along. I’d sworn she wouldn’t leave my sight, and while I did trust most of my guards, I still needed to cull the herd before leaving her alone with any of them in the house again.
I escorted her back to her room, where she got dressed in an outfit I chose. I had most of the clothes that Aunt Daria picked out for her in Russia brought back, so she ended up in a demure gray skirt suit instead of the ridiculously childish outfits I originally bought to demoralize her.
“Why are we heading back to LA?” she asked on the way into the meeting at my office building in town. I didn’t answer. She only sighed and gave up any more attempts at conversation on the long drive.
Despite looking as dignified as possible as someone cuffed to a chair, she couldn’t have been more demoralized during the many meetings I held. There was no way that at least some of the people didn’t know who she was, but no one asked any questions about why she was there, and I didn’t offer any reason. Just cuffed her to the chair in a corner of the room where she couldn’t overhear us, but I could keep a watchful eye on her. A bonus was having someone tied up during the meeting seemed to throw some of them off, suddenly not sure how far I would go.
She was also a distraction, and my eyes kept cutting to look at her, head down so low it nearly touched her chin, an emptiness in her eyes I had never seen before. It looked like she really did consider her current situation worse than any electric shock or knives biting into her skin.
I almost, not quite, felt truly sorry for her.
Chapter 25 - Masha
To think I actually kind of felt grateful when Anatoli jumped in and rescued me from Diego just seconds before the big oaf choked me unconscious. That made two times that he saved my life, and it was hard enough to dredge up any kind thoughts toward him when I was cuffed to his bed.
Those thoughts disappeared completely when he dragged me into his office in town. He certainly didn’t own every business in the high-rise downtown building, and even when I threw the last shred of my pride out the window and asked him to at least take the cuffs off for the trip through the lobby, he flatly refused.
Or rather, he flat-out ignored my plea, so I was promenaded between him and one of his guards all the way through the upscale lobby to the elevators. The security guards nodded knowingly, the two ladies at the reception desk tittered to each other once we were past, and a businessman who was about to get on the elevator with us quickly changed his mind at the sight of our little threesome. Anatoli and his guard looked scary enough on their own, but the handcuffed woman with a very clear desire to tear someone’s head off between them made him decide he wasn’t in that much of a hurry.
My cheeks burned all the way down the hall to Anatoli’s corner office as they needlessly hustled me along. I knew as well as they did that I had nowhere to go, and now that he’d made a spectacle of me as some criminal, it was unlikely anyone downstairs would help if I did get away.
I wasn’t giving up, I was biding my time. He didn’t know it yet, but taking me back into the city was a mistake, because now I was close to my family. All I had to do was find a way to getthese damn cuffs off. Then get past his guards on this floor, out of a building he owned. Those security guards in the lobby might have looked like yokels, but they wouldn’t stand against the man who paid them. Hope was slowly draining out of me.
Anatoli set up a hard folding chair in the corner near the door of his luxurious office suite, with a big, glossy mahogany desk and rich paintings in ornate gold frames. He obviously must have kept this place hidden from my family while he was in hiding. Two walls in the corner office were entirely windows looking out over the vast expanse of Los Angeles. The sky was remarkably blue for the notoriously smoggy city, and I shifted in my chair to try to see if the Hollywood sign was visible from where we were. As soon as he noticed me enjoying the view, he snapped his fingers for me to stand up again.
“I beg your pardon?” I asked haughtily. If he was going to start treating me like a dog, I may start snapping at him like one.
Without a word, he tugged the chair out from under me and moved it to the other side of the door. Since I was attached to it, I had to follow or get dragged along the floor. Now I was looking at the side of a bookshelf. Was he really going to be that petty? I gaped at him, but he continued to ignore me, settling into his desk, which I could only see if I craned my neck around the bookcase. After a moment, he started humming.
I forgot my embarrassment after being paraded around like a prize fish on a hook, and seethed with resentment. He was enjoying this way too much.
After a little while, people came in to meet with him, some staying for just a few minutes to make a report, others settling in for coffee from the perky assistant who acted like I was another piece of furniture.
It was bad enough back at the house with his people gawking at me because they knew I was a prisoner from the start. The people who met with Anatoli were strangers, and no matter what they’d seen or heard in their lives working for someone like him, their eyes still widened when they saw me sitting there sullenly, cuffed to that damn, uncomfortable chair. He couldn’t even put me in one of the cushy armchairs. Or over on the other side of the suite, where each newcomer didn’t practically bump into me on their way in.
With every new person who met with him, it occurred to me that someone might recognize me and get word to my family. I hadn’t been in the US for very long, and left LA to work with Mat in Silicon Valley shortly after I arrived, but the Fokins were heavy hitters in this state, and word that I was missing would have spread far and wide.
Two hours went by, and no such luck. My back hurt, my left foot kept falling asleep, and every time I moved the slightest bit to keep my circulation going, the cuffs rattled, making whoever was in a meeting turn and smirk in my direction. Maybe the worst part of all was that I was far enough from Anatoli’s desk that I couldn’t make out much of what anyone said, so I was left to ponder what he was up to.
Then someone I recognized came in, though he wouldn’t have known me at all since we’d never met. I had seen his image from the spyware I used to track down members of the Collective. This was Enzo Santino, one of the leaders of their faction here in the city. This was no messenger or errand boy, but someone really high up in the organization.
He moved past me without a glance as he entered. Anatoli stood to greet him warmly, leading him back to his desk while he offered him coffee or something stronger. They shared a little laugh the way businessmen did when nothing was really funny.
So this was actual evidence that he was working with them, and I couldn’t believe I had thought better of Anatoli. I thought he was too smart to partner with such a rogue element, and if I was honest, I didn’t want to believe he was truly going to do anything to harm my family. Even when I had been cuffed to that chair that was biting into my butt for the last three hours, even when I was his damn prisoner, I still couldn’t believe the worst of him for some reason.
But why the hell would I think that? Because he’d saved my life twice? I was a damn valuable possession, of course, he wanted me alive. If he decided to never torture me as revenge, he could still dangle me over my cousins’ heads, use me as bait, or for ransom.
