Page 56 of Sexting the Bratva Beast
CARTIER
My head feelslike I used it to hammer nails into wood all night.
I swallow and get a dry clicking sound in the back of my throat. I can’t remember if I snoozed my alarm earlier, or if this is my day off. I crack open an eyelid, and try to gauge the time by the level of daylight in the room, and my heart plummets through the mattress when I don’t recognize where I am.
I sit up way too fast, and the room lurches sideways.
I swallow bile.
Start counting to ten but only make it to four.
Where the fuck am I?
The room is huge. I didn’t get a chance to explore Andrej’s apartment, but I know this isn’t it. For starters, I’m in the kind of bed that I would associate with a movie about Marie Antoinette or Queen Elizabeth I. It’s huge. High. With four posts and an embroidered canopy, and a comforter that belongs in an art gallery. Or a castle.
The walls are covered in ivory silk. The paintings remind me of a famous artist whose name I can’t remember because my head is playing a bass drum with my brain cells right now. The furniture is antique. There’s a dresser draped with ivory lace. Ornaments decorated with gold and jewel-colored enamel. A floor-standing vase that must be nearly as tall as me. And the curtains…
I stand up, shivering as the cool air brushes my bare arms.
I’m wearing a nightdress that isn’t mine. It’s white, heavy, with frilled brocade around the bodice and neckline, the kind of garment women would’ve worn to bed in the nineteenth century. My feet are bare. My toenails are still painted scarlet, but everything else that I’m seeing right now is yelling at me to close my eyes and wake the fuck up from this scarily real dream.
Because the three-hundred-year-old nightdress isn’t the only thing that’s freaking me out. It’s the snowflakes tumbling down outside the window that are making my pulse race and sending shivers up and down my spine.
I stagger to the window, the room still sliding out from under me like I’m on a moving boat in the middle of the ocean, and peer outside.
White. I’ve woken up in Narnia. The only difference is that I’m not wearing a fur coat.
A door opens somewhere behind me, and I turn around to find Andrej carrying a silver tray loaded with a cafetiere, a porcelain cup, and a silver dome covering a plate filled with food.
“You’re awake.” He closes the door behind him with his foot, crosses the room, and sets the tray down on the nightstand. “I’m sorry. I wanted to be here when you woke up.”
“That’swhat you’re sorry for?” Goosebumps pop on my arms, and I rub them to warm them up, my toes curling away from the icy floor.
Andrej grabs a robe from the end of the bed and wraps it around my arms. It feels light as a feather, but the injection of warmth against my skin is luxurious.
Still…
“Where the fuck are we, Andrej?”
“We’re in Russia. This is my family?—”
“Russia!” I cut him off, my voice squeaking. “No…”
I shake my head and back away from him, pacing the floor until my toes feel like blocks of ice. I quickly hop onto a rug to save my feet from certain death by hypothermia.
“How? I mean, how did we get here? I was on a bus. I was traveling to North Carolina.”
It all comes flooding back. The bus screeching to a halt on the Interstate. Andrej pleading with me to get off the bus and hear him out. Sitting on his lap in the back of the car.
Then nothing. Until now.
“Did youdrugme?”
“I promised to keep you safe, Cartier. This was the only way.”
“Drugging me and bringing me to Russia? You couldn’t take me back to the shelter and pay some bodyguards to keep me safe?”
My voice is rising out of control. If I keep going, it’ll become one of those high-pitched whistles that only dogs can hear. It’llshatter glass. And I’ll still be in fucking Russia with a psychopath who thinks it’s okay to drug women and abduct them halfway around the world.
