Page 44 of Born in Depravity

CATALINA

I was pushedinto a dimly lit room.

I bit the bottom of my lip hard to keep from making any noise, and I knew I wasn’t that lucky when I heard the door click to lock behind me.

I was trapped inside with the monsters.

No, not monsters.

Monster.

Just one of them stayed behind.

I didn’t know where the other two went, but he was with me now, and I wasn’t sure if I should be thankful or not that it was just him around toplaywith me.

I’d done it now. I angered the devil and now I would have to pay the price.

Fear worked its way up my spine, and my hands were shaking as I braced them in front of the wooden footboard of the large king-size bed.

I closed my eyes.

If I had anything in my stomach, I would have thrown up.

Why was this happening to me?

“Strip, pet,” the dark voice behind me uttered sweetly. It almost sounded like something lovers would say to one another, not captor to captive.

I shook my head.

Please, no.

I didn’t want to. I didn’t want this.

“Pet, don’t make me ask again. I’m not a patient man.”

I tried to remember who it was behind me. The three men all had pet names for me, as if I was something precious.

Damien Vasiliev.

The one who liked to call mepet.

I know of him. I had heard Mikhail and Nikolay referred to him as Damien this morning, but it wasn’t until the man who owned the house called himPakhanthat I finally connected the dots.

I had tried so hard to distance myself from my father’s world, but evenIhad heard of the three heads of the Vasiliev Bratva.

Damien Vasiliev was the one who’d founded the brotherhood, and the two other men with him, Mikhail Volkov, hissovietnik, or his right-hand man who ranked only below Damien in the brotherhood, and Nikolay Sokolov, his enforcer, soon joined ranks and helped create it to be what it was today.

They were infamous in the mob world.

They also controlled the Eastern part of the U.S. that led to international waters.

Most people didn’t know what they looked like, considering only very few were able to live afterwards.

They ran a billion-dollar criminal enterprise that even surpassed my father’s in power and influence. And Father hated them.

Hated them as much as he feared them, I imagined, coming from the hushed conversations I had been able to piece together here and there.

As sheltered as I was, Father never made any effort to hide his disgust and hatred for the Russian Bratva.

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