Page 25 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

I’m still standing in a sweat-drenched hotel room, burning under the gaze of four sinfully sexy police officers and four fratty would-be rapists. They want me to say something.

Say something! I yell at myself.This was your stupid plan! So say something!

Somehow, I find my voice. But it doesn’t sound like it’s coming from me. Is this what having an out-of-body experience is like? I feel like I’m hovering over myself and listening to a tiny, scared little voice that doesn’t belong to me as I say, “Yes.”

“Yes what?” growls the third officer. O’Shaughnessy, according to his badge, though he looks way more Italian than Irish.

“Yes, sir,” I correct. Why do I feel heat bloom in my cheeks at the command? It feels like he yanked that “sir” out of somewhere deep and dark inside me. And as it emerged from my lips, I felt—something.Something I’ve never felt before. It scares me as much as anything else has scared me this entire night.

The cops all look at each other and nod imperceptibly. I stand still against the wall, arms folded over my chest, trying to shrink until I completely disappear.

“Then you need to come with us, ma’am,” orders the lead officer, the one with the dark eyes. He jerks his head towards the second and third officers, who come up to me and lay their hands on my shoulders. They spin me around, firmly but not quite roughly, and push me in the small of the back until I’m flush against the wall.

“Hands on the wall,” purrs the third officer. He is emanating a musky, woodsy smell, like a very masculine cologne. All the things going on right now and I’m noticing my arresting officer’s cologne? Good Lord, my brain really is broken.

Trembling, I raise my hands up and press them on the wall.

“Higher.”

I slide them higher. I’ve never felt more naked. My nipples are just barely covered by the white top Anastasia dressed me in, but almost the entirety of my back is exposed. I feel a cupping sensation by my ankles, and when I look down, I see that the two officers are patting me down.

What. The. Fuck?

They move slowly, almost sensually, each working on one leg. Bit by bit, they slide their hands up. My outfit makes it pretty damn clear that I’m not hiding even a credit card on my person, much less a weapon of some kind. But the officers don’t seem to care. They go up from ankle to calf, to knee, to lower thigh, to …

“Whoa,” I mutter before I can stop myself.

I feel the glare of the first officer lance through me. “Shut up,” he snarls.

Again, that bloom of heat in my cheeks as I fall silent immediately at his command. Why does this feel more like foreplay than a legal pat down? The pair of officers are moving their palms up past my knees, to my outer thighs …

Then, suddenly, one of them palms my ass, hard and aggressive, at the exact same moment that the other one puts his hand flat between my legs.

I hiss a sharp intake of breath. Immediately, the dark-eyed officer is in my face. “I thought I just told you to shut up,” he repeats in a menacing tone.

“I—just—I …”

“Shut the fuck up. Stand still. Don’t say anything else.” He backs away, though I can still feel him staring me down. The two officers resume their pat down. Their hands are on my abdomen now, leaving little trails of fire in the wake of their fingertips. There is no reason to linger there, and yet linger they do, tracing up my rib cage, up and over my shoulders, through the nape of my neck.

I am so exposed. I want Anastasia, I want my dad, I want to be alone.

But I’m here instead. Pressed up against a wall while these four police officers practically finger me. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

For the billionth time, I tell myself to breathe. Better to leave with them than stay with the rapists. My dad will fix this.

The pat down ends as abruptly and weirdly as it started. “She’s clean,” the cologne-wearing officer announces, though there’s a hint of a bitter laugh at the edge of his voice that I can’t quite decipher.

“Cuff her.”

My hands are wrenched behind my back and I feel the cold metal of handcuffs tighten around my wrists. Then one of them grabs me and steers me out of the door. Someone pulls it shut, and then it’s just the five of us walking at a faster and faster pace down the plush carpet. We pass the elevators and go to the stairwell, weirdly enough. Whoever is directing me—I can’t see which one it is—pushes me down the stairs and grits his teeth in irritation whenever I stumble over a step.

Soon enough, we’re at the bottom, and walking out the side exit door into the warm night. There is a white, unmarked van parked in the fire lane, just out of the perimeter of the light coming down from the security floodlight attached to the side of the hotel.

I’m safe. This will all be over soon. One call to Dad, and it’s going to be fixed up perfectly fine. I’ll get back to my life and try to forget about everything that happened tonight.

A thought occurs to me that hasn’t occurred since the police first knocked on the door: where the hell are Anton and Matvei? Surely they are around here somewhere …

Then the lead officer wrenches open the back door of the van and I get my answer.

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