Page 56 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

Vito walks me around to the seat at the head of the table. He pulls it out for me and helps me into it—the picture of a gentleman, if we only forget about the fact that I’m not here by choice and they drugged me and killed those frat boys and blackmailed my friend into giving me up and—

Oof, I’m getting lightheaded. I take a breath and close my eyes for a second.

When I reopen them, I promise myself to do just one thing at a time for the rest of this meal. One bite. One drink. One question. One answer. It’s the only way I’m going to get through the whole ordeal.

A quote pops in my head, originally about writing a book, but equally applicable to the nightmare I’m living through right now: “It’s like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

One thing at a time.

I can do this.

16

Milaya

I’m seated at the head of the table. Vito and Mateo are to my right, Dante and Leo to my left. Our voices echo in the huge room. There’s a slight chill in the air, though the fire in the hearth helps take the edge off it. All in all, I feel like I’ve been transported back two or three hundred years in time. I’m eating dinner in a godforsaken castle, for crying out loud, surrounded by four men who carry themselves like princes. Their ancestors are looking down on me from their portraits on the wall. The whole thing is too surreal.

“Am I supposed to say thank you now?” I ask sarcastically. “That’s what this is, right? A little good cop/bad cop routine? First, you drug me and threaten me and imprison me, then when you let me upstairs and treat me like an actual human being, I’m supposed to fall over myself trying to please you?”

“This is dinner,” Vito growls. “Nothing more.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. I’m sure he’s being purposefully dense, but it annoys me anyway. At least have the balls to say to my face what is actually happening.

Part of me almost preferred being a prisoner. Things were clear back then when I was in the cell. They were my enemies; I was their captive.

Now, it’s all muddled. Dante is refilling my wineglass aggressively, servers keep materializing from the shadows with endless courses of food, and the brothers are all looking at me with gazes that fall somewhere between curious and predatory. I just try to focus on my food. One bite at a time.

The only way out is through.

Leo said I didn’t have a choice in the meal, but my request for steak was apparently fulfilled, because the main course is a thick, juicy slab of expensive filet mignon, smeared with chives butter and crispy fingerling potatoes on the side. The smell is heavenly. I can see the lines of delicious fat marbled in the cut.

I practically blink and it’s gone.

Mateo chuckles. “Would you like more?” he asks.

I nod and wash down the food with a huge gulp of wine as he snaps his fingers and sends one of the waitstaff scurrying off to the hidden kitchen to fetch me another plate.

I follow my first glass of wine with a second quickly on its heels. I don’t even care about controlling my alcohol intake. How could I possibly wind up inmoretrouble than I’m currently in? These men have taken everything from me. Worrying about letting my guard down is stupid when there is so little of myself left to guard. So I drink. At the very least, it keeps the bad thoughts away.

Dinner is mostly silent for a while. Only the crackle of logs in the fire and the clink of cutlery. Leo, Dante, and Vito keep their eyes rooted on their plates. Only Mateo looks at me after I’ve finished off a second steak. He smiles again, though it’s tinged with sadness. I like him the best of all of his brothers—though “like” is relative, considering that they’re all murderous abductors and sadists. Something about him is different, approachable. Even when he was showing me the bodies of the Frat Stars—something I’ve steadfastly refused to think about since the second the door closed on those poor boys—he did it in a way that said he didn’t want to be doing this. That he wouldn’t be doing it if he didn’t have to, for whatever mysterious reason they still refuse to reveal.

“Do you know who we are?” Mateo asks me suddenly.

I pause. The way he posed the question feels like a test of sorts. I don’t know why it would matter, but I sense that it somehow does.

I look from brother to brother, starting at my left and going in clockwise fashion—Leo, Dante, Vito, Mateo. I must be a little drunker than I thought, though, because before I know it, I’m pointing my finger at each in turn and saying, “Oh, I know you all right. That’s the Playboy, he’s the Nutcase, there’s the Big Bad Wolf, and you’re the Nerd.”

Dante snorts and coughs up flecks of wine on the table. I see Vito suppress a grin as his hand tightens on the silver fork he is holding. Even Leo cracks a smile. Mateo just sighs.

“More fight in her than we anticipated,” Dante chuckles after his coughing fit subsides. “You might be a little bit of a nutcase yourself, Milaya.”

I smile despite myself. “Maybe I am.”

No one says anything for a minute or two. For a second there, when everyone was laughing, it felt like a moment of genuine—well, genuinesomething. Connection? Friendship? Something like that. That’s how it felt, at least, as bizarre as that seems.

But the feeling slips away into the silence. The chill in the air deepens as the smiles fall off each of our faces.

Eventually, Mateo looks to me again. “I mean, do you know who wereallyare?” he asks.

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