Page 87 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

Milaya’s face swims into view. Her eyes are dense with concern. “Are you okay?” she asks again.

“I … fell …” I say thickly. My lips aren’t working right, aren’t responding to my commands, so those few stumbling words are the best I can manage.

I’m not sure what’s real and what’s fake right now. I know my head is throbbing and my past is threatening to consume me. My father’s voice and Milaya’s mingle horrifically in a cacophony of things that should never be woven together. I hear him telling me,“If you stop, you die,”just as I hear her say, “You’re hurt; you need to sit and breathe.”

I try to struggle to my feet, but she presses me back down. I’m so weak with exhaustion and grief that just the gentle pressure of her hand on my chest is enough to keep me rooted to the floor. She raises my head up and slips underneath me so I can rest on her soft lap. Her touch is heavenly. It’s everything I’ve spent almost two weeks desperately avoiding. I knew from the very beginning that if I let her touch me, everything would come crashing down.

But things have come crashing down anyway. My empire is in shambles. I am a failure as don. My family is dead; my men are dead; Roberto is dead. And I cannot even stand on my own two feet without tumbling to the ground in my own home.

So what does it matter anymore? I have already lost the war. Luka Volkov will be here tomorrow, and though the plan all along has been for us to kill him then, I realize now that it might as well be his victory parade. Because, as I sit here with my head in his daughter’s lap and gaze up blearily into her shimmering hazel eyes, I understand that I have come completely undone.

I reach up to touch her face. My fingertips are rough and calloused, but even then I can still tell that her cheek is smooth. When she turns and kisses the heel of my palm, I can feel the gentle heat of her lips.

“You have to sit and breathe,” she whispers again.

“I can’t …” I murmur hazily. “If you stop, you die.”

“What?”

I try to say it again, but my lips don’t want to work anymore. She must realize how much effort it is costing me to talk, because she just shushes me when I keep trying to speak, pressing a long, pale finger over my lips. “Shh,” she says. “Just rest here until you feel better. It’s okay to stop.”

What happens after that is a dream of its own. We lay there for some indeterminate amount of time. I drift in and out of this world and make no effort to steer the ship of my consciousness in any particular direction. After a while, I feel motion. I start to open my eyes, but Milaya gently closes them with her fingertips. “No,” she whispers. “Just feel it.”

Her hand moves down and frees me from my pants, just as she straddles me. I see only darkness, but I gasp out loud when I feel the wet warmth of her surround my manhood.

I am glad she told me to keep my eyes closed. As long as I do, I can pretend this is a dream. And if it is a dream, I don’t have to fight it. Because dreams mean nothing. If this were real, it would mean everything. So I cannot let it be real. That would be the final blow.

More motion. The gentle rise and fall of her tightness around me, squeezing the soul from me. One hand of hers presses against my chest. I want so badly to wrap my fingers around her wrist and feel her pulse. But that would be too real. I keep my palms flat against the flagstones of the floor as she rides me.

The only sound in the hallway is the short, sharp panting coming from both of us. Her hair tickles my face. The edges of this dream and my reality are blurred, erased.

I am suddenly aware of a subtext to this unreal moment. Like realizing that you’ve been eavesdropping on a conversation between strangers without ever intending it. She is coaxing me to stop, to let go. How many years have I spent raging against that very instinct? Every fiber in my being has been trained not to do that. I cannot stop. I cannot let go.

But that’s exactly what she is telling me to do. With her body, with her touch, with her scent, she is urging me, pleading with me.

And when she delicately plucks my hand from the stones by my side and kisses it once more, I can no longer resist.

I burst into her, groaning and heaving. She slows down, dismounts, curls against my side. I do not open my eyes.

Not long afterwards, the dream finally subsumes reality, like a drawing in the sand at the beach washed away by the tide.

I don’t remember what happens after that.

24

Milaya

I feel like I’ve entered a dream world. At dawn this morning, I was cradling Vito’s bleeding head in the dark hallway. By sunset, I am standing on one side of a door, preparing myself to walk through and talk my father out of a war. I don’t even know how to process everything that has happened in the interim.

Just a little while ago, I was curled up in my bed, sleeping through the afternoon with weird and uncomfortable thoughts racing through my head. Mateo had knocked on my door and opened it. “Wake up,” he’d said. “It is time for you to do something for us.”

“Ugh,” I’d snapped, “how many times are we going to do this stupid ritual? ‘Get up, Milaya,’ ‘Wake up, Milaya,’ ‘Come with me, Milaya.’Do you all draw straws for who gets to annoy me on any given day?” I knew I sounded childish and stupid. Petulant, even. I was acting as if I didn’t remember anything that had transpired between me and these men since they first brought me back to this place. Mateo must have sensed that, because he didn’t even acknowledge my petty whining. He just waited for me to get up and get dressed. When I’d done that—reluctantly—he’d led me through the great room and to a hall I hadn’t yet explored. He turned to me just before we entered. “Your father is that room,” he told me, pointing to an innocuous door off to my right.

My blood ran cold. “What?”

Again, he didn’t repeat himself.

It felt like my heart was pounding a million beats per minute. Why hadn’t they told me anything before now? What did they expect me to do?

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