Page 44 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

My body is still buzzing as though everything that happened in the dream is real. For a brief moment, half of my brain hasn’t even realized yet that it was in fact a dream. I can still feel the sticky heat of Vito’s seed in my mouth, the thighs-spread fullness that each of the brothers gave to me.

Above all, I feel the sense of power. I feel the desire that radiated from them like nuclear reactors. They wanted me so badly that they couldn’t stand to even blink one more time without laying their hands on me.

I feel intoxicated by the whole thing. Like I, too, am glowing radioactively.

I shudder.

“No,” I say out loud into the cell. When my voice reverberates back to me, it sounds tinny and pathetic. I say it again, louder and more seriously. “No. No. No!” I hope they’re watching on the cameras they installed in here after my failed escape. I hope they see me denying them and that they know deep down in their bones exactly what I’m screaming about.

That will never come to pass. I need to start seeing these men for what they are: my enemies. They snatched me up from my happy life and chained me to a table, for fuck’s sake. How much do perfect bone structure and brawny forearms really matter in the face of a hideous crime like that?

To my unconscious brain, it apparently matters a lot. But fuck my unconscious brain, because if it thinks I’m ever going to let the Four Horsemen of the Acockalypse go down on me like that, then it’s got another thing coming.

I close my eyes and curl up in a corner of the cell. I feel so thin and stretched out. Three days without food or water have sapped me down to the core, and yet somehow I’m still finding the energy to have hot wet dreams about my captors. I can feel that the insides of my thighs are drenched. Ugh. It just seems like a waste of moisture.

It is nighttime now. I can tell by the tiny sliver of moonbeam that is peeking through the inches-wide hole in the upper corner of my high-ceilinged cell.

I’m wide awake now, but still so shaken by both my dream and my physical suffering that my mind is pinwheeling through memories, some of them real and some of them made up.

I remember losing my virginity. A high school boyfriend back home, Robbie Holmes. He was cute, nice. A little nerdy type. Had floppy hair with a pleasant smile. We snuck into his parents’ friends’ house while they were on vacation, laid out a towel on their guest bed, and got carefully into the whole thing. He told me he loved me after it was over, which was nice, even if it wasn’t necessarily needed. I told him I loved him too, which felt like the right thing to do, even if it wasn’t necessarily true. The sex itself is weirdly absent from my recollection. I only remember being a little sore and a little bored but mostly just relieved that the whole thing was over and I could go about the rest of my life without that monkey hanging on my back.

I remember further back, to my first kiss. Timothy Pearson, seventh grade, at the county fair behind the Ferris wheel. The way I’m remembering these things makes me laugh. It’s like a game of Clue.Colonel Mustard, with the wrench, in the drawing room.But that’s how it’s coming back to me. I can still close my eyes and smell the scent of fried Oreos and funnel cakes and, vaguely mixed into the background, horse shit and cigarettes. But it’s a good memory, for the most part. We were playing truth or dare with our friends and they knew he liked me, so they dared us to go behind the Ferris wheel and make out. We did, hesitantly at first and then sloppily, and then we abruptly parted like we got zapped by electricity. He looked at me and I looked at him and I said, “Guess we should go back now?” Which, in retrospect, was probably a devastating blow for a thirteen-year-old boy who’d been holding out hope of feeling my tits up.

That, too, makes me laugh. I guess it’s good that I have these memories to laugh out.

Because the world I’m in now is utterly devoid of laughter.

Those little moments frozen in time like insects trapped in amber—they seem so sweet and innocent and weirdly perfect in their own way. But they don’t feel real.

They don’t feel real the way the stones under my body feel real—cold and hard and painful. They don’t feel real the way the hands of the brothers on my wrists and ankles felt real when they picked me up from the top of the staircase landing three days ago and carried me back down, kicking and screaming, to this cell. They don’t feel real the way Vito’s eyes felt real when he looked at me and said, “I didn’t want to have to do this, Volkov,” before slamming the door shut and locking it securely into place. Those things felt so real that I’m cowering from them, hiding away by drifting through my past and trying desperately to ignore how hungry, how thirsty, how tired, how agonized I am.

I miss my father. God, I miss him so much. I never realized how much I relied on him. His strength, his certainty, his convictions. I know I have those things in me, but as I waste away in this cell, I feel like a battery that’s gone too long without a charge. If I could just see him again, get wrapped up in a hug from him or my mother or both of them, then I would feel again like I could survive this ordeal. Even if Dad just hugged me and returned me to this cell, that would be enough.

As it is, though, I am alone. No one knows I am here. No one is coming for me.

I have no one but myself to rely upon.

I think I fall asleep for a while, but maybe I’m just pretending. There’s not much difference at this point. Day is blending into night and reality is blending into fantasy. It’s all a confusing mishmash of past and present and future, as well as things that have never happened and never, ever will happen.

I dream a second time of the brothers devouring me with their hands and mouths and cocks, and when I wake up, my thighs are slick once again.

It is still nighttime. Or maybe it is nighttime of the next day. Who’s to say, really? Not me. I’m losing it. Like a boat with only a frayed knot keeping me tethered to the dock. I don’t have long left before I slip away and never come back.

I hear a creak outside my cell. Or maybe I just think I do. Either way, it’s enough to send me hurtling back into the arms of yet another memory.

* * *

I’m thirteen years old. It’s late at night. I’ve just gotten my period for the first time. Part of me wants to cry, but part of me is proud. Mom coached me on this, told me it was coming, and we got ready for it together. But it’s happened now, and despite all the pep talks, I’m a little scared. I just want her to tell me it’s okay. Just those two little words, “It’s okay,” and I’ll be able to take care of all the things that need to be taken care of and go back to sleep. But I need those words.

So I’ve gotten up from my bedroom and slipped out. Our home is dark, cool in the late autumn, and silent.

Until I hear it.

A whimper.

It is a man’s whimper, ragged and deep. Someone is in pain. My mind flashes immediately to my dad being hurt, but then I hear the whimper again, and I know it’s not him. He would never plead like that.

“Please, God …” the stranger’s voice says before trailing off again into wordless agony.

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