Page 11 of Devil's Vows
I finger them softly where they ripped into my flesh below my collarbone, so fucking close, half an inch down and I would have bled out. Weird how the scarred skin feels dead, but emotions zap through me like a live wire. The horror of the moment and what followed, what I had to do to survive. The relief of having clung to life but mixed with foreboding. These scars are a daily reminder of my mortality. I should have bled out, but I desperately hung on because fuck knows, I couldn’t afford to die. Who knows what would have become of my girls.
Until I’m dead, I’m just a mere mortal, and I have two precious daughters to protect. I turn my back to the mirrored wall, not wanting to flex and ape away at myself like some self-obsessed gym bro, as I would have ten years ago. At thirty-seven, and as the old Pakhan’s only son, life has shown me its jaws full of teeth, row upon row of sharp shark’s blades ready to shred. Being in shape turned the tables in my favor, but I’m not out of the woods yet.
With a futile attempt to shrug off my morbid thoughts, I get into the shower and turn on the cold water. I soap down, fist my cock languidly to see where the fuck it’s at. It’s nowhere lately,but it’s going to have to arrive in full force once I have a woman back in my bed, and it will. I am, after all, a man in his prime.
I stroke it just enough to make sure I’m still alive then let go, edging myself, building up to a true fucking release and not just a half-assed consolation prize that comes with jerking off solo for too long. Maybe tomorrow morning. Or tomorrow evening. Maybe in two days’ time. Who the fuck cares. I need the fucking tension to keep me pumped.
By the time I’m done and dressed, it’s past nine o’clock, and Milana should have called it a night. If I gauge correctly, she’ll be in the kitchen now, eating the dinner she avoided having with us, thinking I’m back in my office or have gone to bed.
I give my girls a last glance, making sure they’re fine, then head toward the kitchen. I circle past my office to pick up the photos that got delivered today. No waybill, no courier company. Just an old-fashioned hand delivery nobody noticed because we’re short-staffed.
Milana is sitting at the kitchen island, on her phone, fork in hand, but not eating. She should eat. She’s literally withering away in front of me.
Shit. What is marriage to Boryslav going to do to her? He’s our fuckingcousinof all people.
“Milana.”
She startles and drops her fork, clutching her phone to her chest. “Blyad’, Ivan! Stop sneaking up on me like that.”
I wasn’t sneaking. She’s just so distracted lately.
“How’s the chicken bake?”
I eye her plate. She’s only poked at it. I know it’s tasteless, ready-made bulk from the supermarket’s freezer department and processed to hell and back. I should do better for my girls, but this is where we’re at. More reason to lock in a wife. Someone I can trust around food in this house.
Milana shrugs. “I didn’t slave away cooking it, so it’s fine.”
I wish she would wake up out of this haze and come back tous. It breaks me to see her like this. We’re both hurting with heartache we share but can’t find a safe space to talk about because it would only hurt more. For this, I should cut her some slack, but I can’t. Our situation is just too tenuous.
“What’s that?” she asks, eyeing the brown envelope in my hand.
Her pale skin loses the little color it had. Fuck. Now I can’t do it.
“Just a report I need to go through. Bed-time reading.” I toss the envelope onto the counter behind me and watch how her eyes track my movement, my feigned disregard, gauging if I might be lying. Fuck. We’re rebuilding trust. Now isn’t the time to ask hard questions. “Do you want some wine?”
“No, thank you.”
With a sigh, I settle on one of the other barstools and watch as she takes a bite.Yes, my love, eat, so you don’t have to talk.
“Boryslav has been here for two months, Milana. He wants to close the deal, and?—”
“Well, I’ve only been back a week, getting used to this new status quo.” She waves at the kitchen in general, encompassing the lack of staff, the general mayhem behind the gilded pretense I’ve clung to and managed to uphold. “I’m not marrying Boryslav Petrenko. I want to go back to St Peterburg, tomorrow if I ca?—”
“We don’t have a choice. And you can’t go back to Russia. Not until things have settled.”
She glares at me, swallows compulsively, then spears a broccoli floret as if it’s me, splitting it right in half. I refuse to wince.
“We need this. Papa isn’t going to get better. Our stepmother is exactly where I need her to be?—”
“Out of your fucking hair and in rehab?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
I should have parked her there years ago. It’s rehab but comes with the option of being a long-stay facility for peoplewith our stepmother’s profile, if you pay the right price. They keep her just high enough to not cause trouble. Yep, I’m that fucker.
The problem is, Milana doesn’t know half the shit that went down during her absence and what it took from me—from us Petrovs—to keep our position as the rulers of the New York and New Jersey Bratva, to once again have uncontested rule of our territory and for me to be deemed the rightful Pakhan to rule this area.
And that’s without this fucker trying to encroach on us.
