Page 14 of Married to the Don (Kornilov Bratva Duet 1)

At that moment, Theo wakes up suddenly. He lifts his head and looks around. When he sees the man behind the counter, he frowns.

“Where are we?” he asks groggily.

I set him on the floor and bend down to look into his face. “Can you go sit in that chair over there? I’m trying to see if this nice man has any rooms available for us.”

He blinks at me sleepily and then shuffles over to a timeworn chair next to a card table covered with a spread of snacks so dismal even my empty stomach isn’t interested.

“As I was saying,” the man says, coming around from behind the counter. He leans his hip against the edge of the laminate top, and I can see where his shirt is riding up across his hairy stomach. I stare at his shoulder. “You’ll take whatever you can get?”

I swallow and nod.

He takes a step closer to me, moving into my personal space. When his hand touches my arm, I flinch, but that doesn’t stop him from dragging his index finger across my coat and beneath the opening. He traces the curve of my ribs, and I can feel where he has touched me like the trail is covered in slime, cold and disgusting. “What can you offer me in return?”

“Maybe a payment plan,” I start, my voice high-pitched and meeker than I’d like.

He shakes his head. “All payment must be up front. Company policy.”

I open my mouth and close it several times, trying to find the words. “I could work for it. Clean or—” I look around the room, trying to think of another job I could do. It’s obvious the place isn’t busy enough to need another worker at the front desk, and I’m not handy enough to even begin to know how to fix the wood panels peeling up from the counter.

The path of his finger shifts upward, moving up the center of my body towards my breasts. I’m frozen for a second, too horrified to move, but just before he reaches his target, I jerk back and pull my coat closed.

The smirk on his face falls, and he looks over at Theo. “Hey, those are for customers, kid.”

Theo is reaching for a cracker on the table, and at the sound of the man’s voice, he sinks down into his seat, pulling his hands in close. I want to punch the man in the nose for talking to my son like that.

“You two better go before I call security,” he snarls.

I highly doubt the motel has its own security, but the man’s meaning is clear: do what I say or you’re out of here.

Wasn’t I just willing to do the same thing with Ted at the gym? And that was for a corner in the locker room. This time, it would be for a bed. A tub. Theo could take a bath like a normal four-year-old. He could watch cartoons in the morning while I got ready for work rather than sit on the cold floor of a communal shower.

One moment of sacrifice for one semi-normal night.

“But we’re customers,” I say, trying to sound alluring even though my voice is shaking.

The man studies me and slowly, realization seeps into his thick Neanderthal brain. He moves closer to me, his thigh brushing the outside of my leg, his hand moving to my hip.

I hold up a hand, pressing it against his fleshy chest.

He knocks my hand aside and backs me against the wall.

I push harder on his chest, but he doesn’t move away, and I can feel a primal kind of panic rising up inside of me.

“Not here,” I gasp quietly, hoping Theo will remain oblivious to all of it. “Let me put him in a room first. Let me take care of him.”

“Up-front payment,” he repeats, swiping his hand beneath my coat and grabbing at my breast through my shirt.

I whimper and try to go limp, sinking towards the floor to escape him, but he pins me to the wall with his hips.

“It’ll be quick,” he growls. “No one will see.”

I pinch my legs closed and shove at his chest, but I can feel how useless it is. He’s too big and too strong, and even if I do fight him off, I have nowhere to go.

Shame slides through me like a snake, tangling itself around my limbs and my mind and my heart. Shame holds me still and keeps me quiet as the nameless clerk’s sweaty hands slide under my shirt towards my chest.

I squeeze my eyes shut and pray for it to be over soon.

“Bol’she ne nado!”

The clerk and I both freeze at the sound of the deep foreign voice. Then, slowly, the clerk turns around and his face goes white.

Suddenly, he can’t get his hands off me fast enough.

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