Brutally Broken: A Dark Mafia Romance Read online

  In the moments after orgasm, she is quiet and I am suddenly at the most profound peace I have felt in a long time. If I were a civilized man, I’d clean my mess up, but I haven’t forgotten that just like the others, she’s tried to strip me of everything human. She is keeping me like a dog, so I will act like one.

  I retreat from her bed and lie back on my little divan, arms behind my head, a satisfied smile on my face as we both drift into what I hope for our sakes will be a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Three

  “Wake up!”

  Her voice is strident and rude, cutting through the limited sleep I managed to grab between her meltdown and dawn. When I open my eyes there’s barely any light in the sky, just a few faint rays heralding another day. I roll onto my back and look up at her.

  There’s nothing left of the terrified girl who burrowed into my arms last night and ignited my lust. The bitch is back, makeup applied so thickly as to mask her true beauty, an expensive dress hugging her curves in sinful ways. She’s wearing heels before six in the morning, a true supplicant to pain.

  “You’re lazy,” she hisses. “What if I was a murderer?”

  “That would save this headache you’re giving me,” I growl, sitting up.

  “You’re supposed to protect me. That’s why I bought you. If you don’t want to do your job, I can send you back to the ring.” Her eyes are narrowed, her expression intense. Does she realize she’s threatening me with a battle to the death? I suspect she does. She doesn’t care. She’s a bully in high heels, and she probably deserves every bit of pain she has experienced in her life.

  I don’t know how I managed to find her attractive last night. Her beauty is irrelevant. Her personality is caustic and cruel. She believes her money is more than mere currency. She thinks it makes her a more important person, more real than someone like me who has found themselves stripped of all resources.

  But. And this is a ‘but’ I can barely admit to myself. In spite of my strongly negative feelings toward her, she has done me the favor of pulling me from the men who would have had me slowly, painfully killed. I do owe her, even if I wish I didn’t.

  “You’re alive,” I point out. “Made it through the night entirely unharmed.”

  I don’t tell her about the way she cried out, or how I held her. If she notices the sheets are dirty, she doesn’t say anything. Maybe she’s used to waking up with the scent of cum clinging to her.

  She makes an impatient sound. “Come on,” she says. “Put those clothes back on. I’m taking you shopping.”

  * * *

  Sophie

  He cannot wear his rags around me. The white shirt and black pants he left the compound with might be suitable for a waiter at a low-end restaurant, but in the circles I move in they will make him stand out immediately in all the wrong ways. Polyester is a literal sin, as far as the people I know are concerned.

  I summon my car from the garage. He hangs back behind me, a dark, solemn force of twisted energy. I don’t know whether I feel safer with him around or not. I know I cannot force him to protect me. If the Vristok come today, he will probably let me be taken. I have to engage his loyalty somehow, but frankly, I don’t know how. The mystery of why one human might sacrifice for another has always evaded me. The only relationships I’m familiar with are ones of convenience and mutual financial advantage. Perhaps if I were to impress on him the fact that I am saving his life he might care more, but when I said that earlier, it barely seemed to register.

  Responding to my call, the driver holds the door open for me. I slip in, then wait a second too long for Vadim to get in too.

  “Get in beside me,” I snap at him. “You mustn’t leave my side.”

  His eyes flash at me.

  “Speak to me like a dog again, woman...”

  I like making him bristle and swell with outrage. There is something thrilling about saying precisely what he does not want to hear, riling him and picking at his ego. I know I shouldn’t be giving him reasons to dislike me. He already hates me for buying him. He will hate me for so many more things by the time we are done, I’m sure.

  The driver sets the car in motion. Soon we are leaving the gates of my home and I feel the same rush of adrenaline I feel every time I know I am vulnerable again. The closer we get to the city, the more afraid I get, but after all this time, fear no longer has the power it once had. I live with it, deal with it. It is like air to me, something I am thoroughly accustomed to breathing into the very core of me.

  It would be safer to stay hidden away at my home, but I like to see the world, even if it is rampant with dangers. I know that there’s no such thing as safety, not really. The brute at my side can only protect me from so much. He is nothing more than a big, muscly security blanket.

  I’ve called ahead to the store I want to take him to, and they’ve closed for the morning at my request, as well as put the shades down at the front so nobody can see who is inside. Little measures make me feel safe and also help me avoid the tedium of dealing with other humans. We drive around to the back and go in through the cargo entrance, which allows me the chance to satisfy myself that the place has not been recently targeted by my enemies. They always leave their mark, but here I see no trace of it.

  “Miss Sophie, it is so nice to see you,” the manager smiles at me, that simpering beam merchants give me when I walk in. They don’t see me. They see what they imagine to be endless reserves of money that can be tapped into their minuscule bank accounts.

  “I need clothes for this man,” I say, gesturing to Vadim. “He needs to look well dressed, and if you can find him something that covers up the common criminal element that hangs about him, that would be nice too... ow!”

  I rise to my toes as an infernal pain emanates from the center of my cheeks. At first, I have no concept of what happened. I assume I have been attacked. My enemies must have been here after all! I swing around, ready to face those who would bring me death, but there is nobody behind me besides Vadim, rubbing his hands together.

  And that’s when it hits me. He hit me.

  “How dare you!” I declare at the top of my lungs. “You ungrateful brute! You simple animal! You disgusting...”

  My tirade is cut off abruptly when he grabs me, laying those big, brutal, tattooed hands on me. I scream for help, but there is nobody here willing to go up against a brutal Russian gangster. Just a couple of skinny little shop assistants, and a store manager who looks horrified as Vadim hauls me bodily across the shop floor and plonks down on a couch where people usually sit to wait to give their opinions on the clothing people have tried on in the changing room, except this time the clothes are coming off on the shop floor. And they’re mine.

  He tugs my skirt right off my ass, slides it along my stockinged thighs and lets it fall to the floor. I am shrieking for help, but nobody is moving as he holds me down over his thighs, wraps an arm around my waist, and starts striking my ass with the flat of his palm.

  Holy fuck. He’s spanking me.

  “You have no respect,” he grunts in that Russian accent of his. “You treat people like dirt. You will learn manners now.”

  His palm blasts across my ass, sending bolts of heat and pain through my body. I shriek at the top of my lungs, but it does nothing except herald yet more slaps that land just as hard and just as mercilessly.

  I don’t know how to respond to this. My body is reacting with desperate scrabbling, kicking, and writhing, which does precisely nothing to help me escape his grasp. He has me locked down in this humiliating, submissive position, which leaves me no option but to take his rough punishment.

  “Vadim! I will return you for this! I will send you to the ring! I will...” I burst into a scream as he slaps me again and I suddenly realize that he was being gentle before now. He is so fucking strong, and right now he is so fucking mad. I briefly consider whether or not it was a mistake to call him an animal, but more swiftly decide that it was a bigger mistake to bring him out of that basement
at all. They warned me he was violent and aggressive. They tried to tell me that he would turn on me, but did I listen? No. And now I am being beaten, my ass stinging and aching with every hard slap he lands on my cheeks. My underwear is still up, thank god—but no sooner do I think that than he grabs it in that huge hand of his and pulls it down. I hear the expensive fabric tearing, and know that those panties are ruined forever, as is my ass, which now receives the full power of his palm.

  I don’t know when he’s going to stop. I don’t know if he’s going to stop. Between the slaps, every moment is an eternity of torment. The more I squirm, the harder and harsher he is, and I can’t stop myself kicking and writhing. I even try to bite him, but all that achieves is a mouthful of cheap polyester.

  My cries begin to become more than shocked shrieks, they start to venture toward screams and only then does he stop, when I am crying and begging and wailing. He holds me there and he makes me deal with the pain he has unleashed on me, a sore heat that keeps burning even though the slaps have stopped falling.

  “You will show me respect, woman,” he growls down at me, his big hands wrapped around my left thigh and upper right arm.

  “Yes, yes, okay!” I gasp. I would say anything to get up, and for this to end.

  “Apologize.”

  Except that. How can I apologize when I didn’t do anything wrong? He grabbed me and started beating me just for saying a few words he didn’t want to hear. I am certainly going to return him to the sellers, so perhaps it doesn’t matter. Maybe I should apologize now, and... “Ow!”

  His big hand lands across my bottom in another one of those cruel slaps.

  “I’m sorry!” I scream the words. I can’t withstand him physically. I have to say what he wants to hear. But I can keep the truth inside, safe. The truth is that all the searing rage that swirls inside me every day is now directed at him, and that I intend to have my revenge. I swear to myself that every ounce of pain I’ve withstood in these last few minutes will be revisited on him a hundred times over.

  He yanks me up from his lap, his hands rough as he makes me stand in front of him, holding me by the lower arms, my legs between his thighs. My bare ass is on display, as is my sex. I hope the shop assistants have called the police, but I don’t think they’ve moved since this began. They’re staring at me, no doubt seeing his handprints on my ass and upper thighs. He’s marked me as his. He’s meted out some rough discipline to me because I called him what he is: a criminal.

  He stares me in the eye, saying nothing, and I feel as though he is assessing me. Trying to tell if he has broken me. I try to avoid his stare. I don’t want him to see inside me. I don’t want him to know how very angry this has made me, the heat in my bottom, the shameful exposure of my intimate parts to complete strangers, and shopkeepers at that. He has shown me to mere retailers, lowered me to their level and below. This is unforgivable. If I have anything, it is dignity. Not anymore. Not thanks to this man.

  I expect him to say something, to sneer or threaten, or something else, but he just lets me go. I don’t stay near him any longer than I have to. I step back, tangle myself in the skirt around my feet, and would have fallen over if he didn’t catch me.

  “Careful,” he says, that grip on me again, making my pulse race and the muscles of my bottom contract with anticipatory fear.

  I don’t care about being careful. I am too flustered, sore, and embarrassed to be careful. Everybody is staring at me as I whip the remnants of my skirt up over my burning bottom. I have never, in all my miserable life, been this completely shocked and appalled. Death I can handle. But this, this tearing down of my very dignity, this stripping of my sense of independence, this I cannot countenance.

  I do not know what to do. I do not know how to process what just happened. Nobody else knows what to do either. But Vadim does.

  “Bring me clothes,” he says with a wave to the male shop assistant.

  “Y-yes, sir.” The man does his bidding immediately, and in seconds everyone is pretending that they didn’t just see me with my underwear torn off, my ass bared, my sex on shameful display as I was punished by the same man who is now telling the assistant that he doesn’t want to wear a waistcoat, but he doesn’t mind a blazer.

  Vadim knows how to buy clothes. There’s nothing common about him at all, I realize quite suddenly. A common criminal wouldn’t have as many opinions on silk inlays as he does. I thought I was going to play dress up with him, but Vadim doesn’t need anybody to make him look good. He knows precisely how to dress his powerful, brutish body so that the fabric covering it emphasizes his raw masculinity while still appearing civilized.

  Nobody pays any attention to me at all. I have become a sore-assed pariah in the store. I stand there, utterly uncertain and entirely confused. I always know what to do. No man has ever been allowed to take advantage of me this way. Plenty of them have come to kill me, or to kill others I love. I have seen assassins in the night. I have been witness to brutal crimes. Several times in my life, I have cringed and hid and let men like Vadim have their way with those I cared about. I was unable to stop them. But they never did this to me. They never made me feel small, badly behaved, and naughty.

  I push those feelings away. Vadim is precisely the sort of man who has stripped all sense of safety away from me. He is exactly the kind of man I loathe, and now the knowledge that if I do not send him to the ring now, he will one day die for me brings me no guilt. He deserves it.

  I want to give into tears and run away. I want to leave him here, but that would amount to setting him free, and that I will not do. So I stand there, trying to reclaim my dignity, certainly unable to sit down without making my bottom burn all over again. If anyone notices me dip down for a moment and then stand up very abruptly, they don’t say anything, though Vadim tries to catch my eye in the mirror.

  “I want him to have several outfits,” I say, attempting to take control again. “Make sure he has a tuxedo, and more casual evening attire, as well as daywear suitable for dining or outings.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the assistant says, not meeting my eye. Everybody is now doing their level best to pretend that they did not see what they saw, and when I pay, I’ll add enough to ensure that their silence continues.

  * * *

  An hour later, we return to the car, the big spanked elephant in the room squeezing into the vehicle with us and making it impossible for me to sit comfortably. I end up perching as best I can on one hip as far away from Vadim as possible. He is much better dressed than he was when he came, and Jeeves has loaded a pile of other clothes into the trunk of the car too. Thanks to my generosity, Vadim is one well-dressed asshole.

  I sit in stony silence. I do not want to speak to him. I do not want to acknowledge his existence. I am seriously considering having the slavers come to the house and put him down for me. There’s a small part of me that knows I would never do that, but the outraged part of me is reveling in the idea that I could.

  “Thank you for the clothes,” he says, taking me off guard with his unexpected politeness.

  “You’re welcome,” I say stiffly, looking out the window. I do not want to engage in any kind of conversation with him.

  “You must tell me what you need protection from,” he says, harping on the same old theme from yesterday now that he clearly feels he has some leverage.

  “No.”

  “Sophie.” He growls my name and I feel a bolt of adrenaline go through me as he uses it for the first time. It occurs to me that I never introduced myself. I didn’t feel the need to. Does one introduce oneself to a new lawnmower? He is just as much a tool as that.

  “Do I need to punish you again?” His question makes my adrenaline spike. I swing around and fix him with my sharpest glare.

  “You need to apologize for that and never, ever so much as think about doing anything like that again, on pain of being flayed alive.”

  He makes one of those animal growls. “Don’t threaten me, woman.”

&n
bsp; I lean closer, my voice holding an unpleasant note of near hysteria. “You hit me. In front of retail workers.”

  “And I will spank you again,” he says. “When we get back to your home, I will have you naked, and I will whip you until you tell me why I am here.”

  “Jeeves! Don’t go home!” I call out. “Drive around the block until we can push this asshole out somewhere.”

  Vadim smirks at me. “You are going to hurt, little girl. You are going to be sore until you do as I say.”

  “Why don’t you understand the arrangement we have? I own you,” I say, arching my hips and ass as far away from him as possible in case he tries it anyway.

  “You own nothing,” he says. “You hide away in your little room behind all those walls and you pay for men.”

  “So I own me. And walls. And a little room, at least.” This is the stupidest argument, but pride won’t let me leave it. Vadim is equally prideful, I think. Dominating and controlling too. But he’s not the only one who can ask questions.

  “What did you do to get sent to America to be,” I pause... “owned by me?”

  He lets out a snarl and grabs me, but the seatbelt gets in the way of him really doing anything to me, and he’s left with only being able to pull my legs apart, pushing his hand up between my thighs.

  “What the fuck!”

  “You’re wet.”

  “You’re a psycho,” I gasp as his fingers brush the inside of my leg. He’s not touching my sex. Not yet. But the intention is clearly there. Every time I anger Vadim, he uses my body to punish me. Right now his fingertips are pressing into the soft skin of my inner thighs, stroking that soft spot with a clear and present threat.