Thief (Boston Underworld #5)(39)

“My intentions were different when I began. In that regard, you are correct. But time and circumstances have changed my position. Whatever happened in the past, her father will be the one to pay.”

Alexei looks doubtful. “So even if you learn that Manuel was the one to cause your mother’s most brutal and violent death, you have no plans to harm her?”

I resist the urge to punch him in the face again because technically, I owe him. “Are you telling me that Manuel was responsible for my mother’s death?”

“No,” he answers. “I want your word that you won’t hurt her.”

“I already said I wouldn’t,” I snarl.

“But you intended to when you took her?”

“What is the point of this?” I demand. “What would you like from me, Lyoshenka? Must I get down on my knees and grovel before you?”

“A Vor would never get down on his knees for any man.”

“And I’m not offering. I am merely asking what it is that you would like for me to say.”

“Do you care for her?”

His words provoke a heavy, sinking feeling in my stomach. I can’t bring myself to acknowledge the question either way.

“You could take a page from my book,” Alexei suggests. “If you want to keep her, then marry her. Viktor will not be able to interfere with the sanctity of those vows.”

“I am not you,” I mock. “If I married the girl, he would just kill me. He wants me to marry Ana.”

Alexei stands up and shrugs into his jacket, apparently finished with this conversation.

“So marry Ana,” he says. “And send the girl back to her father as a ruined woman. I’m sure he will forgive her.”

He’s a bastard for saying so. Alexei knows just as well as I do that Manuel will never forgive her.





I wipe the steam from the mirror in the bathroom, hesitant to see the girl staring back at me. My face is puffy from crying. The whites of my eyes bloodshot. My skin is red from the scalding water of the bath and the subsequent scrubbing of the towel. It falls from my hand, and I stare at my naked form in the reflection.

The therapist Nikolai hired to fix me told me I should find something I love about myself every time I look in the mirror. But tonight, there is only hate. I hate every filthy thing about me. My hips are too big. The stomach that used to be concave is flat and squishy, and my ribs are suffocated beneath a layer of flesh that wasn’t there before. I’m soft in too many places, and I want to punish myself for allowing him to control me this way.

He made me ugly, so he wouldn’t want me, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting him. Mischa was right. There’s something wrong with me. There must be to want someone who is so bad for me. Someone who would throw me to the wolves without a second thought.

I did not think I had another tear to shed, but still they streak down my face. I have never cried so much in my life. My father would never have allowed me to be so weak. But I can feel it happening, and it’s out of my control. I’m splintering. Shattering. Fracturing. He’s taken away my power and left me only with pain.

I lock my hands into fists and yank on my hair. The hurt sometimes helps, but not this time. It only reminds me that I’m alive, and I am defenseless.

I walk from the bathroom, still naked, and listen for the sounds downstairs. I can’t hear anything, but I can imagine it well enough. The dinner party lives on, and Nikolai sits beside his soon-to-be beloved fiancée while I suffer in silence.

Fatigue seeps into my bones, and the divide in my heart grows with every passing day. I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of hoping for a brighter future when there is none to be found. He can have his Russian wife. And when he tires of this game, I can finally have the only peace this world has to offer me.

Death.

Without bothering to dress, I open the bedroom door and walk down the hall to his office. This is the only place to find the cure for what ails me now. A bottle of cognac beckons from his desk. Probably expensive.

I swipe it and drift back to my room like an apparition. Unnoticed and unfelt. Laughter floats up from down below, and I cannot mistake that timbre. Nikolai is enjoying himself, and I think I should enjoy myself too.

The cognac opens with a satisfying pop, and I drink straight from the bottle. It burns my throat and eyes, and eventually my stomach too. But it’s a good burn. A burn that makes everything else fade away.

My party is cut disappointingly short when the door opens, and Mischa is standing there. His eyes move to the bottle in my hand, and then over my naked body.

In the back of my mind, there’s a small distant voice that tells me I should care. I’m supposed to be a good girl. I’m supposed to be proper and modest and reserved at all times. But tonight, Nikolai decided to make me filthy instead.

“Nakya.” Mischa frowns. “Don’t you know you should never drink alone?”

I collapse back against the pillows, the alcohol flooding my brain and my system. I don’t care anymore. And that’s what I tell him when I cross my legs and make a flippant gesture with my hand.

“Are you here to take me?”

He rubs a hand over the back of his neck and sighs. “If not me, then someone else will. It has been ordered, and it must be done.”

“Because of my father,” I say.