Wicked Vow

Chapter One
Natalia

“You’ll do as I say,” I tell him slowly, “Whether I’m willing to shoot you or not. And I’ll tell you why.”

My finger curls around the trigger, a definitive threat.

“You won’t hurt me again. Because I’m pregnant.”

The stunned look on his face is the most satisfying thing I think I might have ever seen. I’d been fairly certain that I was right, that the gamble would pay off. It had been the only chance I was going to get. I don’t know if he was planning to kill me a few moments ago, but I know for sure that I’d set off his temper in a dangerous way. 

The blood from the shallow cuts he left is still trickling down my skin. I feel savage, feral, as I hold the gun against his temple, standing there naked and covered in the old blood of my stalker and my own fresh blood. 

Outside, on the lawn, the body of the man Mikhail killed is still lying there. The man who’s been stalking me for months now, whose identity I still don’t know. If he worked for my father, it’s no one I’ve ever seen before or recognize. 

The obvious answer is that it’s someone from the club, someone who saw me dance–which feels like a lifetime ago. I don’t even feel like the same girl I was before Mikhail kidnapped me, the woman who styled herself ‘Athena’ and danced for men at the Cat’s Meow in the seediest part of Moscow. 

I certainly don’t feel like Natalia Obelensky, heiress to the Obelensky fortune and prima ballerina of the Moscow Ballet. But that’s who I am. Who I’ve been.

Who Mikhail wanted to hurt. 

“You’re lying,” he manages, his gaze running over my face again and again. Everything I’m used to seeing in his eyes–anger, obsession, lust–none of it is there right now. There’s only shock and suspicion. Both of which I can understand. I’ve been trying to come to terms with it myself. Waiting for the right time to use it. I hadn’t been sure if Mikhail would care.

When I’d found the picture in his wallet, the photo of the blonde woman and the laughing little boy, I’d thought it might matter. That it might remind him of something he’d lost. But I hadn’t been sure until he told me who they were. Not a wife and child, as I’d thought, but a sister and nephew. His family, all the same.

Brutally tortured and murdered by my father.

His desire for revenge makes sense. It’s understandable, even. I can reconcile the things he’s done to me, considering what my father did to those he loved. 

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to allow him to continue doing it.

It’s time for me to make some of the decisions around here.

“Fine.” I shrug, the gun still leveled at his head. “If you don’t believe me, that’s no problem. We’ll go in the bathroom, and I’ll show you the test. I saved it. I’ll take another one right in front of you. I don’t care.”

I shove the gun a little harder against his temple, my teeth gritting as I stare him down. “I’m pregnant, Mikhail. I fucking hate that it’s yours, but it’s the truth, and that’s all there is to it.”

He sneers at me, his gaze raking lewdly up and down my body in a way that’s almost comforting, because it’s far more like him than the shell-shocked stare he was giving me a moment ago. This, at least, I know what to do with. 

“How do you know it’s mine?” he spits out. “I’ve seen how you behave with me, filthy little kotenok. The things you crave. How do you know it’s not some other man who’s had his cock in you before I got there? You were no fucking virgin, that’s for sure.”

The urge to pistol whip him into silence is strong, but I keep my composure by a thread. “No, I wasn’t,” I tell him evenly. “Which you more than enjoyed. I don’t think you’d have had half as much fun with an innocent, shrinking violet. But I wasn’t with anyone for long enough before you to be sure. Adrian was the last man I was with before you, and I know it isn’t his–although I sure fucking wish it was. I’d rather go back to him than have anything to do with you.”

It’s not strictly true–I have no desire to go back to Adrian and wouldn’t relish the idea of telling him I was pregnant with his baby–but it has the desired effect. One mention of the handsome green-eyed Greek man I spent a few weeks with in Santorini before returning to Moscow to hide. Mikhail’s face twists in a jealous rage that makes me almost want to flinch back with the violence of it.

“Don’t fucking say his fucking name!” Mikhail snarls, lunging at me, and I take a step back, pushing the muzzle of the gun against his head again as I urge him back.

“Why?” I taunt. “Because you hate the thought of his mouth and cock where yours have been? That’s it, isn’t it? You hate the idea of his tongue on my pussy, making me scream his name. Oh god, Adrian–” 

I heighten my voice in a sing-song imitation, and Mikhail’s lip curls as he glares angrily at me. I can’t help but laugh.

“He made me scream so loudly the whole villa heard. Especially when he fucked me with that big, thick cock of his.” I run my tongue over my lower lip, grinning viciously at Mikhail. “He tasted so good, too. I loved swallowing his cum for him. He fucked me everywhere, better than I’d ever been fucked–well, almost everywhere. He wanted to fuck me in the ass, but I wouldn’t let him. I should have, though. Then there would have been nothing left for you.”

It’s hard to repress the shudder of desire that goes through me at that memory–the memory of Mikhail pinning me down as he forced his cock in my ass for the first time, the way he made me come, the brutal pleasure of it. I’d never experienced anything like it. 

Nothing with Mikhail has ever been like anything I’ve experienced. Even now, I can’t help the way my pulse beats faster at the memories of it all–even just a short while ago in bed, both of us covered in the blood of the violence outside. My thighs are still sticky with his cum.

“That’s not the way it went, though, is it?” Mikhail sneers, his ice-blue gaze hateful as he stares me down. “I made you scream for me when I fucked your ass the first time. You fucking loved it. And it was mine. The first man who ever got to do that to you. You can’t change that, suka.”

“No, I can’t,” I tell him evenly. “But I could shoot you right now, and it wouldn’t matter, would it? I could shoot you, clean up, put on a nice dress, and find some other handsome man to fuck me so well that I’d never think about you again. Everywhere. It wouldn’t even matter anymore if I let him come in me. But I think I’d let him come in my ass, just out of spite. Just so you’d roll over in your shallow fucking grave.”

“Do it.” Mikhail laughs. “I don’t think you fucking can.”

“I’ve killed men before.” I give him the same hard stare right back, and from the waver in his gaze, I think he realizes that I’m telling the truth. My voice has stopped shaking, and so has my hand. “The only reason you’re still alive, Mikhail, is because I can’t get out of Russia on my own. I need to see Viktor Andreyev, and you’re going to take me to him. I need to know where my money is, and my old passport won’t get me out of this fucking country, not with Obelensky on it.”

I take a step closer, the gun still pressed to his head. “So this is how it’s going to go. I’m going to make sure you can’t get away, just like you did to me. I’m going to take a shower and clean all this mess up off of me. And then so are you. You’re going to get dressed, and then you’re going to get me a passport and ID that will enable me to get out of Russia. In fact, you’re going to get new ones for Ruby, too, just in case she has some reason she can’t leave. And then, when all that’s done, you’re going to get us on a plane to see Viktor Andreyev.”

“Like fuck I am,” Mikhail spits, and I laugh. 

“You can do the things I just said, or you can die. It’s your choice. Either way, I’ll figure out my next steps.” I shrug. “Who knows? Maybe I can find a way to contact Viktor on my own, and he’ll get me out of here. Maybe I don’t even need you.” 

My finger curls around the trigger with the slightest pressure. Mikhail’s expression doesn’t change, but I know that doesn’t mean anything. He’s a trained Bratva enforcer; he knows how to hide fear, pain, and all of that. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel it.

I wish I could know what he’s feeling right now, at this moment, with the gun pressed against his temple. I wish I could know if he’s feeling the same fear he made me feel. 

“Go into the bathroom,” I tell him, moving to one side as I keep the gun where it is. “Now, or I’ll assume that you’re choosing for me to shoot you.”

“I want to see the test,” he snaps. “I don’t believe you for a second, suka. I think you’re lying to me.”

“Why would I, when you’ve so clearly demonstrated to me how much you hate being lied to?” I walk behind him, the gun pressed to the back of his head now, all the way to where the box of tampons is still sitting by the toilet. “Pick that up. And don’t make any fast moves, or I’ll shoot you. I’d rather have to figure this out alone than let you get the upper hand on me again.”

From the careful way he moves, I’m fairly certain he believes me. He holds out the box, and I nod at it.

“Open it up. The test is inside.”

Gingerly, Mikhail opens the box, slipping out the pregnancy test I’d hidden inside. He looks at it for a long moment, and then he snorts, tossing it into the trash can.

“Maybe it’s a false result. Maybe you faked it somehow. How should I know?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I look at him, exasperated. “Fine. You want to see it in real-time?”

I keep the gun pointed at his head as I reach for the remaining test. “Move, and I’ll shoot,” I warn him again. “I’m not fucking kidding.”

I can see the fury in Mikhail’s eyes, and it thrills me. All the more so, because I know that if he didn’t believe that I’d shoot him, he would have already rushed me. He knows I’ll do it–or at least he’s pretty certain–and he’s not willing to take the risk. 

Five minutes later, I hold up the test for him to see. “Well? Black and white–or rather, blue and white–enough for you?”

Mikhail’s face changes. Only for a second, almost too quickly to notice for most people. But I see it, in the moment before his expression returns back to the hard, angry sneer he’d been wearing before, when he realizes that it’s true. 

I see the moment his face softens, and I know I’ve found his weakness, just as I’d thought.

“Strip down,” I tell him, taking a few steps back with the gun still pointed directly at him.  

Mikhail leers at me. “Horny again for me already, kotenok?”

“Hardly,” I spit at him, even as I feel my body clench at the memory of what we did in bed not all that long ago. “But you’re going to get cleaned up, so I can make sure you don’t go anywhere while I do the same.”

There’s a certain pleasure in putting him through a similar humiliation to what he’d made me feel. I see the anger burning in his face as he strips off the boxers he’d put on after we’d gotten into bed, and I know I need to be careful. One wrong move that gives him the upper hand, and I’ll be much, much worse off than before.

He walks to the shower, turning it on as he glares at me. “You’ll pay for this, suka,” Mikhail hisses. “Just wait. You can’t keep this up forever.”

I smile tightly at him. “I don’t need to. Just long enough to get what I want.”

I stand there, leaning against the counter and waiting as he showers. The thrill of finally having some power over him ripples through me as I wait, looking at the opaque outline of his body through the glass shower door. He’s objectified me for so long now, through weeks of coming to the club, taking me on “dates” that were only ever meant to trick me into captivity here–not to mention everything that’s happened since I’d agreed to go home with him that night.

You enjoyed it, though, the small, insidious voice in my head whispers. You were terrified, sure. It hasn’t been all good. But you can’t pretend that you didn’t want any of it.

“Happy?” Mikhail asks sarcastically when he steps out, reaching for a towel. 

I force myself to look at his face, not wanting him to have the satisfaction of thinking–or knowing–that I’m checking him out. A man so terrifying shouldn’t be so sexy. He’s gorgeous at any time–all of him lean and chiseled with muscle, from his arms down to his ridged abs and the cuts of muscle below that–but fresh and wet out of the shower, with his blond hair slicked against his scalp and water dripping from the lines of muscle across his torso, he’s stunningly gorgeous. It takes everything in me not to look at his cock, soft between his thighs but still thick, and think of all the ways he’s pleasured me with it.

“Go in the bedroom,” I snap, nodding toward the door, and Mikhail smirks.

“I knew you’d come around, kotenok,” he purrs, his eyes raking over my body. “You should shower first, too, though.”

“I plan on it. But you won’t be getting laid tonight.” I glare at him, lifting the gun. “Go get on the fucking bed, and stop with the commentary.”

Mikhail chuckles under his breath, but he does as I say. The rush of power I feel as he walks to the bed is almost intoxicating, and I wonder if this is how he felt with me–if it’s wrong for me to feel this way. If the pleasure I’m getting from turning the tables on him means I, too, am the sort of person I never thought I would be.

Maybe I’ve been that all along. I helped Max and Levin kill my father’s men. I helped them and Sasha escape. I didn’t scruple at anything that needed to be done.

It’s possible that he and I aren’t really so different after all. 

I don’t have time to think that over, though. I follow him as he goes to the bed, and I keep the gun against the side of his head as I reach up to cuff one of his hands.

“Leaving one free? Very considerate of you,” Mikhail says, smirking, and I glare at him.

“It’s not so you can jerk your fucking cock,” I spit. “It’s so you can make the phone call I need you to make.” I reach down to where he’d left his pants discarded on the floor earlier, fishing out his phone, and hand it to him. “Don’t even think about calling someone to get you out of this, either. Call whoever it is that can get a clean passport for Ruby and me, and IDs. One word that sounds like it’s anyone else, and–”

“You’ll shoot me. I’ve got it by now,” Mikhail says sarcastically, snatching the phone from me.

I listen carefully as he makes the call. It’s risky. If he did call someone to help him, I might be in more danger than I was before. But something tells me, from the way Mikhail kept to himself as he’d stalked me, that he hasn’t let anyone in on this. And even now, as furious as he is with me, I don’t think he’d let anyone else touch or hurt me. 

Especially not now that he knows the truth.

When he’s finished making the arrangements, he hands me the phone back. “You’re going to regret this,” he says, hissing the words through clenched teeth. “Meeting with Viktor isn’t going to go the way you think it is. He’s not going to help you. He’s going to help me, and then you–”

“Will regret it? What about the baby?” I smile condescendingly down at him. “It’s my problem whether Viktor will want to see me or not. You just need to take the steps I tell you to take, and I’ll worry about the rest from there.”

I cuff his other hand as he glares up at me, and only then do I finally lower the gun. “We’ll see how you feel on the other side of all of this,” I tell him, setting the gun and the phone well out of his reach, before turning back to face the nude man now cuffed to his own bed. 

“It’s time for the predator to understand how it feels to be the prey.”