Then there was me.
Alone as fucking ever, and for the first time, it bothered me. Maybe it was a side effect of the narcotics they’d pumped me with to lessen the pain. Perhaps it was the psychological result of being held captive and tortured for a week, a plaything for a sadistic asshole to push close to death.
I would be solo during my recovery. Sure, I’d be home. My brothers would be around, but they all had other commitments and loyalties to consider, like their women and children.
Like walls trapping me in my mind, my injuries and aches rose up to a suffocating level of hopelessness. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t fight back. But I would soon.
I vowed to.
Erik Avilov wouldn’t survive my wrath. He would receive every bit of agony he’d doled out on me.
My need for revenge would keep me company. I would let the ideas of torturing him fill my mind. Fantasies of inflicting pain and earning his cries and begs for mercy could fester in my mind.
I was already in a dark place. I lived for the purpose of making that fucker pay. No room was left to envy my brothers for finding the women who completed them. And trickles of jealousy would need to cease flowing.
All I had to look forward to was regaining my mobility and strength. Once I did, I would be on my way to find Erik and give him a taste of his own medicine.
Slipping in and out of consciousness spared me from hearing Maxim and Nadia talk and kiss. The flight wasn’t a long one, and with this private plane, we were given the luxury of a short trip home.
We landed, and Maxim accompanied me to the hospital. Ivan and Alek waited there, both of them sporting expressions of concern. With them were several of the Bratva’s top soldiers.
One glance at Alek suggested that he knew that I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I couldn’t, not for long, with the fractures in my cheekbone that shot pain through my face.
He nodded at me, acknowledging my arrival before they wheeled me off to surgery.
Of course, I would be expected to tell him what happened. I would also want to sit in on all the meetings to hear what they’d learned. None of us would let the incident of my captivity and torture be swept away now that I’d been found and rescued. They’d want justice as well.
But only I would deliver it. Seeing revenge was all I would endure living for.
Nothing else mattered.
3
HANNAH
The next day after an even longer shift, I came home to loud music playing from Melissa’s room. The heavy bass didn’t match the tempo of my pulse.
“I can’t get a break,” I muttered to myself as I closed and locked the apartment door. I didn’t need a break from this life. I wanted a whole new one, far from her.
Spotting Devin’s shoes on the floor near the entrance, I knew why the music was cranked up to the decibel that would make someone call the landlord on us. Whenever they “partied” and screwed all night, the headboard would bang against my wall and keep me up. So did her porn-star-like screams and moans that I bet she did just to make him think he was some studly man of erectile might.
I wouldn’t know. I’d never had sex. Still a virgin and not in the mood to change that status anytime soon, I could admit a fair amount of naivety. It just sounded stupid, theatrical, and weird, like she was trying to amuse him.
I shook my head and headed to my room. If any neighbors planned to come and knock on the door to complain about the noise, Melissa and Devin could deal with it. After I reached my room, I grabbed my things for a fast shower and got that over with.
Back in my small safe space, I rooted out the protein bars I'd stashed in my closet. It wasn’t a balanced meal, but I’d missed lunch and dinner, so it would do. The less chance I had of seeing my sister, the better for all of us.
I couldn’t stand Devin. He leered at me so creepily, and his attention on me pissed off Melissa, who’d go off on a rant that I had designs on her man.
I didn’t trust myself to see her, either. She used the money I gave her for the electric bill on who knew what, probably clothes, and I got a text that the rent payment was short two hundred dollars too.
“I hate you,” I mumbled as I slipped in earplugs to block the sounds in the next room. Between the music and her strange shouts that were supposed to be sexy, I wished I were deaf.
“Get a job. Move out. And find your own place to be loud.”
Whispering to myself wouldn’t solve anything, but it beat thinking it and letting the negativity seep deeper in my mind.
Melissa got this apartment after our parents died, and because she was an adult while I was a minor, she had to be on the lease. She scraped by with odd jobs that she quit or got fired from too quickly, and I was the one who made the money. Under-the-table wages for washing dishes. Dog walking. And most often—babysitting.
