into. I creep forward and press my ear against the door. It’s hard to make out everything, but I can hear the muffled conversation.
“—back to sleep, Niko,” Matvei is murmuring. All the anger and ice is gone from his voice. He sounds like—well, a father figure, I guess, although I’m still having trouble imagining him actually being one of those.
The thought of Matvei teaching a little boy how to ride a bike, or fixing a daughter’s pigtails, is hilariously wrong in so many ways. Like a dog walking on its hind legs. But there’s no denying that he’s got a tender, warm tone right now that I would never have thought he’d be capable of.
“You woke me up,” the little boy replies, his voice thick with sleepiness. “Talking too loud.”
Matvei chuckles softly. “I’m sorry, Niko. We will leave you to sleep quietly. Goodnight.”
“’Night,” Nikolas mumbles softly.
I hear the rustling of clothing. Matvei must be coming back out of the room. But before I hear his footsteps, the little boy speaks up one more time.
“Matvei?” he says.
“Yes, Niko?”
“When are Mommy and Daddy coming home?”
My heart freezes in my chest. That soft warmth in my stomach at the cuteness of a sleepy little boy being comforted – what my friend Cassie would call “my ovaries squealing” – vanishes immediately.
In its place is cold dread.
Everything I suspected, all the crazy thoughts of crying mothers and desperate fathers, of orphaned children stolen away in the middle of the night—it’s true. Matvei ripped this poor child from his home.
For what reason, I don’t have the faintest idea, but there is one thing I can be sure of, and that’s that it is not a good reason. Not a happy reason.
Matvei isn’t exactly Santa Claus, spreading joy far and wide.
He’s more like the Grim fucking Reaper.
So for a little boy in his care to be asking about his parents in that sad voice… it doesn’t exactly inspire the warm fuzzies.
“Not tonight,” Matvei answers carefully. “Go to sleep, Niko. I will see you in the morning.”
I turn away from the door and sag against the wall. I feel weak and nauseous all of the sudden. Because if that boy is a prisoner and I’m now his caretaker, that makes me what? A co-conspirator? A warden?
I straighten up as soon as Matvei re-emerges. “I’m not going to be an accomplice to any of your horrible shit,” I snap.
He turns to face me slowly. “What?”
I look behind him, at the boy’s room. “You heard me.” My words sound more confident than I feel inside.
Matvei takes two steps towards me, cutting down the distance between us to mere inches. He leans closer. His voice is low enough not to disturb Nikolas, who has just fallen asleep.
“You will do whatever I tell you to do,” he whispers harshly. “You don’t call the shots around here. You are mine. When you pay off your father’s debt, that’s when you’ll be allowed to make decisions. Not a second before then. Do I make myself clear?”
I want to slap him. His breath smells like warm mint and his body radiates heat. I’m almost ashamed of how hot he makes me.
And something in his eyes tells me that he knows it. That he can sense my weakness.
God, he really is like a shark, and all the horrible shit brewing inside me is like blood in the water. It just draws him closer.
He raises a hand and gently places it against the base of my throat. I try to back up, but there is no more room to go as I bump into the wall behind me. Even still, I’m sucking in, shrinking down, trying to escape, even when we both know that there is not a snowball’s chance in hell of escaping from this man, this beast, this monster.
“I asked you a question, Victoria. Do I make myself clear?”
“I won’t help you guard a prisoner,” I whisper back. I can’t let him see my weakness. I can’t let him smell my fear. If I give in now, I’m as good as dead, and if I’m dead, so is my dad.
I have to be strong.
I have to fight.
But to my surprise, he just smiles. It’s a slow, arrogant smile, spreading across his face tooth by tooth. His eyes shine like a pool of oil, all darkness, but still somehow catching what little light exists in this shadowy hallway.
“Let me ask you a different question,” he murmurs. His voice is low and raspy. It sends goosebumps racing