VAS (The V Games Book 3) Read online

  “Come on, Vas, let’s just slip off somewhere,” she pleads. “No one will notice.”

  The last thing I want to do is sneak off to sate her need for cock. My eyes search the people gathered for someone in particular. Once my eyes latch onto her, I can’t pull them away.

  “Why can you never give me your attention?” Vika huffs. “You’re always so distracted.”

  I’m so fucking bored with her mundane existence, I can’t even fake it right now. My back stiffens when Veniamin tears away from my sister Diana and rips through the gathering of people like a hot knife cutting butter. The crowd parts like the fucking Red Sea—all but her.

  My damaged little star.

  I start forward, but I’m not going to get to her in time. He mows straight through her, sending her toppling to the floor. The tray she was holding crashes down on top of her, glass shattering against the tile beneath us. Ven’s shoulder barges me as he continues toward his target behind me.

  “Darya,” I breathe, taking a knee to clear the fucking mess all over her. She hisses and moves her hand from her stomach. Crimson stains litter the white shirt she’s wearing. It’s the first and only time I’ve seen her allowed to wear anything. Yuri likes her naked and compliant.

  Fuck, she’s bleeding everywhere.

  I search her body for injury, ignoring the roaring going on behind me.

  “It’s okay, Vas,” Darya whispers. I can’t help but notice all the bruises on her thighs—bruises that motherfucker put on her one of the many times he raped her. She wears her collar, but not the leash today. My blood boils at the fact that she’s kept this way. One day, I’m going to kill him for it.

  I just want to help her…among other things.

  “I swear, I’m okay,” she urges. Her golden eyes dart up past me, fear glimmering in them.

  I follow her worried stare to Yuri standing behind me.

  “What the fuck, boy?” he snarls, then turns to bark at his son. “Vlad, why is Veniamin throttling your sister? And why the hell is this Volkov bastard fretting over my fucking pet?”

  Vlad moves to deal with the ruckus behind me. I turn to see him pulling Ven from Vika.

  Shit, what the hell is happening?

  Vika gasps at the air. “What the hell?” she screeches, her voice hoarse.

  “Everyone out!” Yuri barks. Feet scurry over the tiled floors toward the exits.

  What is it with Vasiliev gatherings?

  When there are just Volkovs, Vasilievs, and Vetrovs left in the room, Yuri lights a cigarette.

  Ven is bright red, and Ruslan has joined Vlad, struggling to keep him at bay. Diana is talking to him in hushed tones, and Vika is glaring at me with Darya in my arms.

  “Someone better start talking,” Yuri demands as he blows out a plume of smoke.

  “This animal tried to kill me and you didn’t stop him!” Vika screeches at her father.

  “Veniamin?” Yuri asks.

  “She killed Niko.” Ven’s tone is deadly.

  Vika pales and puts her hand to the bruises forming on her throat from Ven choking the life from her.

  “Veniamin, it’s unfortunate that Vika’s ambitions and ego got out of hand. What is it going to take for me to make this right?” Yuri asks, and everyone in the room but Ruslan has slack jaws.

  “Daddy?” Vika gasps.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he snaps. “You’ve been a burden on this family.”

  “This is what I was going to tell you,” Ruslan states as he pulls some papers from his jacket and hands them to Ven. “Father and Yuri made a deal months ago. You and Vlad own the shares to The V Games, equally so. You’re partners. It’s all yours.”

  Ven and Vlad both become rigid, and Diana stumbles away, turning to search Yuri’s face for truth to those words.

  “Yegor was ready to pass the baton on to you, Ven, and had something over Leonid Volkov,” Yuri says coldly. “He managed to get the Volkov shares, along with the small amount from Iosif Voskoboynikov. It would have given you fifty-one percent. Of course, I couldn’t allow this. In order to get that one percent back, we agreed I’d step down and both our sons would take over.” Yuri stubs out the cigarette. “So, you see, we don’t want any conflict. You men have to work together, and this…” he says as he waves his hand between Vika and Ven, “won’t do.”

  “I want retribution for my brother,” Ven snaps.

  “It will cost you one percent.” Yuri grins. Manipulative bastard.

  He wants Vlad to have controlling shares.

  “Done,” Ven bites out.

  “Ven,” I warn, and all attention falls on me.

  “Why the fuck are you cuddled up to my father’s whore, Vas? Don’t pretend like you give a shit about me,” Vika cries out, mistaking my warning to Ven as concern for her.

  “She’s not a whore,” I grind out.

  “Oh God, you don’t know how right you are.” Ruslan snort-laughs. He marches over to Yuri and shoves a document in his hand.

  “What’s going on?” Vlad asks.

  Yuri glowers as he reads the document in his hands.

  “Vlad,” Ruslan says, an evil glint in his eyes as he gestures to Darya. “Meet your baby sister.”

  An appalled chuckle threatens to ring out from the absurdity of his statement, but I choke on it when silence fills the room. It’s deafening. My brow crashes and my heart stammers.

  “What the fuck did you say?” Vlad growls, waltzing over to his father and snatching the document from his hands.

  I study Darya closely, trying to find proof in his statement. Now that she’s not looking up into the light, I see her eyes are more of a rich brown than amber—nothing like the Vasilievs’.

  Her features are soft and delicate, a contrast to Vika’s.

  Vlad looks over to Ruslan with narrowed eyes. “What the fuck is this?”

  “Don’t shoot the messenger,” Rus says. “I found it amongst my father’s things.”

  “He’s lying,” Vika yells, punishing me a thousand ways in her head for me still being on my knees tending to Darya.

  Darya’s wounds are superficial, but she needs a doctor.

  “Get her up,” Vlad croaks out. I pick her up, and Yuri growls.

  “It’s not true. It’s one of those tricks Yegor liked to play. Games, and this is just another one,” Yuri grunts. “She’s no one. Tell him, girl.” His demands make her flinch, and she begins shuddering in my hold.

  “I’m no one,” she mimics.

  That piece of shit needs to be put in the ring with me so I can teach him how to take a fucking beating like he dishes out.

  “You’re someone,” I tell her, my voice gruff. Lowering my lips to her ear so only she can hear me, I say, “To me, you’re someone.”

  Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on me.

  My gaze remains fixated on the pattern of a rug in a sitting room just outside the main one. It’s a room I’ve never been allowed in. Until now. The pattern is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Gold and reds and oranges. All interwoven into a detailed work of art. For the floor, no less. Something meant to be stepped on and dirtied up. The intricate stitch-work reminds me of Sister Ivanonva’s. She was in her mid-thirties and the closest person I had to a friend back at the convent. Her needlework was marveled over and praised by all the clergy.

  Pain aches in my chest.

  I miss her.

  I miss the simplicity of my life there.

  Angry, raised voices come from just outside the door, and I peek up at the nurse tending to me. She has cleaned my wounds and covered me in bandages. Her fingertips are soft and gentle, but experienced. My cuts are not deep, and the pain is nearly laughable compared to the agony I’ve endured within these walls.

  I close my eyes and will the tears away.

  I won’t think about it. I won’t think about him.

  “Think, motherfucker, think.” A deep, rumbly voice steals my attention. Like always. Vas Volkov. Someone who drips with sin like the rest of them, but who looks like an angel doing it. Sometimes I wonder if God has sent him to watch me perform these tests thrown at me. Other times, I think God has abandoned me and I’m in some purgatorial version of Hell on Earth. Either way, I’m unsure of the role Vas plays in my world. When my skin heats, I bite on my lip and say a silent prayer.

  Lord Jesus Christ our God, give me strength.

  Vas is pacing the floor, and I’m no longer able to avoid staring at him. He wears a suit, minus the jacket now, like them, but something about him is not as refined. Wilder and barely hidden. A beast rages beneath the surface. Under normal circumstances, such a notion would terrify me. But having dealt with what I’ve gone through as of late, I urge to unleash his beast. What’s the worst that could happen? Get killed and freed from this hellacious prison?

  As though he’s thinking about devouring me whole, his white teeth bite on the inside corner of his bottom lip, his incisor glistening in the light. Teeth that look far deadlier than any demon I’ve read about in my studies.

  My skin warms again. There’s something overwhelmingly sinful about wishing for death from a man’s teeth.

  Lord Jesus Christ our God, forgive me.

  His strong fingers spear through his thick, brown mane. If I were a braver woman, I’d walk over to him, take his hands in mine, and tell him not to worry so much about me.

  And he does worry. It’s written all over his face. Perhaps that’s why I struggle so much in his presence. Why I want to free his beast. Because deep down, I feel like maybe his beast would save me. That he wouldn’t destroy me like the others. He would pull me into his powerful arms and slay those demons for me.

  If Sister Ivanonva were here, she’d send me to one of the chapels to pray. I’m sure my face gives away my sinful thou
ghts. She always seemed to know exactly what I was thinking.

  Still, I can’t look away. The cross he always wears around his neck remains hidden beneath his collar and tie, but I feel its strength radiating my way. It’s the sign I needed all those nights ago when he came into the kitchen and changed my damnation into redemption. That night, his tie was gone and his buttons were undone at the top. The chain glimmered in the light, giving me a beautiful glimpse of hope.

  I don’t know why the devil man took me from my home at the convent and forced me into this world. It was so long ago, I can barely remember the time that’s passed now. Months? Years? Some days felt like forever—an eternity forced into twenty-four hours. The devil man condemned me to such a life, but if he hadn’t, I’d never have found Vas Volkov.

  “Break her down. Yuri likes them compliant.”

  The devil man’s cruel words sound in my mind, tormenting me. I look back over at Vas. A flutter like pigeons in the old chapel I was so fond of echoes in my chest. Whenever he returns my gaze—as though he can see right inside my head—my skin burns and my heart sings. Only one person has made me feel so worthy. And that’s him. My little glimmer of hope.

  “I need to take blood,” the nurse informs me, holding up a needle, distracting me from my thoughts.

  I slip my arm from the jacket Vas gave me and offer it to her. I try not to inhale his scent. Masculine. Powerful. Intoxicating. A hint of mint like from the garden behind the convent. Archbishop Dimitrov favored mint in his beverages, so we grew it in great quantities. The archbishop was kind to me, just as Vas is. Mint reminds me of moonlight and warm summer breezes and a tiny bit of freedom.

  “Don’t you think she’s given enough blood tonight?” Vas grinds out, stalking over to us and covering my body further by pulling the lapels of his jacket closed. His touch sends shivers rippling through me.

  “I can take hair instead,” the nurse tells him, replacing the needle with scissors.

  “Please don’t worry about me,” I whisper to him. Taking the scissors from her, I snip a piece of my hair and drop it into the container she has on her tray.

  “Is that all?” Vas demands. She nods and packs her things away.

  “Thank you for treating me,” I tell her, my voice a raspy whisper.

  “You only speak when spoken to—which is fucking never.”

  I drive away Molokh’s evil words, trying not to let out a whimper.

  The nurse looks up at me with surprise and furrows her brow. “You’re welcome.”

  Once she leaves, Vas sighs and drops into the seat next to me. His legs are spread slightly in a pose that sends my heart racing. I can’t help but stare at his solid, muscular thighs under the straining fabric of his slacks. The heat from his body warms mine, and the urge to burrow into his side is strong.

  “How are you feeling?” The intensity of his icy-blue gaze on mine makes my stomach ache. He’s just so handsome. Like God truly did spend extra time making his features utterly perfect. A strong, chiseled jaw. A smile that belongs on an angel. A protectiveness that seems to radiate from him like the sun. So warm. So, so warm.

  This world I live in is always so cold.

  “Confused.” I bite on my bottom lip and hold his stare.

  When a strand of my hair falls into my face, his hand moves to curl it behind my ear. The brush of his fingers against my cheek makes me long for the tenderness.

  Without permission, I lean into his touch and close my eyes. All I’ve known is distance. The nuns at the convent I grew up in kept a professional relationship between the girls who lived there. Comfort was something our beliefs gave us. God was our father, our master, our life.

  But I was forsaken by him when he allowed the devil to come into his house and take me from it.

  Lord Jesus Christ our God, forgive me.

  Sister Ivanonva would tell me the Lord was testing me. Why must his tests be so difficult? So soul shattering? I’m weary from all the tests. I’m not strong. So many days, I fail at my faith in him and my religion.

  The door creaks open, and Irina comes into the room. She’s the wife of Vlad Vasiliev, the son of the man who holds me captive in his hell. Could what they say be true? That this man is my kin?

  “Vlad sent me,” she says, smiling. “Yuri is being stubborn.”

  Yuri. I despise that name. I call him Molokh, the demon I’ve been sacrificed to, a god amongst the weak. His flames scorn my flesh, but don’t burn my soul.

  Even though he tries to break me, his evil cannot dwell within me.

  “Darya, could it be true?” Irina asks, coming to sit on the arm of the couch beside me. “Could you be Yuri’s daughter?”

  Never.

  I have one father. A holy one.

  An unpleasant stirring churns in my stomach. I fight the nausea threatening to spill from me and ruin the wonderful tapestry on the floor.

  Yuri Vasiliev is bred from the depths of hell.

  “In order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes,” I reply, my words a whisper. My eyes lock with Vas’s. I let them drift down his throat and burn a hole in the fabric of his dress shirt where his cross remains hidden.

  I miss my cross terribly. It was stripped from me along with my sanity many, many months ago. Absently, I touch the base of my throat where it hung for so many years. Now, a collar like that of the dog’s at the convent is wrapped around my throat as a reminder of my place in this home. In this world. Am I forsaken?

  “It’s a passage in the Bible,” Vas informs a confused Irina. “Second Corinthians, chapter two, verse eleven.”

  “You read the Bible?” She smiles and raises one of her perfectly manicured brows. Her appearance and demeanor is soft and welcoming tonight. It’s confusing to me. This woman has lived here where I’ve merely existed, and this is the first time I’ve really looked at her and shared her company.

  “So, what happens now?” Vas asks, undoing his cuffs and pushing the sleeves up his forearms, ignoring her question. An array of color paints his flesh and I’m transfixed on the images of angels and demons raging war on his skin. It’s like looking at the ceiling in one of our many chapels back at the convent. A sob catches in my throat as tears pool in my eyes.

  Is this yet another test of my faith? I question in my mind. I’ve gotten so used to silent conversations and being ignored, I don’t realize Vas is talking to me.

  “Darya, please don’t cry. I promise we’re going to find out who you are,” he vows.

  “And where you belong,” Irina adds.

  “We know where she belongs,” Vas informs her. He boldly wraps an arm around my waist, sending shivers shooting through me, then drags me into his lap. I gasp at the gesture, then relax and breathe him in. Up close, he smells of freshly picked mint leaves from the garden mixed with ocean water in the summer. It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful. The way he holds me is secure and protective and it makes me want to cry. His arms cage me to him in an unyielding embrace. It’s so different than the forceful nature of those who walk in this very home.

  I should fear the touch of a man. If experience here has taught me anything, it’s that, but I don’t fear his, I welcome it. For months, he’s shown me not all men harbor the devil’s intentions.

  “And where is that?” Irina asks.

  “Not here,” he says fiercely, rising to his feet and carrying me with him. Fear has me frozen in his hold. Not fear of him, but fear of what will happen to him if the demon Molokh sees him handling his property.

  “Wait!” Irina calls after us, but Vas is moving too swiftly for the door.

  Just as we reach it, it swings open. Vlad, red-faced and furious, looking very much like his father, glowers at us. A whine slips past my lips and I cling desperately to Vas. His grip tightens and a growl rumbles from him.

  “Out of my way, Vasiliev,” Vas barks.

  Vlad’s amber orbs narrow and his jaw ticks. “You’re not taking my sister anywhere.”

  My sister.

  My heart skitters at his words. I know they keep saying this, but I don’t understand it. I don’t want to believe it. If he is my brother, that means Yuri is my father. How is this possible?

  I shiver as more tears slide down my cheeks.