Kostya A Dark Bratva Hate Story Read online

  “You fucking cunt!” A little trickle of blood runs down his neck.

  “Damn straight, but I’m the fucking cunt who will sever your carotid if you make one wrong move. All I want to do is leave. Walk towards the door with me," I order him.

  My heart is pounding with fear as we move across the room. Every man in the place is watching us. Arkady slides out of the booth, but doesn’t try to approach.

  Gennedy stumbles along, until we’re halfway across the room.

  I hear a familiar voice, and it turns my knees to water.

  "Anya. I hardly recognized you.”

  Pressing the knife even harder, I turn to look. Kostya is ten feet away from me. Despite everything, my heart does that funny little dance in my chest, even though I know he’s here to end me.

  He's holding a gun, pointing it in my direction. His dark eyes are merciless.

  A loud sound bangs in the air, and something warm spatters me. Despair makes me sob aloud. I’m dead, I just can’t feel it yet. And Raisa, poor Raisa...

  Then I realize that Gennedy is sagging and falling to the ground. I stare down at him and am struck dumb with horror; the top of his head is gone. At the same time, I feel a sharp sting in my left butt cheek, and everything goes fuzzy. I’ve been shot with a tranquilizer dart.

  The plastic knife slips from my fingers and clatters to the floor. I stumble as I hear Kostya’s voice from a million miles away.

  “You let him put his hands on her. I told you not to.”

  “We needed to search her.” Arkady’s voice is a frightened whine.

  “That was what the metal detector was for. And you failed anyway, and let her get in with a weapon. But the most important issue here is, I gave you an order and you disobeyed.”

  A gun shot cracks through the air, instantly followed by screams. Kostya doesn’t miss; that means the reason he only wounded Arkady rather than killing him is because he’s going to let him suffer.

  That’s what he does to his enemies. He makes them suffer. And because I humiliated his stepbrother, I am the enemy.

  I have one last thought as my mind goes blank.

  I would have been better off if Kostya had killed me instead of Gennedy.

  Chapter Five

  Kostya

  Not now. I don’t need this crap now.

  Diego Costa, underboss from the Chicago mafia, is on the phone yelling about how we shorted him on our latest delivery.

  There is no fucking way. Our people are meticulous. We delivered one hundred ghost guns, untraceable, as ordered.

  “I’m in the middle of an emergency,” I say shortly. “Come here for lunch at one, we’ll discuss it.”

  “I’d rather meet in town,” Diego says, sounding annoyed. I’m sure he would. The house where I stay when I’m training women is an hour’s drive from the city, in a rural area. His wife Donata is pregnant with their second child, and he doesn’t want to be far from her side right now. He didn’t tell me that, but it’s my job to know such things.

  “Sorry, I can’t make it into town for the next few weeks. Long story.” I don’t want to leave the house when Anya is here. I own all the houses on this road, so that if any of the women succeed in the impossible, and escape from this house, they’d have nowhere to run, but I still don’t like to take chances.

  “Yeah, I can imagine.” I hear the faint tone of contempt in his voice, and it raises my hackles. Yes, he’s guessed that I’m breaking in a new group for auction. No, he has no right to judge me. A couple of his men, Carmelo and Rocco in particular, have enjoyed the services of those women on more than one occasion. And Diego may not enjoy the use of sex slaves, but his hands aren’t clean. He has snuffed out more lives than there are stars in the sky. Many times, he doesn’t even know why he’s killing someone; like me, he gets orders, and he follows them without question.

  “Is there a problem?” There’s a bite to my tone.

  “When we pay up front for a hundred units and get eighty, yeah, there’s a fucking problem.”

  “You’ve worked with me for years. Have you ever known me to screw you over when we’re doing business together? If I wanted to start a fucking fight, I’d do it like a man.”

  “See you at one.” And the phone cuts off.

  Great. Just what I need right now.

  I leave my office and go to the door that leads to our training area. I press my palm against the biometric lock, and it clicks open and I walk down the hall to her room.

  I swing the door open, enter very quietly, and stand in the corner, watching.

  She lies curled up on her side, half-covered by a thin blanket. She’s slowly regaining consciousness. She’s moving a little, her breathing has sped up and I can tell that she’s waking up, but she's pretending that she is still asleep. A metal cuff on her ankle is attached to a chain that’s bolted into the floor. There are rings on the wall, and a chain dangling from the ceiling in the middle of the room, and a grate in the middle of the floor. There is also a sink and a hose, and a cabinet full of various toys and tools. No windows, of course. Her world is all darkness now.

  After Pasha and I killed her father and blew up her house, she and her nursemaid Masha vanished. For an entire year, there were no reports of them at all, and then we started getting occasional info on Anya, but none on Masha. Maybe life on the run was too much for Masha; she’s in her eighties, after all. Or was. Or maybe...I have another theory about why Masha might have disappeared, but I push that to the back of my head. It’s nothing I need to deal with right now.

  We came close a number of times. There were reports of them in Montana, Arizona, New Mexico...but every time we swooped in, she’d already fled.

  Anya was very good at staying off the radar, but nobody can hide from us forever. We always find a way.

  I examine her with a critical eye. She’s lost weight, but her body is still lush and gorgeous. I stripped her down while she was out, admiring her curves as I dressed her in a t-shirt and underwear. The familiar heat that I feel at the sight of her burns through my veins and stiffens my cock. I will finally know her body, every inch of it. Not the way I had hoped, though.

  She stirs on the bed, and I take a moment to get in the right head space – the kind of mind set which will let me brutalize a woman into obeying my every command. With every new shipment of women, I must shove aside any scrap of compassion and decency that still lingers. I have to school myself to focus only on the steps necessary to achieve my goal – molding a person with hopes and dreams into an obedient sex slave who submits to her fate.

  I am the Brigadir for the Chicago Bratva, in charge of all our operations here. I deal with smuggling weapons, drugs, and stolen art, but for the past year, my stepfather has also assigned me to the task of breaking women. It is not a job that I would have chosen; perhaps that is why he picked me to do it. My stepbrother is always whispering poison in his ear, maneuvering to displace me from my position.

  There are three other girls here, in another room. One of them is Anya’s best friend Raisa. Originally we had them scheduled to be sent to auction, but we just got a very good offer on them. Raisa, Tatiana, and Zoya, all virgins, will be sold to a single buyer, once we have them properly trained. My man Aleksandr, my chief of security, has been tasked with that job. He’s a natural born sadist, and for him, this is better than a fat Christmas bonus. In fact, I let him do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the training. I loathe it; he loves it.

  As for Anya, she’s all mine. And I worry that she won’t break. I know what the consequences of that would be - both for her, and for those I care about - so I cannot let that happen.

  I walk over to her, very quietly so she doesn’t hear me coming, and yank off the blanket. She lets out a startled shriek

  "Good morning, Anya," I say, as she flails on the bed and sits up. The chain on her ankle rattles.

  She stares up at me, squinting in the dim lighting, sucking in deep breaths. She doesn’t look around the room at
all. Most girls frantically swivel their heads, seeking a door, a window, an escape that will never come. They try to seize back some of their power by orienting themselves; it’s one reason I keep the lights so dim.

  But she just stares right at my face. It’s unnerving.

  She clears her throat. "Kostya. It's really you. I thought I'd dreamed it."

  I smirk down at her, determined not to let her get under my skin. "So I’m your dream lover?”

  Her huge eyes stare up at me, sad and resigned. "You were once. I loved you once."

  Ah, that I’m used to. Emotional manipulation. All the girls try. "Let me save you some time. I'm not the man you thought you knew. I am here for one thing only, to train you. When I’m done with you, I will send you off to auction.”

  Her mouth purses in disgust. “I’d heard that you were training women now. I didn’t want to believe it. Does your mother know you do this? Does your sister know?”

  I thought that nothing could penetrate my thick shell of indifference, but her scorn slices deep. "If you mention them again, I put a ball gag in your mouth for the rest of your stay here. Understood?"

  She stiffens, but her gaze is still defiant. That will change. "Yes."

  It's because of my mother and little sister that I am doing this.

  My stepfather, once such a good family man, is growing impatient with them. My mother has some mysterious ailment that the doctors haven’t been able to diagnose. Dizziness, fatigue, weakness. She’s retreating into her own world. So far, though, my stepfather is treating her well, relatively speaking; instead of shipping her off to some sanitarium, he has nurses taking care of her around the clock.

  If I were to disappoint him, that would change.

  And Elizaveta is fifteen now, only a couple of years away from the time when my stepfather will select a husband for her.

  My stepfather has implied, in subtle ways, that there are various options when the time comes to arrange her marriage. If I follow orders, she will be married to someone close to her own age, someone with a good reputation. If not...

  But I have no right to complain about the tasks that are assigned to me. My father was Bratva, and I followed in his footsteps. That was my choice. This life comes with great privileges, but great cost as well.

  Like my actual soul.

  I shake my head, frustration burning through me.

  “Why did you come back here?” I demand angrily, running my fingers through my hair. “Why take such a risk? You must have known what we’d do if we caught you.”

  Her eyes shine with infinite sadness. “Actually, I thought you’d kill me.”

  I give a bitter chuckle. “You should know better than that. Death would be a mercy. Breaking you and selling you sends the message we need to deliver. Those who cross us suffer endlessly.”

  “I can’t believe that you’re really going do this to me, Kostya. You cared about me once, I know you did.” She stares at me intently, eyes searching for the man she used to know.

  “Do you think I actually have a choice?” I’m shouting now, my self-control slipping. “You know as well as anyone the consequence of defying the Bratva!”

  “And you know that I was never Bratva! And my father was the one who chose to do business with you, not me! I never asked for this life.” Anger and despair drip from her words.

  “You enjoyed all of its benefits, though, didn’t you?” I say scornfully.

  “As if I had a choice. What do you think I should have done? Thrown away the jewels my father gave me? Rip off my designer gowns and tell him that I preferred to wear rags? He’d have beaten me for my defiance and locked me in my room.”

  “Poor you,” I mock. “You expect me to pity you because you made bad decisions? You could have married my stepbrother and lived a life of luxury. Instead, you had to make a total fool of him in public. And look where that got you.”

  Her teeth sink into her full upper lip, but she doesn’t try to argue with me. She just stares up at me with those enormous, beautiful doe eyes, which are blue again now that I’ve removed the contact lenses.

  “My friend is here,” she says in a soft voice.

  “Yes. And that’s also on you.” I stand there and wait. A look of horror dawns on her face. It doesn’t make me feel good to see it, but the sooner I break her down mentally, the easier it will be for both of us.

  “You took her because of me?” Her voice quavers and breaks.

  “That’s right. We are the reason she lost her job. We are the reason nobody else would hire her. We had a friend steer her to our nightclub to look for work. Or rather, you are. And when we took her, we spread the word far and wide, because we knew it would get back to you.”

  That hit the target. Her eyes fill with tears, and she shrinks away from me, blinking frantically because she’s too proud to let me see her cry.

  Her shoulders slump, and she looks up at me in utter misery. This is good; I’ve cracked her armor. “If we’re all to be sold, then why am I not with her?”

  “Because you’ve always been a trouble-maker. A leader. You’d try to organize some kind of escape, you’d put ideas in the heads of the other girls. You’d slow down our training.”

  There’s also the fact that I don’t think I could handle watching Aleksandr with her. I’ll let him do some of the training, but there are limits. I want to keep her all to myself – even if it’s just for training.

  “Could I at least see her? To say goodbye?” Her voice is soft now, pleading. She still doesn’t get it.

  I bark out a harsh laugh. “Are you a complete fool? Your wants, your desires, your needs, are no longer important. They never will be again. You’re not a person; you’re an object to be used, and you only stay alive as long as you’re useful.”

  She bites her lip and shifts on the mattress, scowling at the wall.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” I order her. Her eyes stay stubbornly fixed on that wall, staring at nothing.

  I kneel down in front of her, grab her chin, and turn her head so she’s forced to look me in the eye. She can’t be allowed to think that she can get away with even the smallest act of defiance.

  "I will tell you this once. I am a man who does what needs to be done, and I do not let feelings get in the way of my duty. What I need to do is train you to be sold. And you need to be a very good girl and obey all orders, instantly, for your own sake.”

  Her eyes flare in anger and she struggles to yank her chin from my grasp. I grab the hair at the back of her head and hold her head in place.

  I let my voice soften, just a little. “If you cooperate and show that you can be a good, submissive slave, you may attract the attention of a kind master. But if you fight, what kind of man do you think will want you? The kind of man who likes to break a woman. So please, for once in your life, do the smart thing, Anya.”

  And that’s the last time I can let myself go easy on her. I told her what she needs to do to get through this; it’s up to her whether she wants to take my advice or not.

  I let go of her chin and stand up.

  “Our training begins now. Do not ever use my name. You will address me as sir. You will only speak when spoken to. Disobey me, and punishment will be harsh and immediate. Now, remove your shirt and panties so that I can photograph you for our buyers."

  “You want me to what?”

  "Do it!" I bark at her.

  Her eyes blaze with anger. Yes, there’s the old Anya. Recovered already – but not for long. “Fuck you, Kostya. Why would I make your job easy for you?” She folds her hands across her body.

  It’s good that she tried to pull this bullshit early. I can get her first punishment out of the way.

  I walk over to the wall, grab the hose, and turn the spigot. Freezing cold water blasts out with tremendous force, and I turn the hose on her.

  “Stop!” she screams, and tries to crawl away, as the stinging water batters her flesh. The chain brings her up short. She crawls frantically from o
ne end of the mattress to the other as I follow her with the stream of water. When she can’t escape me, she curls up in a ball with her back to me. I walk over to her, blasting her directly in the face, and she utters a strangled scream, choking as water splashes into her mouth.

  My mind and my heart split in two, as they always do when I discipline the girls. Feelings have no place here, so I don’t let myself experience them. I concentrate on the next step that needs to be taken, and then the one after that.

  After a couple of minutes of this treatment, I walk over to the wall and turn off the spigot. She’s completely soaked; her mattress, her blanket, and everything else are drenched as well.

  I leave the room, and when I step out, I turn the light off and dial the thermostat down. I head to the parlor, and pour myself a double shot of vodka. I down it, and then pour myself another.

  When Anya went on the run, I actually scaled way back on the drinking. I only drank in social situations, and never very much. It was a kind of self-torture, a denial of the solace I desperately needed. But when my stepfather forced me to go into the business of trafficking, I started again. It’s stupid, it’s self-destructive, but I can’t get through my days any other way.

  When I go back to the room, she’ll be able to tell I’ve been drinking.

  Fuck that, what does it matter? What do I care what she thinks of me?

  I sit by the bar, brooding, waiting. After fifteen minutes I fetch a large towel and a camera, and return to her room, turning the light up to blazing intensity before I go in.

  The air is arctic. She’s curled up in a ball on the floor, rocking and frantically rubbing her arms. I toss her the towel and she scrubs herself off, then wraps it around herself, shivering violently.

  "Take your shirt and underwear off," I say.

  “C-c-can you pl-please turn the heat back up?” Her lips are blue, and her teeth chatter so hard she can barely speak.

  In response, I walk towards the spigot on the wall.