“Damaged,” I repeated the word.
“I saw the scars on your back.”
Lifting my head once again, I stared into his eyes. Ivan was a scary man. I’d looked at him a few times and been frozen in fear, but that hadn’t stopped me from looking. He was handsome, but there was a coldness wrapped around him. He had the sweet smiles and almost the innocent look, but it was all fake, every single bit of it. There was nothing loving or sweet about this man. Trust me, I knew. He and my father had a lot of similarities.”They’re just marks of a time in my life. They don’t mean anything.”
“Because he called youTrash?”
I shrugged. “Trash doesn’t get to have feelings. It doesn’t have a voice. It doesn’t complain. It’s just trash.”
“You’re not trash, Charlotte.”
“I know, but it makes life easier, doesn’t it?”
“What does?”
“If you believe you are trash. An inanimate object that has no value or meaning, tossed aside because it’s worthless. It makes the punches less painful. It makes everything not seem so unfair. You don’t get locked in your room and forgotten if you mean nothing. You eventually stop crying, because it doesn’t matter. When he looks at you, and through you, it doesn’t sting. You just live, but wait for that moment when you’re grabbed and thrown aside once again.”
Staring into his eyes, Ivan looked right back at me, and in an odd way, I had a feeling he knew exactly what I was talking about.
His fingers tap against his thigh. No words are spoken.
Saying those words aloud, I think about my eighteen years of life. I never had a great birthday or Christmas. In fact, Rage was the only person to remember my birthday, and he told Cassie. I didn’t know it, until they started to present me with a card or a gift. The presents had to be small. If my father ever saw them, he’d destroy them.
At home, my bedhad been taken from me. I had a used mattress from the club on the floor. Used bedsheets. Even my curtains had been destroyed. He wanted me to have nothing. His hatred for me had bled from his pores.
I tried not to think about it. My life was easier thatway.
Whenever he was away on club runs, those were the days and weeksI was free. I was able to clean my room, remove the mold that accumulated in the corners. Use that time to go grocery shopping to fill the fridge and freezer. Hang out with Cassie without fear of being interrupted by our father’s wrath. Was that the life Ivan offered me? To finally live without fear?
Tears filled my eyes and I was way too afraid to hope. Some soldier’s mistake had meant my life had changed for the better.
“There’s a cell phone in my luggage. I didn’t ask for it. Rage gave it to me.” I took a deep breath. He wanted me to be able to reach him at all times.”
“And you’re telling me this why?”
“I don’t want it. I don’t know what you need me to do, but I will be loyal to you, Ivan Volkov. I will always put you, my husband, and the Volkov Bratva first.”
Ivan nodded his head. “That’s the first step. I will be taking your cell phone.”
I nodded.
“Ive’s not a difficult man to handle, Charlotte. He understands you more than you realize, and if you give him a chance, he’ll prove it time and time again.” Ivan got to his feet. “Eat something. Being a married woman now, you’re going to need your strength.”
He left me alone and I stared down at the plate of food. There was so much here. I’d gone without food, starved because it had been my father’s wish at the time. Picking up a slice of toast, I took a bite.
That fucking bastard was not going to control me for another second. He’d made me trash, but no more.
I took another bite, thenanother.
I’m no longer trash.
I am Charlotte Yahontov.
Ive
One Month Later
We didn’t have a sixthbrigadier, and running Oleg’s territory between the five of us was wearing thin.
I knew Ivan was pissed. There was no one he could trust. I couldn’t be in different territories, not when I had problems building within my own. I had it on good authority that a Hank Balafonte had started running drugs through my city. Not only had he begun to do that, but they had started to do the rounds in my nightclubs. I’d already gotten my hands on several pieces of product, and got my nerd to analyze all the components within the drugs. I really fucking despised what I found.
The drugs were not designed to give a high. They were being distributed to women, and those women were turning up on the missing list. This was causing me a headache. They were not turning up at hospitals or dead. No, they were missing, which only left one option-they were being sold.
So now I had a drug problem, and human trafficking to deal with, which pissed me off, especially since the last place the women were seen was at one of my nightclubs. This meant the cops were knocking at my places of business. This wasn’t good.
There were five missing women so far in the past month. That was too high a number for me. I’d already paid off several of my guys within the police force to give me the necessary details to find the women. As for Hank, he was floating under the radar as well. I’d already had several of his men locked up across the city in my cages, and were currently enjoying several days of starvation.
There was also the other detail of another problem-Benjamin Court-who liked to think of himself as a supplier of everything everyone needed. The small little gangs who thought they could run the streets now had guns and knives, and there was once again direction toward me, because being the fucking king of this territory, I had to have control over it.
I knew Ivan’s fake death would cause a ripple effect throughout his territories. People would take the chance to try and rise up. His other brigadiers and I, who didn’t know until Ivan wanted his fake death to be known, had to react to the news accordingly. We did, and this was the consequence of that. Our enemies were trying to rise, and it was up to us to squash it.
“Where is the passage to the ports?” I said, looking at the large map of our city.
Vlad, one of the few men I trusted, pointed at one direct road. He traced it with his finger that led out of my city and down a long road, going straight to the docks. “That’s the only access point.”
Vlad had been working by my side for twenty years. He’d been tossed out by the previous Bratva as he’d been born a bastard to a soldier. He’d been declared worthlessbecause his mother had been a whore who attempted to blackmail the soldier for money. Vlad paid the price for his parents’ actions. We’d met twenty years ago, and he swore his loyalty to me and to Volkov Bratva, so he could exact his revenge. I granted him that request, and he’d been loyal ever since. He was also a happily married man, and he said the key to the perfect marriage was that he listened to his wife. He talked to her. Even as I stared at the map, I couldn’t help but think about Charlotte.
We’d been married a month. I’d left her at our country home while I traveled to my penthouse suite in the city. I hated city life. I always tried to make it back home, but in the past month, I’d gladly made the excuse of work.