1. Katya

I sit in my room, on the windowsill, my face still throbbing, and imagine myself climbing down the trellis and just walking away, not stopping until I get somewhere I want to be.

My mouth always gets me into trouble.

That wasn’t the first time I talked back to him. Nor the first time he hit me for it.

He promised me.

He lied .

Again.

Why am I surprised? After a lifetime of betrayals, why should one more surprise me?

I thought this time was different.

I thought wrong .

I asked my father two simple questions: 1) why his word meant nothing; and 2) how much did he sell his only living child for?

That’s when he struck me with his open palm.

How could Viktor Kolesova, leader of the Kolesova Bratva, do those things? Some part of me knew the answer. He had mismanaged the territory and the Bratva terribly since Dmitry died. That’s what destroyed him, destroyed the Bratva.

Destroyed me.

Made him the kind of person who makes promises that he doesn’t keep.

Made him the kind of person to go into debt and use his only living child, his forgotten daughter, to pay that debt.

Made him the kind of person that would hit that same child when she pointed out his failures.

One year ago, my father promised I could go away to college, on the condition that I complete one year online first and make perfect grades. I was never much of a student, so the odds were in his favor, but a year of hard work later, and I have perfect grades. I kept up my end of the bargain and he was supposed to keep his promise.

Promises come easy, it’s keeping them that’s the hard part.

I told him I can’t sit around the house anymore without going crazy, that I’m 23, have never had a job, have no skills, and no education beyond my high school diploma, and I hate what I’ve allowed myself to become. I hate everything about myself, and my situation and I need a change. I need a goal. This past year I had both and it was my best year since … probably ever.

This was my way out, my last chance to become something or someone I liked. That’s why I worked so hard.

Now there’s no getting out. I’ll be trapped forever. Worse than being a Bratva daughter is being a Bratva wife.

I don’t even know Petya, my future husband, but I have no doubt my father owes him something – either money or a favor, and I’m the only thing he has left to pay it with.

That realization – that I have no value as a person, as his child, only value as a thing to be sold to the highest bidder, hit me harder than his open palm.

I want to cry; I can feel tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. But tears won’t help me, so I choke them back, I brush them aside with the back of my hand.

I know what those tears are. They’re a lie. They’re begging to be rescued. They want my prince, my hero, to climb up the side of the house, to my tower bedroom and save me, take me away from here, take care of me, give me everything I want and deserve.

They’re bullshit and so is that dream.

Damsels in distress stay in distress unless they learn to save themselves.

No one is going to save you .

I hear those mocking words in Yuri’s voice. Sure, he’s an asshole, but he’s also usually right about the world and almost everything else, too.

You’ll have to do it yourself .

I’ll fight then. Fight for myself tooth and nail.

I look down at the ground but hope there’s another way – a less terrifying way.

I look around my room and survey everything carefully.

Walking out the door won’t work. For one, my father’s office is across the hall and that’s where I left him after he slapped me. Even if I got by him, there were half a dozen men protecting him, whose job it was to keep the place locked down. Once I was outside the house, I’d only need to worry about the security cameras, not the men. And what did I care if cameras caught me leaving?

The bathroom window is way too small for my hips to wiggle through.

Nope, it’s the big window or nothing. The fresh spring air does smell nice – like freedom, I hope.

Still, I’ve never done this and it’s a long way down to the ground below.

This needs some thinking over, some time to build up my courage. I close my eyes and try to visualize success.

“Don’t jump,” a voice from behind mocks me.

I have no need to turn my head and see him, I know that voice. I can see him easily enough in my mind. He’s been in my dreams—and nightmares— for the past four years: Yuri, my father’s right-hand man.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I tell him. It’s by accident that I’m worried about.

“Hoping to be rescued like a princess locked in the tower?” He asks, a smile in his voice.

“ Fairy tales aren’t real. And you’re not Prince Charming.”

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve ever said, Kat,” He comes over, puts a hand on my folded calf and leans over me to look at the ground below.

I finger my Russian Cross gold necklace that I always wear—a gift from Yuri from before he blamed me for Dmitry’s death.

?

“Thinking of escaping out the window, then?” He purses his full lips together, to whistle, then relaxes them into a grin, looking at me, “Would take some balls. This fall would only shatter your legs, not kill you but you just want the attention? A shame to hurt these legs either way.” His hand creeps along my calf and up my thigh.

“Maybe I’m thinking about using this knife,” I pull the knife from the Russian Cross, the bottom is the knife handle and hold it near Yuri’s neck as a warning, but he doesn’t even flinch.

“If you held that blade to my balls, then maybe you’d have some leverage. Put it away before you hurt yourself, we both know you won’t use it.”

I do as he says and put it away because he’s right. I won’t use it. Violence isn’t my thing.

I turn away from him and back to the window. “It’s freedom I want not attention. I’ve been waiting a year. I worked my ass off, bided my time, sacrificed. And now he changes his mind,” I say. “It’s not fair.”

“Wake up, princess,” he growls. “This is the Bratva. It’s not supposed to be fair. No one gets what they deserve. Did Dmitry get what he deserved? Was that fair? We only get what we fight for, and even then, only if we’re lucky. If you didn’t think Viktor might change his mind, might even sell you off, then you’re a fool.”

A silly little fool. “You don’t understand,” I say, really trying hard not to sound like the whiny adolescent attention-whore he thinks I am.

“I understand one year. One year is nothing. My plans, three years in the making, are spoiled with you here,” he said acidly.

“What plans?”

“None of your business. My point, princess, is that nothing takes me by surprise. Nothing shocks me. I adapt to every changed circumstance. I walked into this myself; it was up to me to walk back out again myself. I understand that, and I don’t worry about it.” He turned to me, again, “What will you do? I doubt he’ll ever let you go.”

I don’t have an answer, deep down I understood all this too, but refused to let it come to the surface.

“And you still made that deal and kept up your end. And it got you nowhere. Do you know why?”

No, and I really don’t want to hear it from you . “Why?” I ask despite my better judgment.

“You think you need permission. Of course it’ll be denied if you beg for it, if you need it, that’s how the world works, kiska. You need to take what you want. There’s no other way. Like this.”

My only warning is the slight tension in his body, then he moves. He catches my wrist in one hand my chin in the other, tilting my head back, our lips are almost touching, if I leaned in just a little …

Don’t think about that. He’ll know, I tell myself.

His eyes dip to my lips, and I know he knows. His lips spread into a grin, “That’s it, isn’t it? You want me to save you .”

“Fuck you,” I spit at him.

“Well, that’s one way to ask for my help.” I don’t have to look at his mouth to know it’s spreading into a grin. His thumb smears against my bottom lip.

“Let go of me,” I try to turn away from him, but he doesn’t let me.

“Not until I’m done with you,” He shifts his grip from my chin to the base of my neck, his arm around my back pulling me into him.

I can feel a hardness pressing into my belly. His hard cock.

It wants me.

That thought in my head sends my hips rolling into his, I want him, too dammit.

With want humming through my body, he presses his lips to mine. I freeze for a second, my body tense. Then I lean into it and surprise myself by kissing him back.

Oh, that feels good .

The tingling in my lips is spreading to my whole body … my pussy throbs to life.

Yuri’s hand curls around my waist and I gasp as he pulls me closer.

He feels solid and strong.

Again, I feel his erection between my thighs, and I pull back with another small gasp. My eyes find him.

“Tell me what you want, Katya.”

For a long time, I just stared at him.

“I don’t know,” I answer.

“Of course you do. Tell me what you don’t want first. Narrow your choices,” he waits for me to answer.

“I don’t want to stay under this roof or to marry Petya,” I answer.

“Good. How could I help you with either of those things?”

“I don’t know.” And Yuri wouldn’t help me even if he could. Why would he want to?

“What if I settle this debt for Viktor but my price is you marry me? Then you’ll be under my protection, and I’ll send you away to school if you want.”

No. Fuck no. “That’s too high a price. I don’t want that with him or with you. I want freedom not exchanging this cage for another one. I know how the Bratva works. It’s no different anywhere else.”

“What do you want, then?”

“Freedom.”

“There it is princess,” he turns my head to the velvety blackness outside my window. “Take it. Escape. Run and don’t look back.”

My eyes look down, they can’t help it. When I see the ground, my body cringes from the window, leaning back into him.

He chuckles, laughing at me. The sound comes deep from his chest as it shakes against me. “I didn’t think so.”

His laugh dies down, finally. “How about a game, then? The stakes are too high in your mind. A game?”

“What game?”

“Chess?”

Pffft.

“Tag? Hide and go seek? How about if you escape from your room, and run across the lawn, and touch the trunk of the weeping willow tree in the corner before I stop you? If you win, I’ll ask your father myself to postpone the wedding and send you away instead. If I win, … well … I’ll take what I want.”

It’s a trap. I don’t know why he’d help me. He wouldn’t help me. It must be a trap.

And there’s no misunderstanding his meaning, ‘I’ll take what I want.’ He licks his lips and looks over me.

My body leans into him again, against my will.

I shouldn’t want that.

Suddenly he lets me go, steps away from me, “Your choice, princess,” he says and walks out of the room.

I watch him go, my heart thundering in my chest, then I turn to the window, trying to make out the willow tree in the inky darkness.

I’ve made up my mind. I made it before Yuri came to see me, I just needed a little push.