Chapter 4

Four

K irill

Her body pulses once in my arms before the fight leaves her as quickly as it came. The drug works fast, and she slides easily into sleep. I hadn't expected this when I told her of her father's true identity. In the last two months, I'd thoroughly investigated her life before her life became mine.

I could find no evidence that she knew the hidden identity of the man who sired her, but I had a hard time believing that a man like Ivan hadn't exposed himself to his daughter, and the woman he'd fucked for over twenty years.

If it did nothing, it would have kept them in line. The life she and her mother had lived before her mother had died had been strict. Strict in the way that had my suspicions that she knew, and was protecting him with her mock ignorance, high. I couldn't imagine any young woman would choose to spend her free time inside a library, or volunteering in the church. I'd thought it to be a front, but now…

Now, I'm not so sure.

I shift the girl in my arms, glancing down into her face. She's lost weight since she's been in my care, under my roof. At first, I didn't give a shit. At first, even though I'd been attracted to her in a way that I fucking hated, I'd told myself it didn't matter.

She wasn't mine.

She wouldn't be mine.

She'd been a burden my brother dropped on me. A favor.

And then I decided to keep her.

I curse under my breath at the shadows that paint the delicate skin beneath her eyes. As though strung by a puppet string, my thumb swipes over the scattering of freckles across her cheek, over the delicate bridge of her nose.

Her skin is so soft.

She doesn't even know my name. I've held her captive for almost two months. I've spent time every day sitting with her in her cell. I've interrogated her, told her of my day, and sat in silence. But I've never told her my name.

And she hasn't asked.

A sting in my chest has me pulling my hand away from her face. I'm just as messed up as my father and brother, Ilya. I'm not even sure my youngest brother, Kane, is any better, what with the way he schemed to possess his now wife.

We're all fucked up. We're all cursed with this obsession. This dangerous, all-consuming need to possess the one woman who, finally, after all the others, catches the attention and affection of our monster.

I've had women catch my attention before. Plenty of women.

I've taken them to bed, fucked them until they made a play for a heart I kept on lockdown, uninterested in this obsession that claimed the men in my line, rendering them possessed.

I never wanted this for myself, was happy with life as I'd been living it. Alone.

Until her.

Until she caught the attention of my monster.

She's been nothing but problems since she arrived, but she's crept under my skin. Now, I can't get her out. This obsession I've feared my entire life—this fixation I've run from—it's upon me.

I've been stewing over ways to make her mine. Since our beginning was so royally fucked up, it's going to take work. A lot of work.

If I'd thought for even a second that when Ilya pulled a favor, asking me to take the girl, that she would be the one to ignite the wick that lingered in the core of me, I'd like to think I'd have told him to pound sand. Find someone else to conceal the girl.

But in truth, I know I'd still have taken her. I simply might have taken a different approach to forcing her submission. I may have tried my hand at something simple, like charm.

If I'd suspected that the daughter of my family's greatest enemy would be my singular fixation—my manifestation of the Volkov curse, I'd have?—

Well, fuck, I don't know what I'd have done.

I fucking shouldn't have taken her, though. Fuck Ilya and his fucking favor.

I'm a mess, and I've never been a mess in my life.

Gently, I stand with the object of my fixation, my obsession, in my arms. It's not a hardship. She was tiny when she came to me. Now, she's a fucking feather.

She doesn't eat enough.

"You good?"

I look to my friend and right hand with a scowl that says if he tries to take her from me, I'll fucking shoot him. And I will. In public, Dimitri plays my bodyguard. In reality, I don't need a bodyguard. Being raised by Alexei Volkov, I'm more than equipped to protect myself.

But the CEO of Volk Vault Bank shouldn't know how to fight like I do. My title is expected to employ a level of security I can't refuse, and so I don't.

I'm also not about hiring just anyone to play the part of my protector. Dimitri is my closest friend, a brother of choice. It's his job to take a bullet for me, but I would take one for him by choice.

Dimitri chuckles, more than aware of the Volkov curse. Only a few months ago, I'd been laughing over drinks with Dimitri about the curse having snared Ilya. Now look at me. And look who's laughing.

Fuck.

I'm done letting her spend her days in the cellar. I'm done letting her refuse her food, done letting her waste away.

And I'm fucking done letting her hold her silence when all I want is to hear her lovely voice. I want to see her ignite with passion. I want to taste her mouth and claim her body. I want to fuck the memory of the men she's been with from her mind and body—replacing it with me, and only me.

The idea that she's been with a man who isn't me fills me with a kind of possessive rage I can't explain. Can hardly contain. It hums below the surface of my flesh, ready to maim. But it won't be hard, fucking them from her system. From my research, I'm more than aware the men she spent her time with were more like boys, in their early twenties, lacking the life experience one needs to truly know how to fuck a woman.

Still…

I enter the room she destroyed early in her stay with me— I've had it fixed —through the door that connects it to my own rooms. On the bed that has been draped in cream, like her skin, with pillows as vibrant and red as her hair, I lay her down.

I want to lay with her, but she's been through enough for one night. She needs to rest.

And I need to figure out how the fuck I'm going to make her mine. Forever.

Whether she wants me or not is no matter to me.

I'm a Volkov, and in the end, we always take that which we desire.

I desire her.