Inked Adonis (Litvinov Bratva Book 1)

I wake to the sound of crunching plastic.

Ilya stands over me, slamming a water bottle onto the rusty metal table beside my cot. Everything in this hellhole is rusted or rotting, which seems fitting. This is where hope comes to wither.

“If you die, it won’t be because of dehydration. Bottom’s up.”

He’s right—it’ll probably be a bullet to the back of the head. Quick and clean, if I’m lucky. Slow and messy if I’m not.

The effort of sitting up sends screaming pain down my entire right side. It hurts enough that I can’t respond with more than a scowl. My stomach betrays me by growling loud enough for him to hear.

“You must be hungry.” He gestures to a plate of sandwiches beside the water bottle. The bread edges have gone stiff and dark, like they’ve been sitting out for hours. Days, maybe.

At least the water bottle is sealed.

“I’m not eating anything you give me.”

He rolls his eyes, looking bored. “I wouldn’t kill you with something as pedestrian as poison. In any case, keeping you alive is more interesting.” His expression shifts to something crueler. “You should’ve heard my brother after I showed him your little home movie. He’s livid.”

My eyes burn but produce no tears. The irony isn’t lost on me—maybe Ilya’s wrong about dehydration not killing me after all.

I roll onto my side, swallowing a groan as fresh pain pulses through me. My body aches. My mind aches. Even my soul feels bruised.

I just want it all to stop.

“You brought this on yourself, Nova.”

The sound of my name on his tongue makes me want to scrub my skin raw. But he must get bored watching me suffer, because his footsteps retreat and the lights click off, leaving me in darkness.

I count to fifty before lunging for the water bottle. My desperation is pathetic—half of it splashes down my shirt as I gulp it down. Within seconds, the bottle is empty.

I still want more.

Falling back onto the cot, I stare up at the crumbling ceiling. Time has become fluid since they brought me here. Hours, days—who knows? I drift in and out of consciousness, my only markers being Ilya’s visits and the sound of his men laughing down the hall.

I can’t let myself imagine what Hope or Grams must be thinking. I can only pray they don’t come looking for me.

The only thing worse than me being here would be them being here with me.

My eyelids slip closed, but even the thought of sleep is laughable. As exhausted as my body is, my mind is operating at a constant, frantic hum.

It’s like a nightmare where you’re caught in endless hallways and no door will open. No matter how many times I run the scenario, lying here leads to death. Either at the hands of Ilya or one of the goons I can hear cackling and drinking down the hall.

Or, if I get out of here, maybe Samuil will kill me himself.

I bury my sobs in my sleeve. No one who hears them will come to help.

Like Ilya said, I brought this on myself.

I should’ve let my father kill me. At least then I would’ve died knowing Samuil trusted me. I could’ve died with my dignity intact—whatever that’s worth.

Now, Samuil will show up and execute me like the traitor he thinks I am.

Will he wait for my explanation? Even if he does, will he believe it?

If I were him, I wouldn’t. Not with the evidence stacked against me. This time, I did exactly what Ilya is accusing me of. My intentions won’t mean shit.

I don’t sleep, but I drift in and out of awareness as the laughter in the other room grows louder and wilder. Ilya’s voice is missing from the mix, though.

Maybe he’s gone.

Maybe I can escape.

Escape to where, I have no idea, but that’s not important now. If I stay here, I die. The only chance I have is to get up and try.

Getting up, however, is torture. My joints grind together with every movement. I have to bite my lip bloody just to reach for my crutch.

“Hey!” I croak. “Hello?”

The drunken chatter continues uninterrupted. I slam my crutch against the metal bed frame, wincing as the sound reverberates through my skull.

Finally, the laughter dies down.

“Is it the girl?” a deep voice asks.

A chair scrapes concrete. Someone grumbles, “Lemme check.”

Hulking footsteps thump down the hall to my room. A mountain of a man appears in the doorway. His snub nose wrinkles. “What?”

I sink in on myself, trembling. “I’m going to be sick, and I can’t… I need help.”

“Well, don’t do that shit here. I’ll have to clean it up.”

“Help me to the bathroom.” I fake a dry heave hard enough that I think I might actually throw up. Zero points for originality, but the classics are classic for a reason, right?

The man moves surprisingly quickly for someone his size. His huge hand wraps all the way around my bicep, his fingers overlapping, and when he wrenches me off the mattress, I want to scream. Instead, I hang limply in his hands.

“Move your feet,” he barks.

“I… can’t.” I heave again, and with a snort of disgust, the giant drags me down the hall to a cramped bathroom.

The floor is more grime than chipped tile and thick bars pass over the windows. He deposits me on the floor like taking out the garbage.

“Can you crawl to the shitter? I don’t wanna mop.”

One glance tells me no one has ever mopped this room. But I nod, weakly scraping my body over the cold floor. “Thank you.”

He grimaces at my gratitude and turns away.

“Throwing up,” he announces to the rest of the men as he rejoins them, earning him a laugh. “She ain’t going anywhere for a while.”

Their laughter follows him back to their game. I pull myself up using the yellowing sink, cranking the tap to mask my movements. After swallowing several desperate mouthfuls of metallic-tasting water, I fake another round of retching.

More distant laughter. They’ve already forgotten about me.

I count to one hundred. Then one hundred more. Long enough for the alcohol to dull their senses further. Long enough for complacency to set in.

Then I grab my crutch and crack open the bathroom door.

Slowly, so slowly I don’t even feel like I’m moving, I make my way down the hallway. Light leaks from around a partially opened door, and raucous male laughter slithers through the same gap. Whether there are other guards on duty besides these, I have no idea.

I ease past the door, barely even breathing. I’m just on the other side of it when a man shouts. I think he’s raising the alarm bell, and I’m seconds away from breaking into whatever form of sprint I’m capable of when I hear him laugh.

“Casey was bluffing! He’s got nothing!”

The table erupts in more laughter, and I blow out a breath and continue on my way.

Finally, I turn a corner into what looks like an old showroom for a car dealership. Faded safety awards and advertisements still cling to the water-stained walls. The windows have been papered over, but even the newspapers are rotten with age.

Through a crack in the filth, I see a door.

Forgetting all about guards and cameras, I shuffle as fast as I can across the dusty tile floor and throw my weight against the door.

Locked.

My heart sinks. Fuck. Fucking fuck. I pirouette in a slow, painful circle in search of⁠—

There. On the other side of the room is another door. I resume my stagger, trying to be quick and silent at the same time. At least the pain has receded—adrenaline has taken its place and numbed every limb.

My entire world has shrunk down to one door and one word.

Please, please, please, please, ple⁠—

I reach it and batter my good side into the door—and it swings open so fast I almost fall on my face.

But it’s open.

And I’m free.

A van and sedan squat in the parking lot like watchdogs. No way to tell if they’re rigged with alarms or cameras, so I swing wide around the building’s back corner. Through the gloom, I spot a line of trees in the distance.

Dense. Dark.

Perfect.

I channel everything I have into making it across the parking lot and into the treeline. Once I’m there, they won’t be able to find me.

My brothers never could. When Dad was gone and they were in charge, I would hide in the trees surrounding the embankment behind our house. I’d curl into a ball and hide in the brush, staying perfectly silent until they got tired of searching and went back inside.

I’ve done it before.

I can do it again.

I channel every ounce of that survival instinct into crossing the cracked pavement. Each step sends shockwaves of pain through my leg, but adrenaline numbs the worst of it. Twenty yards feels like twenty miles, but I force myself forward. One halting step. Then another.

The tree line shimmers like a mirage. Closer. Closer.

A sob tears free the moment I step into the cool shadows. I clamp my hand over my mouth, stifling any other sounds that might escape. Thorns and branches scrape my skin as I pick my way deeper into the darkness.

Away from the building. Away from Ilya. Away from death.

One foot in front of the other.

I walk as far as I can, putting the maximum amount of distance between me and the dealership. I move until I physically can’t. Until the sky is dark and my feet are bloody and it takes the last of my energy to crumple to the ground.

I land next to a shrub, so I pull myself hand over hand until I’m nestled beneath it. The branches scrape against my skin, but I burrow deep, out of sight, and lean my head against the trunk of a tree.

Then, for the first time in too long, I sleep.

I open my eyes. Pale morning light cuts through the branches above me. Grimacing at my stiff joints, I push to my feet and start moving again before I’ve even processed what’s happening.

It’s animalistic, this instinct to push forward, to run. I focus only on putting one foot in front of the other until, finally, I hear cars.

I angle towards the sound of traffic until I can see a road through the trees. Then, sticking to the treeline, I follow the road to a tiny, decrepit gas station.

At first, I think the place is abandoned, too. Thick tufts of grass shoot up between cracks in the pavement and the brick is covered in layers of graffiti.

But before I can lose hope, a woman steps out of the bathroom in the back of the store, phone clutched in her hand. Her Grateful Dead t-shirt is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Without stopping to think, I hurl myself through the trees. “Hey!”

She turns to me, eyes already narrowed in suspicion.

“I’m sorry,” I pant. “I-I’m lost. I need help.”

I don’t even want to imagine what I look like after sleeping on the ground all night, but the way her eyes snag on my face tells me it can’t be pretty.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I ask. “Just… just for a second. I only need to make one call. Please. I’ll stand right here. One call is all I need.”

I’m seconds away from dropping to my knees and crawling to her when she hesitantly holds her phone out to me. “One quick call.”

Hallelujah.

Maybe I’ll live to see another day, after all.