Sinful Hearts: Chapter 5

This never should have gone this far.

Wincing, I step out of the Uber I just took from Club Venom. It pulls away from the curb after I shut the door, and I glance up at the garish neon sign blaring “The Pearl of the Black Sea” above me.

He’s certainly not expecting me, especially unannounced. But this is where Leo does business. And judging from the number of swarthy, gruff looking men in suits with visible Bratva tattoos milling around the bar and lounge area when I walk in, he’s here this evening.

Screw you, Leo. This ends tonight.

I make my way up one of the staircases from the main dining room level to the lounge and bar upstairs, grimacing with every step. I’d always imagined that there might be at least discomfort after doing what I was planning on doing tonight for the first time. But I’d imagined it would only happen once.

I didn’t plan on a four-round marathon. Just as I didn’t Hades Drakos.

I also didn’t plan on the instant addiction. The inability to say no or to tap out. The way he teased, manipulated, and played my body like a master. The craving for more, more, .

I also didn’t exactly plan on him being hung like a freaking horse.

I grimace again in discomfort as I take the last step up into the lounge area. But even so, a flush creeps up my neck and a warm, sensual feeling pools in my core. Sore or not, that was .

Really, really fucking good. So to speak.

I make my way through the mixed crowd—both regular New Yorkers and the obvious Bratva-connected types—sipping vodka in the upstairs lounge. At the far end, two burly men in suits and wearing earpieces guard the staircase up to the third floor, where Leo holds court in his private office.

The teasing memories of earlier tonight fade as the reality of how I even got to this point presses its foot down on the back of my neck.

Again, this never should have gone this far.

I’d cut Leo out of my life before I was even eighteen. He’d certainly cut Nora and me out of his, which I was more than fine with. And when I decided just under a year ago to move us to New York, it felt like taking an even bigger breath of fresh air. We’d be putting an entire ocean between us and him.

Until he followed us.

Leo has always worked for the Reznikov Bratva—first under Antin Reznikov, when I was small. And then more recently after Antin died, under Konstantin, Antin’s son.

In . Or, at times, in Russia.

I’ve kept tabs on Leo since I was eighteen and took over legal guardianship of my sister. I wanted to know where he was, to make sure that wasn’t anywhere near . So I heard about it when he moved to New York right after we did, to start working for Konstantin’s co-king of the Reznikov empire, Gavan Tsarenko, the head of the organization’s presence in the US.

I told myself it was a coincidence. I told myself New York was a city, and we could easily never cross paths.

Until Leo very purposefully crossed mine, two months ago, and immediately sank his claws into me again.

Suddenly, Leo me. Because even worse, he .

He fucking I’d never slept with anyone.

I’d never be able to prove it in court. But I know damn well that he got that particularly personal piece of information from a nurse at my OB-GYN’s office. A nurse who suddenly had the money, at least according to her ecstatic posts on social media, to quit her job and move with her boyfriend to a lavish beach house in Nha Trang, Vietnam.

A nurse who very obviously sold my personal medical details to Leo. And he’s been using that information to torment and threaten me for the last two months.

Because in the fucked-up world of the mafia, and the Bratva, and all of that shit, apparently that’s all a woman is: a tradable commodity whose value is determined by whether or not she’s a virgin.

It’s not like I was ever “holding on to my virtue” or anything like that. Nor am I at all religious, or a prude, or asexual. I mean, I desires. I get sexually turned on. I’ve just never slept with anyone.

Well, until tonight.

At first, it was that I knew I was too young. Then, I was essentially Nora’s mother, and who the hell has time to date or have a social life when you’re raising a seven-year-old at the age of eighteen?

After that, there was always just something else to take up my time. University, and then law school. And then absolutely throwing myself into work. My was my boyfriend. And the idea of a one-night stand, or any kind of casual sex just…never appealed to me.

And then there was Hugo.

I was twenty-two and working a hundred hours a week at my first job in London. Hugo was a few years older, and one of the firm’s most promising junior partners. He was nice, and charming, and I agreed to go out with him.

Three dates later, I was thoroughly creeped out and had zero interest in seeing him again.

Because Hugo was one of men—the kind of guy, like Leo, who viewed virginity as some sort of commodity. Or worse, as a signal of “goodness”—as opposed to “whorishness”, as Hugo so colorfully explained it to me on that third and final date, after I’d finally told him I’d lost interest in him.

But Hugo didn’t really hear that, and didn’t want to hear the word “no”. He got obsessive—not just with me as a human being, but with my “virginal status”. It got so bad that I had to move to a new firm entirely. It even escalated to the point where he was stalking our apartment, my new job, and Nora at her fucking .

I finally got a restraining order against him, and it all stopped. But after that, I was officially done with dating. Not when there were men out there who were only going to reduce me to some sort of virginity fetish.

No thanks.

And for a while, it didn’t even affect me at all. I’ve been too insanely busy with work the last few years to have time to date anyway. Vibrators exist. So does internet porn. And I have a imagination.

But then two months ago, Leo entered the picture again to once again leverage my lack of sexual experience into a tradable commodity.

But fuck that, and fuck him.

This ends tonight.

The guards at the bottom of the staircase to the third floor glare at me, moving closer together as one shakes his head and holds up a hand.

“No one goes upstairs,” he grunts.

I smile a tight smile. “I’m sure Leo will want to know I’m here.”

The guy arches a brow, glancing at the other guard before shaking his head.

“Is he expecting you?”

“No.”

“Then you should leave.”

“You should tell him Elsa is here to see—”

“My my my, aren’t we all dressed up?”

I shiver, a mixture of fear and revulsion crawling up my spine as I turn. The thin man with the sunken eyes and the shaved head leering at me has always made me think of a skeleton ever since I first met him two months ago. His name is Pascha, and he’s Leo’s right-hand man.

He also thoroughly and utterly creeps me the hell out.

Same as the other handful of times we’ve crossed paths, Pascha looks at me like he’s mentally undressing me, which makes my stomach turn. It’s even worse tonight, though. Usually, all he’s got to work with are drab gray or black pant or skirt suits.

Tonight, I’m dressed like . Which of course, only turns his usual leer into an outright dangerous one.

“You look delicious,” he hisses, grinning that bony, creepy grin at me.

“And you look like a sex offender, as always. I’m here to see Leo.”

Pascha glares at me. “You would do well to treat me with respect, .”

“The only little bitch I see here is ,” I smile sweetly at him.

Pascha’s eyes narrow dangerously. “

.”

“Just tell him I’m here.”

“You can tell him yourself.” Pascha nods at the two burly guards before grabbing my elbow and yanking me angrily after him as he storms up the stairs. I grit my teeth, still wincing with every step but relishing the triumph I’m going to feel once I tell Leo that his little plan just went up in smoke.

Upstairs, we march down a tacky gilded hallway until we get to a heavy door. The guards step aside as Pascha blows past them and through it, with me in tow.

There are six other men in the room—some drinking at the bar along one wall, a couple of others cleaning handguns on a coffee table between two leather couches. Leo himself looks up from his large, ornate desk when we enter, first with a curious, then amused expression on his face.

“

there she is,” he purrs in his thick Russian accent, clearly dulled by vodka by the late hour.

“Hello, Leo.”

He scowls. “You could address me as you should, you know.”

“Which is how, exactly?”

“As , for a start.”

I laugh coldly. “I can promise you, that’s not going to happen, .”

My dad ignores the dig. “Can I assume you’ve come here tonight to finally follow through with your family responsibilities?”

I can only stare at him. “Family responsibilities?” I hiss. “Where the hell were ‘family responsibilities’? Like, ?”

Leo glares back at me. “You were provided for as a child. You had food, clothes, a roof over your head…”

“No thanks to you. My mother did all that.”

He rolls his eyes. “How? By sucking dick?”

My temper flares. “

.”

“If you don’t wish to acknowledge what she was…” he shrugs. “Well, I can’t force you.”

My mother was many things—amongst them, yes, an exotic dancer.

But she slept with men for money.

“The money for your needs came from me, ” He sighs, raising a silver-rimmed crystal tumbler and sipping what must be vodka over ice. “But enough. It is in the past. Now, we have the future to look toward, and what it means for you and our family.”

I laugh coldly again. “

family? I have my family and you have yours.”

He smiles, making a tsking sound with his teeth as he shakes his head. “Blood is blood, . And you have something this family can use to advance itself.”

I resist the urge to throw up as he leans forward across the desk.

“I know you’ve never been with a man,” he growls quietly. “This is good, very good. Because a man like Melik Mirzoyan can appreciate a bride who’s never bled for another man.”

This time, I do actually have to choke back the vomit rising in my throat.

Because there it is: the reason for all of this. The reason I went out tonight to do what I did, to rid myself of my freaking virginity, so that he couldn’t hold it over my head anymore.

My father wants to marry me off like some sort of prize cow to the prince of the Albanian Mafia, Melik Mirzoyan, to secure a deal with Melik’s father Serj. Such a deal would allow the Reznikov Bratva to buy out Serj’s empire. But apparently Melik is one of those sacks of shit that is only interested in a virgin bride.

Fuck. That.

Slowly, as the silence grows in the room, I start to smile—wider and wider, until Leo’s brow furrows.

“This is amusing to you?”

“No, but your choice of phrasing just now is.”

It’s now or never. I didn’t intend to be this dramatic with it, nor did I anticipate there being half a dozen other men in the room, including the ultra-creepy Pascha. But screw it, why not.

“What phrasing?”

Without saying a word, I bend at the knees and reach down. Leo’s face scrunches up in confusion as my hand slips up under the hem of my dress. With a wince, I peel the cream-colored lace panties away from my still-tender parts and pull them down my legs. Then I slip them over my heels, and dangle them from one fingertip, smiling.

Then, before I can lose my nerve, I toss them right onto Leo’s desk.

His eyes drop and his face twists when he spots the dark red stain on them.

“What the ?!” he sputters, standing abruptly and backing away, as if I’ve just tossed a bomb, or anthrax, on his desk. His eyes drag up to mine, revulsion on his face. “What is this!? Are you on your fucking period or—”

“No, Leo, I’m not.”

He frowns. Then blinks.

And slowly, it hits him.

The color rushes into his face, suffusing it with deep a purply-red as his lips curl viciously.

“

.”

I just smile. “Oops. So much for the purity pledge for poor widdle Melik and his fragile male ego.”

Leo’s face contorts with rage, his eyes tightening to slits.

“You. Fucking.

”

“You do get to talk to me like that,” I snap. “Actually, you don’t get to talk to me at all.” I shake my head, keeping my head high as I glare right into his face. “This is . Don’t ever come near me again.”

Then, with a show of cool confidence I don’t feel in the slightest, I turn and stride out of the room, my chin up and shoulders straight.

I keep up the façade until I get outside. Then the air rushes out of my lungs with a wrenching sound as I look up and shove my fingers through my hair.

.

It’s over.

The Uber I ordered on my way back down through the restaurant pulls up to the curb. Grinning, I hop in. And then we’re off into the night.

Nora’s fast asleep on the couch when I get home. Netflix still thinks she’s binging , so I quietly turn off a shirtless, monster-slaying Henry Cavill, cover my sister with a blanket, make sure the blinds are drawn so the first light won’t wake her, and leave her to sleep.

There’s almost a twinge of regret when I shower—as if I think that washing his scent, his touch, and his…well, off me will erase the memory. But I needn’t have worried. After I crawl into bed and snuggle under the covers, it’s the only thing I can think about.

Part of me feels a little guilty for using him. But not guilty. This is Hades we’re talking about, after all. To him, I’m sure I was just one more random girl on one more random night. It’s a thought that sits sourly in my brain much more than it should. But I shove the sourness down.

It is what it is. And I have zero regrets.

No one ever has to know.

He can be my own secret sin.

My dirty little secret.

And it’s with endless replays of all the ways he made me explode rushing through my head, like a powerful drug, that I slowly sink to sleep.