Page 39 of Axel (Belles & Bratva Beasts #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

AXEL

“So, where should I take her shopping?”

I question my mother, watching her blow perfect smoke rings and admire their form.

It’s her one playful habit.

She smokes vanilla cigars, and seems to enjoy tapping her ashes on the back of the naked man, bound with his ass in the air when she answers me, “Chanel, of course.”

“What if that’s not her style?” I ask about Ruby but cock an eyebrow at our captive.

Wow, he’s really hung and hard for this torture.

He’s kneeling and bound in a BDSM device.

Vale suggested to Nash that we use it for interrogations. Though our next queen can fire snark like hollow-point bullets, especially at me, Vale’s also getting her PhD in Sexuality Studies, and her knowledge is helpful.

This man, who Grant caught climbing over the courtyard wall at Delta’s, ready to ambush us, has been a tough nut to crack. Literally.

This Humiliator device has him kneeling with his cheek on the ground, his ass in the air, and his ankles and wrists bound in chains to a bar behind his knees.

The bar is two, locked together, and squeezed between them, in a vice, is the base of his scrotum.

If our captive moves, he tortures his nuts.

Eventually, it’ll make him crack.

Vale’s a genius. A sex genius.

Because it hurts my nuts just looking at it.

Our captive has to be one of Turner’s men, one of the sex traffickers, but he won’t speak. He had no ID. No phone. No trace of who he is. He just silently stares at my mom with lethal admiration.

“She’ll be your queen.” Mom puffs her cigar. “Of course, haute couture will be her style. At least for our traditions.”

Ruby flies home tomorrow, and I want to spoil her.

Her three weeks in Greece turned into four. Not that she didn’t want to come home to me and our kittens. It was her sister Scarlett who delayed their departure.

Scarlett claimed she had a stomach bug and flying would be a special hell. But really, Ruby confided in me that she thinks Scarlett is pregnant and no one knows yet, not even her husband, Luca.

While Ruby’s been gone, everything and nothing has happened.

Our kittens are cute, but I won’t name them without Ruby. She has to meet them first. The furry little fuckers have distinct personalities, but all love to sleep in my shoes.

Nash will initiate Vale in two days. He finally relented, agreeing to let Jace be Vale’s second king. And Vale passed her queen’s test with orgasmic colors … and a sex swing on the floor.

Of course, I did my part, but I barely touched Vale. I only tested Nash to make sure he’d allow her to be initiated and not murder Jace for it, as I’m sure Nash will also test the hell out of me when it’s Ruby’s turn .

The thought of Ruby’s initiation makes me want to buy a twenty-five-pound bag of salt. For cuts. For bodies. For anyone who touches her.

I can’t think about it without feeling psychopathic. So, I don’t.

I focus on Turner, our escaped sex trafficker. We’ve located his men and hideout. We got that intel from a man who tried to kidnap Vale from my mom’s club. That man cracked easier than an egg, not like this bound fucker with his ass in the air.

After Vale’s initiation, we’ll raid Turner’s hideout, hoping to rescue his next cargo of victims.

But this guy? Watching my mom like a hawk? Like a hard-dicked hawk?

Something about him feels familiar.

But with all he’s a part of? Trafficking women and children? He’ll never make it out of this bunker alive. It’s a bomb shelter in the old naval yard, north of Charleston. I bought it for us to use for weapons storage. For prison and torture. For cornhole on a rainy day.

“If I take her to Chanel,” I’m bugging the shit out of my mom, “what color should I buy her?”

She puffs her cigar, smiling. “What have I always taught you boys?”

“Give a woman whatever she wants.”

“Precisely. Take her shopping and let her pick. It’s not her initiation; I like to buy our queens special gifts for that.” She makes a face. “But I still don’t understand why you want her to watch this one. It’s not her turn yet. I still need to meet her.”

“I want her to see everything before she agrees.” I shrug. “It’ll be different for her, more dangerous, being my queen, the heir’s queen, and I want her to understand the risks.”

“Ahem. ”

The bound man coughs. It’s his first sound since I’ve been here, though he hasn’t seen my face.

He can’t look over his shoulder from where he kneels on the floor to where I stand. He can stare right at his rusty metal, threadbare bed, or he can stare left at my mom’s black, spiked, red-soled Louboutin’s.

All while I have a wincing, clear view of his very groomed asshole.

“He’s someone’s sub,” Vale had guessed in an off-handed statement about him last week.

Nash brought her here so she could see the darker part of our world.

“He likes bondage and humiliation, and he’s very groomed for it.

Physically. Verbally,” she said. “I don’t know who he belongs to, but he serves someone. ”

I see what Vale meant.

This captive is way too compliant for a man so tatted and jacked. His body is honed for violence, not his passive pose.

Someone’s trained him.

“Fine.” Mom taps more ashes on his back. “Let your future queen watch an initiation. Yes, you need her full consent. But don’t you dare do any rituals with her until she meets me.”

“Why?” I smirk, leaning against the concrete wall, peeling with decades-old beige paint. “You afraid you won’t like her?”

“No.” Her face softens, answering me, “You love her and I’m afraid I’ll love her, too, and I can’t bear to see you hurt if you lose another queen.”

“Katya never felt like my queen.” I coldly huff, “She felt like my curse.”

“Ahem.”

Again, this fucker interjects? First, at me being the heir, and second, at a queen who left me?

Fuck this. Now, I’m suspicious.

Keeping out of range of his stare, I hunt, my shoes clapping over concrete until I stand behind him, just enough to step the point of my shiny black oxfords down on his trapped balls.

“Argh!” he growls, protesting.

“Oh, so this isn’t your kink, ballboy?” I mock, “We finally found a torture that doesn’t please your dick?” I step harder. “Care to contribute meaningfully to the conversation, or do you need a cough drop?”

“Fuck you, Aleksi,” he mutters my birth name and my eyes widen. My mind, shocked. My pulse stutters as the hot blood in my veins turns to ice.

Then … it’s instinct.

I reach for my gun, and press the muzzle of my double-mag, Mossberg 9mm to his asshole, and growl, “ What did you just call me?”

“Aleksi Kholodov,” he answers, laughing. “Nice to finally meet you, brother.” I whip my murderous glare to my mom, my trigger finger itching to pull. “Half brother, I should clarify.” He jeers, “We have different mothers, which is a good thing, because I really want to fuck yours.”

I rage, “You fucking piece of…”

“Michael!” My mother shouts my fake name. “Leave! This man is delusional and my prisoner and the last thing he needs is a bullet in his ass. He wants me to fuck him there and I will for his intel.”

What.

The.

Escaped Bratva.

Hell?

My half-brother? On my father’s side? Somehow, in my cold bones and thundering heart, I believe him. It feels true. And if that’s so, it means…

My father has found us.

“Leave!” My mother orders me again, pointing toward the door. Outside, three of her armed guards await her orders. After that? Five more are stationed outside, with two snipers who keep the only door, in or out of our bunker, in their crosshairs.

This man will never get out.

My half-brother will die in here.

Did my mother know this all along?

“Not before he pays.” I tuck my gun into my back holster and whip my knife from my pocket.

I’ll obey my mother, our queen, but she knows who I am, too. Who I was born to be.

With careful precision, I press the blade of my dagger to our captive’s hamstring.

If he truly is our father’s son, he’s seen this effective torture.

“You dare to disrespect her ?” I want to call her my mother, to defend her honor, but I won’t confirm our identity.

“You want to kneel for her?” I sneer, “Then let me help you. Do you know where the term ‘being hamstrung’ comes from, ballboy? It comes from slicing a man’s hamstring.

More accurately, your biceps femoris. Thanks for working out.

I can clearly see yours.” With a one-inch cut, I slice across it, making him cry out and taking his freedom of movement for months to come.

“It comes from this revenge, you disrespectful piece-of-shit.”

Then I pull out a salt packet. Now thanks to my sadistic father, I always carry one in my pocket. Pouring it over his weeping wound, he whimpers in pain while I jeer, “And now you’ll live with no infection, but it’ll be on your knees for her, you mother fucker, indeed.”

I move my blade to slice his other hamstring, but my mom shouts, “Enough! I fight my own battles. Leave!”

It’s with fierce love and something else in my mother’s glare that she pleads with me to listen .

I have her eyes. We all do. And right now? She’s trying to protect me.

From myself.

Without a word, I storm out of the room, letting the door slam behind me before I tuck my bloody knife into my pocket.

“Cover her!” I command her guards as I fight every instinct I have to kill my half-brother.

But with deep inhales, I pace the concrete hallway and get my shit together. We didn’t survive this long by being impulsive and stupid.

Vale’s initiation.

Alena’s wedding.

Turner’s destruction.

We have so much to do, and we’ll get through it. We honor our vows and traditions. That’s how we survive together.

While secretly I’ll find out…

How in the hell did my father find us?

And I’ll ask my mom how long she’s known.

And I’ll worry like hell…

What if he finds Ruby?