Page 49 of Omega

Vitaly frowned. “Not really, no. It is your friend, Kyrie St. Claire. She killed my daughter. It is she who must suffer.”

I shivered at that. “So what do you want from me?”

“Little enough. You are bait, nothing more, nothing less. She will come for you. She will send someone. That barbarian, Nicholas Harris, first, perhaps. Others, maybe. Eventually, she herself will stand in front of me. That is when the suffering will begin.”

I swallowed hard. “She was only acting in self-defense.”

He shrugged. “This I know. But it does not matter. She killed my daughter. I cannot excuse this, no matter the reason.” He eyed me. “Until then, all I require from you is…cooperation. You are a diversion, no more.”

A diversion.

Shit.

Ireallydidn’t like the sound of that.

11

ROAD TRIP

As the days passed, I played a game with myself.

Vitaly was always present, always a gentleman to me. He never swore, never smoked, and never raised his voice. In fact, he never raised his voice at all, to anyone. He was always totally even-keeled, calm, smooth as a glassy lake. His household help seemed to respect him, but did not seem to fear him. The men, though—the foot soldiers or base level thugs or whatever you wanted to call them, nowtheywere scared shitless of Vitaly. And with good reason. He killed them regularly, for the slightest infraction. A misstatement, a failed job, an ill-advised glance at me…and that switchblade would find their ribs. They never saw it coming. It was like a serpent striking, sudden, vicious, and final. He never missed, never hesitated. Right to the heart, and they just dropped dead.

And it was always a man named Gutierrez who cleaned up the body. Gutierrez was short, thin, balding, and always wore mirrored aviators, black cargo shorts, black crew-neck T-shirt, sports sandals. It was a uniform, it seemed. He was never armed that I could see. And he was scarily efficient at disposing of bodies. It was like a scene out ofScandal: he’d appear with a huge blue tarp, roll the body onto it, wrap the body in the tarp and seal it with duct tape, heave the wrapped corpse onto an appliance dolly, and wheel it away. Moments after that, Maria appeared with an armful of towels and disinfectant, and the blood stains were gone. The whole process took less than ten minutes.

So, the game I played with myself was pretty simple, and rather morbid: I woke up each day and asked myself what I would be willing to do to stay alive. What horror would I willingly endure, if it meant my heart kept beating? What barbarity would I perpetrate if it meant another day closer to Harris rescuing me?

I chanted my mantra like it was a “Hail Mary”, over and over and over:Harris is coming, Harris is coming, Harris is coming.

Thus far, four days into my captivity, I’d been very well treated, if scantily clad. Vitaly provided me with a new pair of underwear, a tiny red thong. No shirt, no bikini top, nothing. Apparently his claim that I would be properly attired was a lie. I lived in that thong, and forced myself to act as if I was fully dressed. I endured the eyes of his lackeys as they came and went with reports, the eyes of the maids and the chef as he brought meals, the bodyguards always lurking just around a corner. And Vitaly’s eyes, always his eyes.

A touch, now and then. A palm across my ass, a brief caress of my boob. A hand on my hip, an inhalation of my hair.

I was forced to shower with Vitaly as my audience once a day, in the morning, after breakfast.

Vitaly was a creature of habit, I discovered. He woke at six a.m., rolled out of bed and exercised for thirty minutes. Squats, lunges, two kinds of pushups, crunches, obliques, planks, five reps of twenty each. On the third day, he made me do it with him. Asshole. At six thirty he had breakfast, plain yogurt with fresh-cut strawberries, four eggs scrambled with cheese, four slices of toast lightly buttered, three cups of coffee, and a handful of vitamin supplements. Then he showered, shaved, dressed, and watched me shower. By eight he was ready to go, and usually left the penthouse via helicopter with two bodyguards in tow, and an older, weather-beaten man with salt-and-pepper hair at his side. The older man’s name was Cut. At least, that’s what Vitaly called him.

Cut never so much as looked at me, but I felt his attention somehow, anyway. I didn’t like his attention. It made my skin crawl, made my gut churn.

And yes, the entire time I had my old buddy Mr. Papermate the Pussy Pen in place, ready when I needed him. Fucking uncomfortable. Definitely not meant to have something hard up there at all, much less for so long. It was starting to hurt like a bitch, and I was never able to forget about it. I was, for sure, gonna end up with a bitch of an infection.

Super fucking fun.

But I had no doubt in my mind that I’d end up needing Mr. Papermate at some point in this little adventure. Especially with Cut around.

Cut scared me worse than Vitaly. Cut was an unknown quantity, whereas with Vitaly, at least I knew for a fact that he could and would kill without compunction. I knew he liked to look at me, liked to watch me shower, like to grope a bit. He made me sleep on the floor at the foot of his bed like a goddamn dog, which really pissed me off, but I dealt with it without complaint because I liked being alive, and it didn’t mean anything in the long run. No blanket, no pillow. Just the carpet, my naked ass hanging out, my arm under my head. Vitaly was toying with me, testing me, pushing me to my limits. Trying to elicit a reaction.

Unfortunately for him, he was absolutely correct in his assessment of me: I had an iron will. If I decided to do something, no force on earth could sway me. Usually I just did what I wanted, whatever seemed fun or easy. But if I got something in my mind, there was no stopping me until I did it. That was how I managed to work two full-time jobs plus fifteen credit hours at Wayne State University. It was how I survived the shit I did, growing up. I survived the ghetto as an outsider, not black, not white, not Hispanic, but as a girl alone on the streets and in the schools, which were often as dangerous as the streets, if not more so. In school, they could trap you in the locker room or the bathroom. On the streets there was usually somewhere to run. I’d survived that—not necessarily unscathed, but I’d survived it. I didn’t talk about that shit with anyone, though. Not anyone, not even Kyrie.

But I survived. I’d push through fucking anything, no matter what. I’d made it this far, made it out of the ghetto on my own, I’d paid my way through school, damn near got myself a bachelor’s degree, and a good set of skills. And I would be damned if some motherfucking Greek kingpin would end me. He wanted to watch me shower like a fucking nasty-ass creeper? Let him watch. He wanted to make me sleep on the floor like Fido? I’d sleep on the floor.

He wanted to rape me?

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Wanted to beat me into a bloody pulp?

Wouldn’t be the first time.