His to Ruin Read online

  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2018 Winter Sloane

  ISBN: 978-1-77339-588-3

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Karyn White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To my readers, I hope you enjoy Nik and Sasha’s story as much as I loved writing it. To Evernight, for giving my story a home.

  HIS TO RUIN

  Winter Sloane

  Copyright © 2018

  Chapter One

  Nikolai Lazovsky took out his father’s old revolver from his gear bag, swung open the chamber, and checked the bullets inside. Only six shots and he’d make sure each shot counted. He wouldn’t start with the skull of his enemy though. Too easy and a quick death was too good for him.

  Nikolai had other toys tucked away in the bag, sub-machine guns and grenades, knives of varying lengths, if he wanted to go up against an opponent up close and personal, but using his old man’s gun seemed fucking symbolic.

  Maxim Petrovich had shoved the same gun to the side of his father’s head ten years ago, shooting Yuri Lazovsky at such close range that, even fast forward to the present, Nikolai could still remember the spray of brain matter and blood on his face. He rubbed at the invisible spot on his scarred cheek.

  Nikolai closed the gun chamber, setting it down. Touching the same weapon of murder that ended his father's life always soothed his nerves, even a little. Then he lit a cigarette to calm his racing heart.

  Nope. It fucking didn’t do a thing. His hands itched to grip a weapon, to reduce some poor miserable dirt-bag into a screaming canvas of flesh.

  Nikolai shoved all thoughts of bloodlust away. He’d taken time off from his work as a freelance contract killer for this hunt. No use getting careless and making a mistake, not when he’d waited an entire fucking decade to execute his vengeance.

  Putting out his stick on the nearby ashtray, he rose from the table. A quick glance towards his laptop told him the bugs an inside man had planted still functioned. It proved a waste of money. Most of the time, it picked up nothing but music, as if nothing but a ghost lived inside the walls he spied on. Nikolai knew better.

  Grabbing his binoculars, Nikolai walked towards the window of his hotel room, the one that had a perfect view of Petrovich Tower. He angled the binoculars to the topmost floor, the penthouse suite, to catch a glimpse of his future prize.

  Nikolai checked his wristwatch. This time of the day, she was usually leaning against the balcony, peering at the traffic beneath her, like some goddamn princess in her tower of steel and glass. Maxim thought he had everything covered, that no one could breach his security defenses and obtain the prize he took great pains to keep hidden.

  Too bad Nikolai wasn’t just anyone. He’d racked up plenty of kill counts and dirtied his hands a hundred times over just for today. Practice, before the real thing. There she was, the short and curvy beauty who was about to become his.

  From this angle, she looked like a tiny doll, except dolls didn’t have such expressive eyes. A certain naivety and innocence still clung to her, which made his conquest all the sweeter.

  His dick dug into the zipper of his jeans. Anticipation raced down his spine as he adjusted the binoculars to get better up-close shot of her. In three days, Nikolai would no longer need to look at his little doll from afar. He could do with her as he liked.

  Fucking perfect.

  Then she looked right at him, as if she knew she had a secret watcher, a monster in human skin stalking her from afar. All in Nikolai’s imagination of course, because she couldn’t possibly see him. Maxim’s little princess probably looked down on everyone else. She thought she was untouchable, but Nikolai was about to change all that.

  He devoured her silently, from the way her curves clung to her silk robe, to the thick black hair that fell down her back in waves, and her heart-shaped face. Fuck, those lips would look amazing wrapped around his dick. She’d look perfect, on her knees, awaiting his next command.

  What would Maxim think, seeing his princess in the hands of a monster like him? The Bratva boss thought his little angel was safe and secure in the fortress he’d built. The greedy son-of-a-bitch thought he was untouchable, that no one could lay a dent on the walls of his kingdom.

  Well, Nikolai was about to shatter those walls and make sure they all came crashing down on Maxim Petrovich’s head.

  ****

  Goosebumps rose across both of Sasha’s arms as she stood on the balcony. She didn’t know why this was her favorite spot. It didn’t have a view of the city’s outline, like the windows in the living room, just an old hotel across the street.

  This wasn’t the first time this week she’d felt someone watching her. That was absurd though because according to her father, the penthouse’s security system was top notch. Besides, two of her father’s best men were always on rotation outside the front door of her prison.

  She would have preferred to linger there a little longer, watching the throngs of people on the street below, going about their everyday lives. When she’d been younger, she used to imagine what it be like, being someone else’s daughter, girlfriend, or sister, but she no longer did. It hurt too much, thinking about things she couldn’t have.

  Shivering, she headed back inside, but Sasha still couldn’t shake off the feeling of being watched. Probably all a figment of her imagination, and yet it thrilled her to fantasize about some stranger, watching her from afar, his intentions unknown.

  Sasha let out a bitter little laugh and padded back inside. God, she was sick of looking at the same furniture every single time, tired of the heavy silence each time she walked from one room to the next. Sasha turned on the music, blasting it so she didn’t feel that isolated.

  Classical music filled the entire apartment, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” because that had been her mother’s favorite, then hers. She ran her fingers over the covers of the vinyl records on the living room shelf. No one used these anymore, only her father if he wanted nostalgia. Her father didn’t allow other music in the house. He said it was to preserve the memory of Sasha’s mother.

  First, it was music, then the rest of the house. Nothing in this prison belonged to Sasha. A polite knock came from the door, and one of her father’s men, Abram, poked his head in, shoulder holster getting caught in the door.

  “Everything okay here, princess?” he asked, needing to yell, because of the soaring notes.

  Princess, the same nickname her father used. She hated that word.

  “Fine.” Sasha gave him a perfectly acceptable monosyllabic answer.

  Abram stared at her a little longer than necessary, and she shivered, realizing her robe remained open. Her heart started to beat a little faster. Feeling self-conscious, she closed it. Many times, she debated tempting one of her father’s men to come inside, just to test their loyalty, to see her father react, but she knew the answer to that.

  She didn’t consider herself beautiful, not like her slender mother. Sasha had seen pictures on the net of models and other thin and pretty girls. She wasn’t like any of them, but men like Abram only saw tits and ass. To them, she was forbidden fruit, a sheltered virgin tucked away from the rest of the world by Maxim.

  As tempting as she was, a crazy young woman hungry for touch, someon
e who hadn’t spoken or come in contact with another living soul except her father and trusted men for years, they feared Maxim’s wrath even more.

  The other Bratva families looked up to her father for a reason. He didn’t hesitate to use violence and bloodshed as a means to obtain what he wanted. How ironic that the greatest treasure Maxim owned, slipped from his fingers. If her mother hadn’t been murdered in cold blood, then Maxim wouldn’t be the bloodthirsty monster he’d become today.

  “Your father wants you to prepare dinner. He’s flying in straight from Moscow,” Abram told her.

  “I see.” She turned her back, hearing the click of the door a moment later.

  Sasha curled her lip. Of course, Maxim needed his men to tell her that. He couldn’t bring himself to text her himself. Then again, the head of the Petrovich Family had most of the local politicians and judges in this city eating out of his pocket. Maxim didn’t concern himself with unimportant matters.

  She felt like that princess trapped in an impregnable tower in that fairytale her mom used to read to her when she was younger. Sasha’s greatest fear was for her father to forget he put her here in the first place, not allowing her to step into the outside world until she died, or he did. Sasha looked at the framed photographs lining the walls, featuring her mother either alone or with her father.

  Maxim no longer saw her as a person, much less his daughter. Sasha was only a painful reminder of his loss, a ghost of her mother. Even then, she was a pale copy. In all the portraits, her mother smiled at the camera, blue eyes full of the warmth of life. Sasha felt like a walking corpse on most days.

  Sasha kept hoping to wake up someday in another place, a new setting, where she didn’t need to constantly stare at the pictures of her dead mother. On occasion, she’d been tempted to tear the portraits off the wall and fling them outside her balcony. That would give Maxim a hell of a surprise.

  She clenched her fists by her sides. Sasha was twenty-two, and Maxim had been keeping her here since she was eleven.

  Needing an outlet before dinner with her father, she headed back to her room. It was the only space in the apartment she had a say in decorating. Sasha sat at her desk and fired up her PC. Settling her drawing tablet at her knees, she opened her current project—a desert landscape with the giant ribs of a monster peeking out.

  Having never seen much of the outside world, Sasha only had her imagination to draw on. She loved creating fantasy landscapes, and she even managed to sell some of her work online. Art kept her sane, giving her the strength to face each new day.

  Sasha had been sketching places in the real world lately. It was as if part of her heart longed to visit those exotic places, Niagara Falls, for instance, the Grand Canyon, a former mental asylum turned museum in Venice, or this mysterious temple in India.

  She clutched the edges of the tablet. Her chest tightened. Sasha let out a bitter laugh. The last time she asked for freedom, he’d flipped, and she remained stuck in bed, miserable and unable to move for days. Maxim wore two faces, one that of the struggling father, the husband who still mourned the loss of his wife—and the other? Maxim turned into a red-faced monster, only able to see one emotion. Rage. Her father would never let her out of this steel and glass tower. Maxim would kill her before letting that happen, but she had to try again.

  Chapter Two

  “How’s the chicken?” Sasha asked because talking about some inane matter felt a lot better than sinking into deep silence again.

  Maxim looked up from his phone, his plate untouched.

  “It’s good, Natalya,” he murmured. Maxim picked up his fork and shoveled meat into his mouth.

  She blew out a breath. Maxim called her by her mother’s name. Again. Dread wormed its way into her insides like a barbed wire, worsening as more time passed. She gripped her fork, took some of her vegetables, and chewed. No surprise it tasted like ashes in her mouth.

  Ask him again, a tiny voice inside her spoke out. Sasha remembered the tears she’d shed, the blood she’d had to clean off the floor. Fear joined dread, the combination unpleasant.

  Maxim took his napkin, wiped his mouth, then finally looked at her for the first time tonight.

  “Sasha,” he said, shaking his head. “I forget sometimes. The turf wars with the damn Italians have been a headache, you understand?”

  No apologies. Maxim Petrovich never owned up to his mistakes, not when he could push it to another sucker. He put his phone away. That’s new, she thought, playing with the vegetables on her plate. She was a terrible cook, so she rang up the nearest restaurant and one of her father’s men would bring it up. His men hadn’t told Maxim she couldn’t cook a damn thing, and neither did she. Her own little form of vengeance.

  How petty she’d become. Shove a pretty bird into a gilded cage and despite the comfortable prison, the bird would always hold some resentment for its captor.

  “How was your day?” he finally asked.

  The fact he made an effort at some form of conversation surprised her. Usually, Maxim would talk her ear off, vent and unload all his frustrations, not expecting her to respond. Convenient, because Sasha would never spill his secrets.

  “The usual,” she replied.

  Maxim frowned, pale gray eyes assessing her. He stared at her far too long, making her a little uncomfortable, apprehensive even. “What’s wrong?”

  Did Maxim get high on some new designer drug before coming here? He was acting out of character tonight.

  “Nothing.” A storm brewed inside of her, frustration and anger that had built over the years. Sasha knew the words would trigger his fury, make Maxim toss aside his good guy mask and put on the one which continued to hunt her nightmares on worse nights.

  “I want to travel, even just for a little while. You can assign someone you trust, and I won’t—”

  Maxim banged his fist on the table so loud, it made the cutlery jumped. His entire face turned red, the veins poking out. “We’ve talked about this, Sasha. You’re no longer a child. I needn’t explain the fucking situation to you.”

  Back off now, a cowardly voice inside her warned. He’ll hurt you again. Remember his last threat? Sasha consciously touched the fingers of her left hand, her drawing hand, and swallowed. How could she forget?

  A year ago, Maxim had backed her into her bedroom, a menacing shadow. He’d leered at her PC, her drawing tablet. That time he didn’t just threaten to take away the tools that kept her sane. Maxim had threatened to break her hand to make sure she could no longer pick up a pencil or pen without shaking.

  That hadn’t been the worst part. She most hated the moments after, when his bad mood faded and Maxim would put back his good guy mask and hold her close, apologizing again and again for hurting her, asking why she kept asking for it.

  She usually listened to that voice but not tonight. She needed to get this off her chest, to prove to her father that she’d never stop bargaining. Sasha had both Maxim’s and her mother’s blood running through her veins, steel underneath blood, flesh, and bone.

  “Yes, I’m no longer a child. I became a woman in this prison, and look how fucked-up I’ve become,” she said dryly.

  Porcelain shattered. Food splattered across her grandmother’s tablecloth, the floor, even the wall behind Maxim. Such a waste but she shouldn’t be worried about the food now, but the beast she’d awoken.

  “Don’t be an ungrateful bitch. I kept you safe all these years. You have no idea what’s out there, what my enemies would love to do to you,” Maxim said. He jerked a finger to the floor-to-ceiling bulletproof windows next to them. “And don’t you dare call our home a prison. You have all the comfort and luxury you’d need. Most young women aren’t so lucky.”

  “All I want is a little time to stretch my wings. I’m not asking for a lot. I’ll handle my own expenses.”

  “By how? Whoring yourself?” he asked dryly.

  Sasha flinched when he shoved his chair backward so violently, the legs created scratches on the marble flo
oring. Self-preservation made her rise, seek out a potential hiding spot where he wouldn’t reach her.

  Not that it would ever work. Sasha might be safe from the rest of the world, from the men who would love to do depraved things to her, according to her father’s bedtime stories, but she’d never been safe from Maxim.

  No mattered how much she screamed or begged for help, it would never come.

  She took a step back as the sound of his popping knuckles filled the silent space, flinching when he casually pulled out the gun tucked in his belt. The buckle bore the same design as the ring he wore, that of a tiger’s head, its jaws and teeth exposed—the symbol of the Petrovich family. Sasha remembered being transported to a happy time she started to doubt really existed when her mother was alive, excited to give Maxim that belt.

  Sasha knew the look in her father’s eyes, knew he wouldn’t listen to logic. Why did she keep doing this to herself? Sooner or later, he’d kill her out of rage. Was it worth provoking him just to chance to step out of her prison and see the places she could only dream of?

  In those wild fantasies of hers, she imagined standing next to a man, someone to share the same wonders. Her soul mate. These were the dreams of a deluded a little girl, and Sasha was no longer that.

  Maxim tapped his gun against the table. Fear crept down her spine, and she didn’t dare speak. Would he finally use that weapon of murder against her?

  In a frighteningly calm voice, he said, “I’ve spoiled you too much, that’s what some of my men are saying.”

  “They’d say anything to please you.”

  She shouldn’t have said that. Maxim let out a curse, shattering more porcelain on the floor. She winced. Prolonging this would only make him madder, as she knew from personal experience. Sasha never learned, but she’d never stop trying to find a way out of her cage.