Claimed

Chapter 2

CHRISTIAN ‘VICIOUS’ VOLKOV.

I hate complications.

And this complication comes in the form of feline blue eyes, sunshine blonde hair, delicately arched brows and a sinfully full bottom lip.

I almost laugh painfully at the thought of Rhett Kingston having a fine bottom like the woman seated across me looking like she wants to put my head in a noose once I fall asleep.

She might be a fine bottom, hell finest bottom I have seen for a freaking while but I look at that face and I’m reminded that her husband, her lover, the father of the child I’m carrying in my arms right now raped my sister and killed her.

I might have lied about the million dollars but freak me for enjoying the fact that I’m taking his woman and his child away just like he took something from me.

An eye for an eye.

Una vita per una vita.

The weasel might leap out from the place he’s hiding once the news hit him that I have his little family with me.

I can only wait.

Patience. Control.

Patience. Control.

“I’d like to have my baby now.”

Her voice pierces through the air. Raspy, grating, bedroom sexy and still a complication.

I eye her for a second.

Alexia Green.

Then my eyes wander to the baby wrapped up in a white blanket like a muffin.

She’s small. Way too small than anything I have ever held.

I want to hate the kid because well…I freaking hate kids and this one belongs to Rhett all the more reason to hate her. But that’s the thing… I don’t.

Her eyes might be closed but her hands once in a while fight past the blankets trying to reach for my hands.

“No”, I growl.

“You think I’d run away knowing your men might shoot me the very minute I do?”

She asks me like I’m a child who hasn’t understood the dynamics surrounding us.

“That didn’t stop your husband from doing so, Mrs. Kingston.”

She’s not Mrs. Kingston, I know that because I’ve read her profile. I’ve read everything about Rhett except this baby.

“Rhett has not been my anything for a long time. The name’s Alexia Green and unless your boobs have milk in them, I suggest you hand me my baby.”

Suggest?

She’s got a pair on her for sure. Bigger balls than I’ve seen on a woman.

“Your baby seems fine to me, Mrs. Kingston. You on the other hand don’t seem to be. What’s bugging you right now? The fact that I’m holding your baby or the fact that you know where Rhett is. Don’t try to bullshit me right now, where’s Rhett?”

She laughs.

This woman, whom I’d lost control of hours ago laughs like I’m not the man in charge of everything bad she reads in her little fairytale books.

“What’s bugging me? Gee, what’s bugging me? My ex left the minute I told him I was pregnant, I’m all alone and Millie’s all I have. I’ve been fighting men off my doorstep every single day of the week and right now I’ve been kidnapped by a man who was about to snap my neck had my daughter not cried. Yes, Mr. Bottomhole, I’m bugged by the fact that you are holding my baby!”

By the time she finishes, her tears are well underway.

She sobs, tries to wipe the tears with the back of her palms only for her to sob again.

I hold her baby.

Damn straight I sit there watching her sob, basking in her pain because a few weeks ago, I was the same helpless man watching everything I had crumble to pieces.

I’m no saint.

I’m no hugger who’ll freaking bottomure her that she and her baby will be alright because the truth of the matter is, I couldn’t give two shits if she cried and filled the Missouri River.

She belongs to Rhett and best believe she’ll work herself to the bone till my wounds are healed and I find it in my stone-cold heart to forgive.

***

“From the start”, I bark, nursing back the Macallan that dislodges in my throat when my buddy Tommy struggles to speak.

Beaten black and blue, he wiggles in his chair like the piece of worm he is, trying to peer at me with the one good eye that’s working.

The one good eye that won’t earn him brownie points from me.

“Vic—please…I didn’t know she was…one of yours. I didn’t know she was your sister.”

Tommy chants the same chorus he’s been singing since I caught him and Rhett escaped.

I tip my nose at Maximo.

Maximo raises his fist about to punch him for the tenth time in the night when dear ole Tommy starts talking.

“Rhett said she needed to be taught a lesson. W-we cornered her just outside her college…she bit me trying to resist us, she would have caused a commotion so I-I strangled her. S—she pbottomed out.

When she…she came to, Rhett and I were already-“

“Taking what wasn’t yours. Bottomaulting her like she was nothing but a whore?” I smirk but beneath my smirk is the pain impaling me to the ground, the pain chaining and tethering me to my own guilt.

I drink the last of my liquor tipping my head at Maximo before I stand up and leave the gross warehouse.

Tommy’s screams follow my way out and his pain is like a soothing balm to my wounds because I know Maximo has cut away one of his fingers.

Again.

“How long are we holding them hostage?”

“Until she repays me”, I quip, Maximo grunts at my bullshit.

“Rhett killed Catelina, not her. You are in a bad place, Volkov. Freak, I am too but getting an innocent civilian won’t erase your grief”

He’s the only one, out of my men who calls me Volkov. Who’s close to me enough to call me out on my bullshit but right now, I want nothing more than to shut him up with a bullet between his eyes.

“It’s sure as hell making me feel better that I have her and not him”, I grit looking into the night and wishing to get lost in the darkness.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“Then what? She and her kid work for you their entire lives?”

No.

“Yes.”

“You are freaking sick, man”, he grunts, tired of trying to knock some sense into me.

The irony isn’t lost in me that he calls me sick when he’s my enforcer. The one who finishes my dirty work when I spiral out of control.

“You know Juana says Alexia and her baby light up the house. I’m guessing you haven’t been there for a while so what’s your excuse for visiting today?” he continues running his mouth.

Only when the car stops in front of my mansion, the same mansion my parents left me and Catelina. Do I turn to him and say, “I’M KEEPING AN EYE ON MY BOTTOMET”?

***

I saunter into the house alone; Maximo having had driven off to take care of some raucous brawl at one of my clubs downtown.

My head throbs and my anger ignites at the new smell of vanilla and wildflowers that hog the foyer, the living room and I’m not entirely surprised that I’ll find the same scent in the kitchen too.

Only when I enter the kitchen, the sight that greets me is one that would make even a man of the cloth sin without thinking twice.

Her back to me, Alexia Green stands on her tippy toes trying to reach for something on the high shelves.

Her legs are creamy, milky, the type that belong to one of those Vogue cover models. For a minute there, all the blood that’s keeping me sane flows right down south and the urge to mar those legs of hers with my teeth grows.

When my eyes rake north, past the back of her knees to her heart-shaped bottom, anything remotely connected to freaking her brains out flies out the window.

The summer dress she’s wearing, the one that I’m too familiar with because I bought it myself stares right back at me, taunting me, pushing memories I thought were locked away to the surface.

I have no damn clue what I’m doing as I strut across the room angrily.

I have no damn clue what gets to me the minute I grab her by the wrist scaring the wits out of her.

All I see is my sister’s smile wearing the same dress this woman is wearing and I lose it.

“Take it off”, I scowl.

“What?”

I lean closer, right to her ear where she can hear me loud and clear.

“I said… freaking strip!”