XXX - 145 Enslave: The Taming of the Beast Read Free

her!”
“You think I don’t know that?” he yelled. Then a hopeful look crossed his face. “Your husband is rich. Perhaps he can help us.”
Jelena blanched. “I can’t ask,” she said quickly. “Not for this. He’ll tell me to go to the police.”
“The police.” Her father spat the words out. “We can’t trust them. You know that.”
He’d been in prison in Russia. They had not helped her family. She nodded, knowing his answer before she’d even finished her own sentence.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” her father said instead. “It’s not safe. He knows where we live. He could decide to come back anyway. We’ve got to protect the baby.”
Irina looked nauseous. “He could come back?”
“You don’t know what this man is capable of,” her father said, and his voice actually trembled a little. “He’s a legend. He used to be on the West Coast somewhere, before a big mafia family in Las Vegas took him on. Killed his first man when he was seventeen, they say. Used to be really good-looking, I hear, but vicious. He was on his way to inheriting one of the biggest crime syndicates in Las Vegas. Then, once he got in that explosion…” He shuddered. “They say he’s absolutely brutal now. They call him The Beast. There’s an open contract out on his life, but he’s like a ghost. No one can touch him. Anyone who crosses his path dies—or wishes he did.”
Deidre was crying silently, her hand splayed over her large, protruding belly. Mikhail put a protective arm around his young wife.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Irina said, looking at Jelena now. “You’ve got to help us!”
Jelena sighed. “I will help you move. You’ll stay in a hotel tonight.”
“You will pay for that?” her father interjected.
Jelena felt a snap of anger. You stole the fucking car. You’re the reason we’re in this mess. Why can’t you pay for it? “I’ll pay for it.”
Her unhappiness must have been obvious on her face. He took a step forward, his chin jutting forward defensively. “I was putting the car money aside, for an emergency, or for after the baby was born. I would think you’d want to help your family.” He looked at her with reproach, and guilt burned in her chest like acid. “As your family has helped you.”
“Of course, Papa,” she said, bowing her head. “Let me make some calls.”
“And talk to your husband,” he added, straightening, looking more like the patriarch.
Jelena buried herself in the details of moving them out, gathering only essentials, leaving things behind. She’d been through this too many times before; it was a familiar routine. But her thoughts kept returning to Nadia. Nadia, whom she had resented for never being forced to marry, being their father’s favorite.
Nadia, who she now realized had often disappeared just before their father had gained something of value. Nadia, who never complained, never asked for anything. Perhaps there was a different reason that Nadia was her father’s favorite.
Jelena closed her eyes. Perhaps Nadia had not gotten the better end of the bargain, after all, in avoiding an arranged marriage.
“We must do something before that beast kills her,” Jelena whispered, but no one in her scurrying family heard her.
I just thought you’d want to help your family …
It would be up to her, then. No matter what it took.

    Nadia rode silently in the man’s opulent car—a Maybach, unprepossessing but more expensive than most ostentatious luxury cars. The leather seats felt like butter against her skin; even the air was perfumed with expense.
Where is he taking me?
He obviously was very rich, and very dangerous. Even in the spacious car, he seemed to engulf the interior, forcing her to unconsciously scrunch against the door.
“Driving too fast for you?” he growled.
She jumped, suppressing a squeak. “No,” she whispered.
“Then maybe you can let go of that handle.”
She looked down to find herself white-knuckling the handle on the