Guarded Rebellion (The Baranov Legacy)

14. Eva

14

EVA

T hree hours after we spoke on the phone, I held my breath as I waited for Kelly to jog back to the bus stop. Tucking under the shelter of the small lean-to structure that was designed for shielding riders from waiting in the rain, I shivered and wrapped my coat tighter around my body.

I’d never done this before.

I was a rules follower.

It had been ingrained in my mind that I should always be a good girl.

Obedient. Mild-mannered. Quiet and not causing any problems.

Sneaking out of the apartment would be a huge problem once my absence was noticed. And it would be.

I’d exited my room, racking my mind for ideas of how to get to campus for that frat party, and it was much to my surprise that Marcus, not Lev, waited outside my bedroom. I didn’t ask where Lev was. I didn’t have to.

“He’ll be back later tonight,” Marcus offered freely when I acknowledged him on the way to the kitchen.

“Oh.” That was all I said to him, plugging this information into a better scheme and plan. Having Lev out of the way simplified manners. It would’ve been far more difficult to try to sneak past the overlord asshole.

And it hadn’t been all that hard at all.

Kelly took a bus to get here and played a part in pretending to be a DoorDash deliverer gone wrong. And while Marcus had to deal with the snafu of her thinking she was supposed to bring takeout to the apartment, going down to the lobby to address the matter with the doorman, I slipped away.

“Come on. Come on,” I whispered, my breath fogging before my face. “Hurry…” The bus would be coming any minute, and I didn’t want to wait any longer in the cold. Besides, if Kelly couldn’t talk her way out of the lobby and trick the doorman into believing she’d made a mistake, I’d need to go back there to the building and help her. Going back would threaten my goal of sneaking out, though, and I really didn’t want to give up yet.

This little act of being out in the world sans guards was freeing. I felt liberated. Untethered. Every breath I took was fuel to do whatever I wanted. Each step I took was another mark of progress toward the unknown.

It was heady, dizzying me. Exhilarated to stand at a bus stop on a cold January night, I bit my lip and tried not to let my teeth chatter. I’d dressed to party—within reason—but even if I’d layered up three times over, I’d still be chilled with these temperatures.

It was just me out here. The big, blank navy sky felt wider and darker, welcoming me to embrace this new and foreign sensation of being alone. Of being unattached. Just one woman, one soul in the grand and vast expanse of the universe.

“Cold, little lady?” a haggard man asked as he limped along, his eyes unfocused and wild.

“No,” I replied, clipped and stern.

“I can warm ya up.”

“ No .” I repeated.

Okay, I really am alone out here… with this street bum.

But I wasn’t scared to not have Lev, Marcus, or any other Baranov man with me. I knew the necessary elements of self-defense and I would be far faster than this wiry old dude.

Before the situation could get dicey, Kelly appeared around the corner. She jogged, sending her blonde waves swaying in that high ponytail. A slim band of knitted blue wrapped around her head and covered her ears, but with that much of her face exposed to the elements, I worried that she was cold.

“Whew!” She grinned once she reached me, catching her breath. “That was much easier than I thought it would be.” Noticing the bum, she furrowed her brow and adopted that don’t mess with me attitude she sometimes let me see when she seemed to be intimidated—which was often. Kelly was shy, but I had a hunch she’d turn fierce when she had to.

“Easy? You call that easy?” I joked, huddling closer to her to give her some of my body heat as a bus approached. “My heart is racing. Like I’ve just done the unthinkable.”

“Have you ever snuck out before?” she asked in a whisper. Even though the bum had moved along, walking and limping further down the sidewalk, she kept our conversation confidential.

“No. Never.” I shrugged as she gestured for me to get on the bus first.

“Wow!” Kelly climbed on and we settled on a bench. No one else was riding, but that was no mystery. It was freezing out there. “Never? Not once?”

“I think you underestimate how confining my life is.” I grimaced as I admitted it. “I’ve never been without a guard.”

She frowned. “Are you… uh, are you really in that much danger?”

I would always be in danger one way or another. My family would have enemies until the end of time. That was just the way this world worked. But I didn’t want to make her afraid. “No, not directly.” Patting her gloved hand, I smiled and shoved this worry aside. “I wouldn’t sneak out if I thought it would put my life—or yours—in danger.”

“Okay.” She laughed lightly, adjusting her scarf. “I mean, it’s just a frat party.”

Ha. Just a frat party? This was a naughty act of rebellion for me. Merely thinking about going to a frat party—unchaperoned—was a supreme gesture of defiance on my part. And it symbolized so much more. I would have an opportunity to mingle and people watch knowing I wasn’t being studied as well. I could say what I wanted. Act as I pleased. Even though I wasn’t an extrovert and had no plans to be wild, I looked forward to just being there. To tricking myself that I could fit in with normal people, others my age who weren’t worried about turf wars, rivals placing hits, and the law enforcement targeting them for any and everything they could think of.

No torture. No embezzlement. No racketeering.

Just a frat party with simple, ordinary classmates.

I couldn’t wait.

“Excited?” Kelly asked as the bus neared the campus boundaries.

“Yes.” I set my teeth to my lip, unable to stop smiling.

“Just stick with me, okay?” she asked. “I’ve never gone to one of these things before, either. I’ve heard stories, and that’s really the only reason I’m curious enough to go.”

“Me too. It feels like a social experiment. Just to see what all the hype is about.”

She nodded. “It’s an experience.”

One I would always remember as the time I dared to decide something for myself for once.

We arrived a decent distance away from the frat house, but the walk there wasn’t a burden. The wind lessened, reducing the bite in the air as we hurried along the concrete path. Maintenance crews had plowed it and reapplied salt to melt the slickness earlier, but we still skidded and slipped here and there.

No one else walked on the bigger stretch of the path, but as we came closer to where the frat houses stood with the woods as a backdrop, we slowed our pace.

“I didn’t realize how big these houses are,” I commented, looking up at the mansion lit up and aglow with festivities. Christmas lights were still blazing, despite the holidays already over with weeks ago. Music hummed and thumped, the vibrations reverberating from the ground and up through our legs. Almost the size of the mansion I’d formerly called home, this frat house was a monstrosity of debauchery and partying.

“Me neither.” Kelly looped her arm with mine, clutching me closer to her side. “So let’s really plan to stick together. I don’t want to lose you.”

I frowned. “Are you nervous? We don’t have to go.”

“No. We do. Or I want to. I want to do a normal, typical thing. Nothing about my life has felt normal or typical, and I’m desperate to dupe myself into thinking I can belong just like anyone else in there.” She lifted her arm to point at the house.

We had more in common than I could’ve ever realized. “Me too. But if you’re this anxious, we can try again another time.”

She huffed, urging me to keep walking toward the house. “Yeah, right. Lev’s going to be so mad that you snuck out. He’s bound to ground you for good.”

I smiled. “Nah. He wouldn’t take it that far.” I don’t think…

“We’ve come this far,” she said in an effort to resist her sudden hit of social anxiety, “so we may as well go all the way.”

I laughed once at her comment and nodded.

We entered the massive party house arm-in-arm. At once, we were accosted by so many things that I could only sum up the experience as overwhelming. With eyes wide open and admittedly na?ve, I took in the scene around me to get a grounding for the chaos. Music deafened me, hurting my ears and also making my legs tremble from the booms of the bass. Smells swirled in a nasty mixture of booze, sweat, and weed. Everyone moved so fast, it was a blur of activity that I couldn’t track or follow at all. People were dancing on furniture. More were drinking. Others were talking and laughing, but there was so much commotion that I couldn’t settle on any one thing to look at or pay attention to.

Talk about being overstimulated.

“Let’s head toward the back,” Kelly said, practically shouting into my ear for me to make out what she wanted to tell me. “Maybe the music will be quieter there?”

I nodded, mostly reading her lips to understand instead of actually hearing her voice. I would go anywhere else to get out of the headache-inducing loudness in the foyer.

But I doubt anywhere in this house will count as quiet.

Holding on to her arm, I trailed after her as we headed into the party. Weaving through the throngs of people was no easy feat. Elbows jabbed into our sides. Bodies shoved, knocking us into the walls and furniture. At one point, a pair of women making out with each other and a man blocked the hallway and we had to circle around and figure out a clear way forward.

Reaching the kitchen didn’t help. With the open layout of the entire floor, we had no break from the constant drone of music, laughter, shouts, and chatter.

I’d never felt so claustrophobic. So intimidated, like I truly was the outsider who would never fit in.

I’d been to parties before. I’d gone to events. I’d been immersed with drunk, high, and wild people. But never like this, in such an unrefined and Bohemian environment. My experiences lay in the black-tie galas, the fancy fundraisers. Elegant wedding receptions and polished parties where decorum and decency were still expected.

This frat party… wasn’t fun. I couldn’t settle my racing mind for long enough to people watch, realizing that I couldn’t because everyone here was acting like an animal.

Embrace the experience. Just check it out to be able to know I’ve done this once.

I came here wanting to feel alive. To do something unexpected and daring. But the further Kelly and I moved into this space, I couldn’t escape the belief that it was a waste of my time.

I hated to feel superior, to be so haughty and want to look down on these people. They were my peers. My age. But they were not cut from the same cloth. I’d grown up fast. Maturity had been expected of me at a young age, and with my mother leaving the family, I’d been thrust into a childhood that was more like adulthood than not.

These partiers seemed so… childish. Trivial. Frivolous.

I don’t belong here.

But I hated to accept that reality because it would only reinforce the hard truths Lev had told me. That I didn’t belong at college at all. That I was being a greedy, selfish brat to insist on having this experience at all when the only things I’d ever been wanted for were my hand in marriage and my body to carry babies.

I sniffled, hating this onslaught of dense emotions. I couldn’t cry. Not here. And maybe not ever. Yet, the oppressive awareness that this was all for nothing weighed so heavily on my soul.

This is stupid. I am stupid to ever think I could be free from the expectations I’ll never break from. I ? —

Someone plowed into me, breaking the link between me and Kelly. She tripped, going forward in the crowd, while I pitched backward. The tempo of the music changed, more to something frenetic like what would be at a rave, and with the revitalized energy in the room, we were split. Kelly was swallowed into the crowd. I was shoved backward.

“Kel! Kelly!”

A man’s arm wrapped around my waist. The thick limb didn’t budge, not even when I pried at it and dug my nails into his hairy flesh. Muscles tightened as he doubled down on dragging me out of the chaos.

“Let me go!” I turned to punch him, to disable him in any way that I could, but he grabbed my arm. With sheer force of will, he forced me into another room.

A darker room.

An empty room.

Only a bed stood in the darkness. Sheets lay rumpled on the mattress, and a sleeping, naked woman lay on the floor.

Panic swept over me. My heart thundered, banging wildly in my chest. Breath came shorter, swallower. As my mouth went dry and I strained to swallow, I let my instincts control me.

Fight or flight.

I tried both. Flailing out my arms and kicking frantically, I wrestled with the tall, muscular man forcing me toward the bed. He tripped over the unconscious woman’s foot, and as I finally cleared my throat and sucked in a deep breath to brace myself for a scream, he shoved his hand over my mouth.

“Shut the fuck up, bitch,” he growled.

Pinning me to the bed, trapping me under the bulk of his weight, my mind seized with the terror of what was happening.

I’d lied. I’d told Kelly that I wasn’t in any direct danger.

But I was. Like any other woman here at this frat party, any woman anywhere in the world, I would always be endangered by taller, stronger men who had their mind set on rape to get what they wanted.

Tears streaked from my eyes as he tugged at my clothes. His breath turned ragged as he shoved at my panties beneath my dress.

Still, with a manic need to escape, I pushed and fought. Desperate to force him off me, I considered how utterly stupid it was to ever think about forsaking the safety Lev provided me.