Twisted Throne (Bratva Born #2)

1. Adriana

Adriana

My face hurts from crying so much.

All I want is to be back with Dimitri.

I’m trapped, and the person holding me captive is the man I thought of as a father figure.

He has dark desires I could never imagined. Dark desires that maybe, in another lifetime, in a different timeline, I might have shared. The way he took me, though… I will never be able to get past that. He has committed an unforgiveable sin. How dare he grab me from my life and simply take me as if he has that right.

No, he’ll never get what he wants. Me.

There’s also the fact that I only crave one man now. Here in this room where I’m terrified and alone, I’m craving his touch, his warmth, his strength more than anything.

The way he smelled, his taste, that sexy deep voice. The time I spent with him was minimal, yet it feels like oceans of time. As if we somehow bent the laws of physics. Perhaps it’s because it’s all so new to me that it feels at once as if it was mere minutes, but also intense years that I spent in his arms.

I’m like a damn baby bird that fell out of her nest, all new and innocent, and I imprinted on the first man I gave myself to. Now, he’s it for me, and no one else can come close. Being torn from him has made me realize as much. I might have been pissed at him, but I’d take him over any other man a thousand fold because I have no choice. He’s made me an addict. For him.

Barnaby said he can train me, condition me, but I don’t think he can because unintentionally, or perhaps on purpose, Dimitri conditioned me first. He got me hooked with the first touch. The way they say you can be from the first taste of crack, Dimitri did that to me with the first taste of him.

My body aches and I stretch, but it doesn’t alleviate the pain. The short bit of sleep I had must have been so tense it made my muscles ache.

“Well, this is another crazy mess you’ve gotten into,” I mutter to myself, trying to lighten the sense of doom with some humor. At least the bed I’m in is comfortable; that’s one small blessing. My mind flicks back to Dimitri and the bed we shared. To San Francisco and the world I’ve been ripped from.

How can I help my baby brother now, when I’m a whole ocean away?

After seeing the room full of erotic art and the dreamlike painting of a young woman who looked just like me, I lost all hope, but I’ve had time to think.

Barnaby is a madman. So maybe like all madmen, he can be manipulated. I have my brains as a weapon, and I need to be smart.

Still, I’m in a dangerous situation.

He’s built me up so much in his mind that when he finally takes me to his bed, he’ll soon find his obsession wanes. I can’t live up to the fantasy in his head. No real woman can. Once I become a reality, I risk being a disappointment. What would he do then? He can’t merely shrug, say this was a mistake, and let me go. No, once he tires of me, he must kill me.

This situation is worse than me being at risk of assault; I’m at risk of being killed because I’ll never be what he wants.

The good thing about reading a lot is it gives you the chance to experience all kinds of situations in life without living through them. Psychologically, when we read, our brains live out those situations, and they’re a rehearsal in some ways for the real thing. Thanks to my reading tastes, I’ve vicariously experienced many dangerous situations, and a lot of scary twists and turns.

The one thing heroines who win do is use their mind.

Surely his obsession could be a weapon? If used the right way. It could buy me the time and space to think and plot.

What is that story about the woman who kept herself alive, by telling addicting tales for a king? I can’t recall the title through this fog of panic.

Perhaps I can keep Barnaby at bay by giving him a little taste of what he wants but playing games, drawing this out. It will mean to some degree having to swallow down my disgust and fear because he needs to believe I want him too but was merely scared. Maybe I can lie and tell him I didn’t have sex with Dimitri. After all, he doesn’t know that I did for sure. He’s probably had reports from someone inside Dimitri’s organization, which means Dimitri has a mole, but they weren’t in the bedroom with us. No one can say for sure we did the deed.

Unless, he gets a doctor to check me out. Shit.

Still, for a short while, I can play the innocent and make him believe I need to be treated with kid gloves.

For the first few days ahead, I put a game plan in place.

Play keen but coy. Act interested. I can ask questions about the art, talk about the literature I’ve read, make him believe he’s found a soul mate of sorts. If I can build that mental connection, I have more chance of him letting me move freely around the house.

After all, he’s probably hoping that at some point we can be that way, or how will he explain it to Sian?

If I could get out of this room, I could find a phone and call her. She’d be horrified too. In fact, she’d probably fly home immediately and let me out of this cursed house. Telling Sian might not be in my best interests, though. It had been my first immediate go to plan, but it might tip him into a rage, and after that slap, I’m not sure what he’s capable of.

How does he think he can explain this to her, though?

She’ll be so disgusted with him. As am I.

I stare at the wall in front of me. William Morris. Barnaby loves William Morris wallpaper.

He’s also interested in the lives of that group of artists, and I recall he got me fascinated too. I was studying literature and the lives of people like Byron and Shelley, so reading about William and his wife Jane Morris fit right in with my interests too.

Jane was a great beauty, introduced to William by his friend, the artist Rossetti. Who then went on to become obsessed with her and painted her repeatedly. I do believe they allegedly had an affair too.

My mind whirs as I think back to the paintings of her. Dark hair, pale skin, blue eyes.

She doesn’t look like me particularly in her features, but she’s very similar to me in her complexion. Were those conversations Barnaby’s way of telling me about his obsession with me?

I turn to my side in the bed and stare once more at the wallpaper as a wave of utter desolation washes through me. How will Dimitri ever find me here? He’ll have no idea that my friend’s father is really a madman; how could he? I didn’t, and I spent many weeks here.

The key turns in the lock, and I stiffen

I’m wearing a long, silky black nightdress. There is a closet full of clothes in the sex room, which includes a plethora of sexy night garments. I chose this because it hides my body the most.

Barnaby walks in, and I let my gaze travel the length of his body. I’m not admiring; I’m learning, calculating.

Could I fight him and stand a chance? There’s only him. Doesn’t seem to be any security guards or men with guns around him, unlike Dimitri.

He’s fairly tall, probably around five-foot-eleven, maybe even six foot. Physically fit too. He’s no weakling. I recall he lifts weights and works out. Again, I think about how in another life, if maybe he’d let me know his feelings we might have had a chance because Barnaby is a classically handsome man. What my friends would call a Silver Fox.

We aren’t in an alternative world, though, and he’s shown himself to be a madman.

“Did you sleep well?” Barnaby asks pleasantly, like the crazy person he is.

“Not really.”

“Is the bed not to your liking?” He furrows his brow. “I can order another.”

“Barnaby, the kidnapping is not to my liking.” I shake my head at him. “Think about how this will affect your daughter. She’s going to be devastated.”

He smiles. “No, she’d love to have you here, living with me.”

“No, she won’t. Not as her father’s lover.”

“Trust me, she’ll be delighted. She was the one who found you, you see, my darling.”

My heart stops. “ What? ”

He smiles. “When she was little, her favorite story was Snow White. Utterly beguiled by it, she was, bless her. As you know, she’s a well-rounded young woman, and from an early age, she was fascinated with art. One day, I took her to the portrait gallery, and we saw a painting by Rossetti, and she said to me that the woman in it could be Snow White with her dark hair and pale skin. That painting … it called to something in both of us. Something deep and strange. I began to tell her stories at night about how one day she’d meet a real-life Snow White who would become her best friend, and she asked me if she would be her new mummy too. I said that yes, that could happen.”

He smiles as if this is all so very normal. The door behind him is open but I’m in bed, under the covers, and he’d know what I was going to do before I even got untangled from the sheets if I tried to run.

“My stories changed, and Snow White became her mother and my wife. Then, at night, after she was in bed, I’d tell myself the rest of the story. The things my wife would do. The things she’d do to me, with me, and let me do to her. I kept the ones for my daughter innocent, of course. I’m not sick.” He laughs.

Oh, I beg to differ.

“I became quite obsessed with Jane Morris and her story. Then, one day, I saw a painting of Snow White, which wasn’t like the others. It was sensual. She was a true beauty. Young, still, but a woman, not a girl. I bought it, and that painting became my muse. My obsession. It hung in this room, but I had a copy made which was in Sian’s room for a while. However, she took it down when she became too sad looking at it and knowing she’d never find her Snow White mother in real life. It’s still in the back of her closet.”

He leans in, and I flinch. Slowly, he brushes that damn lock of hair that always hangs over my face back. “Exquisite,” he murmurs.

I flash back to mere days earlier. Me tied on a bed, a dark haired, handsome, brutal stranger doing and saying the exact same thing to me.

Dimitri’s touch should have felt terrifying, and it did, but it also felt so good. I had wanted to chase it, follow the warmth of his fingers brushing against me. Barnaby’s touch makes my skin crawl. I can’t show it, though. I must try on some level to lean into this, for a while at least. Buy myself that time I so desperately need.

The more I learn, the more I realize how sick this whole thing is. My best friend trapped me. My best friend, and her father, bonded over a twisted fantasy of finding themselves a real-life Snow White to bring back to their home and share.

“Anyway, off she went to college, a broken-hearted girl, obsessed with her shattered dreams of ever finding that perfect, beautiful new mother she’d dreamed about and talked about for years. Then, one day she called me, and oh, Adriana, my darling, if you could have heard her voice.”

He smiles, and it crinkles his warm eyes. They’re nice, those eyes. Such a lie .

I don’t speak because what can I say? Every sentence he utters makes me believe more firmly that I’m screwed.

“She said she’d found her . The painting on her wall. The painting on my wall. In there.” He points to his erotic paintings room.

“Did she ever go in there?” I ask.

“No. Of course not. That’s for grown-ups, silly. Her stories were innocent. About her pretty mummy who would kiss her daddy and then plate up breakfast all loving and kind. Anyway, she was afraid to come up here mostly. On account of the ghost.”

“There’s a ghost?” My skin chills. It really should be the least of my concerns, but this new information terrifies me. I’ve always been a wuss about such things.

“Supposedly. The ghost of Lady Anne Raley, who they say was held in the basement here as a prisoner by the Marquis at the time.”

“Why?” I ask. “What did she do?”

“She spurned his advances after a torrid but brief affair. They say she got pregnant, and once the child was born, she demanded to leave. He wanted her to stay and be his mistress and raise the child with him, but she refused. When he became sick of it, he threw her down there and left her to rot, quite literally. Now they say, she wanders these halls looking for her child, whom he kept and raised as his own with the woman he married after that.”

I shiver. “She wanders these rooms?”

“Supposedly, yes. It’s all nonsense. Ghosts aren’t real. You and my daughter have such vivid imaginations.”

“So do you, it seems. You were involved in the fantasy of turning that painting of Snow White into a real person.”

He shrugs. “My interests were more erotic, if you like. Yes, I indulged my daughter, but I became utterly beguiled by that painting in my own right. I’d masturbate in front of it every day.”

My cheeks warm at his words, and I look down at the sheets.

“It wasn’t enough, though. So then the escorts started and the parties. I’d try to find girls who looked like her. There were a few with a passing resemblance, but none who looked exactly like her. Why would they? She wasn’t real, so imagine my surprise when I got that phone call informing me that my clever little daughter had found the living, breathing embodiment of that painting.”

He chuckles. “She wanted you as her friend, and eventually my wife, and I wanted you for my own reasons.”

I’m about to speak, but he continues talking.

“My God, Adriana. The first time I saw you, I came four times that night. Up here. Alone. Aching for you. I couldn’t believe you were real. How can it be that you look so much like her?”

They say we all have a doppelganger, and it would be just my luck that mine resides in a painting owned by a madman and his only slight less unhinged daughter.

“Barnaby, you say she’ll be happy with it, but she won’t, not if she knows you are going to do … things to me.” I try to act as innocently as I can. “She won’t be happy if she sees this room, will she? If she finds out that your interests are much more depraved than hers. She sees the whole thing as an innocent venture. A way of replacing her mother. You want me for entirely different reasons.”

“Yes, and no.” He steeples his fingers as if he’s deep in thought, or prayer. “I won’t take you fully until we’re married. I know you’re a virgin because it came up on the auction details.” His eyes narrow. “I truly hope you still are, for your sake. Despite the infatuation you had with that thug.”

I swallow hard and say nothing.

He sighs. “Look, Adriana. Let me be brutally honest. The men who took you are terrible, violent, evil men. They’d gang rape you, mutilate you, and stuff your body in a case and throw it in a landfill without a second thought.”

The images are horrific. I blink, but now they’re stamped on my mind.

“I was going to bring you to me one way or another. I had plans. My first choice would have been, of course, to woo you, hence me being desperate to get you back here. If that hadn’t worked, and you’d refused to come, I would have had you brought to me. However, the auction forced my hand. I did warn you not to go back to America. To your father, didn’t I?”

He had, and I don’t say that the reason I went back, was partly to spend time with my dad because I think it might make him angry. “I couldn’t stay here, Barnaby. I wasn’t your daughter, and so far as I was concerned, you were being kind offering your daughter’s friend a room for a while.”

He scoffs, “Oh, come now, Adriana. We’ve asked you to stay with us many times. My daughter has made it clear to you how much she’d like you in our lives. In my life.”

His face darkens. “She even made comments about you being my new personal maid, or mistress, and you never said anything or acted shocked.”

I swallow hard. “I thought she was joking. I thought … I thought this was all a silly joke and a way of making me feel better about always being here and abusing your hospitality.”

“The one thing we couldn’t have predicted was your stepbrother. He was the fly in the ointment. You went out there to America, and within a couple of months, instead of coming back here, you were staying out there because you were worried about him.”

“He’s not safe,” I whisper. “He’s only a child. I need to help him. I must go back.” Tears fill my eyes. I take his hand, bring it to my chest, and place it between my breasts, over my heart. “Please, Barnaby. We can try … this. A relationship,” I lie. “I can come back here once I know he’s safe and we can um, date. But first, you need to let me go home.”

He holds my gaze as a slow, smirk crawls across his face. “You’d come back?”

I nod.

His hand shifts to my right breast, and he pinches my nipple hard enough to make me cry out. “Don’t lie to me, Adriana. I don’t like it.”

I can’t help the tears that prick at my eyes, but I’ll be damned if I let them fall in front of him. I bite the inside of my cheek and keep my face stoic.

“I don’t want to date you,” he sneers. “I will marry you, and you will become my wife, my whore, and my muse. Do you understand? I won’t penetrate you, though, until we’re married. That doesn’t mean we won’t do some training.”

“Training?”

“Yes, in the ways I like to be pleased. The ways you need to be my innocent Snow White who turns dirty just for Daddy Barnaby. Soon, there will be a party here, and there will be entertainment. You’ll be groomed and dressed by a member of my team, and I expect you to be on your best behavior. Girls who don’t behave are punished, and trust me, you won’t like my punishments.”

I wonder how long I have, to plan an escape and enact it. What is his timeline for this training? When will the party be? This is all too much. From now on, I must take notice of everything I see and hear and be mindful of ways to get out of this predicament.

“I need to exercise, Barnaby,” I say. “I can’t stay inside forever. I’ll die of lack of vitamin D. Can I go for a walk in the grounds?”

“Yes.”

I stare at him, shocked it was that easy.

“Now, or after you eat?” he asks.

“Now,” I say, enthusiastically.

He takes his phone out of his pocket.

“Can you come to the blue wing? Thank you.”

Shit, who was he talking to?

He stares at me. “Do you want to go like that? Your nipples will be like bullets in the cold, and I might not be able to stop myself from sucking them through that silk.”

My jaw clenches so tight, I want to slap him. He smirks again. “Get dressed then, my darling. You know where your closet is.”

I throw the covers back and race from the bedroom into the den of iniquity as I think of the sitting room now, and pull some clothes out of the closet. They’re all exactly my size. I recognize some of them as things that my friend bought for me. I can’t believe she was buying me clothes to wear once I was trapped here as her pretend mother. Forced to be part of the sick game she and her father had been playing, unbeknownst to me.

The clothes are beautiful, but that is irrelevant. I choose what is going to be best for me to try to escape in. I know these grounds well. They do have high fences and a gate at the end of the drive. The drive isn’t too long, so I might have a chance to run for it, but there used to be a guard on the gate, sitting in a small gatehouse. There’s a bridge over the river in front of the house, wide enough for a car, the short drive, and then … freedom.

There are grounds staff, though too, at least three gardeners, one of whom I used to have a bit of a crush on, Jonny. That makes it difficult for me to make a run for it over the bridge as they’d see. But at the far side of the estate, where the land meets farms, there are parts of the high fence, which could easily be climbed, due to the way the trees grow near it. There are some with thick, sturdy branches. As a kid, I was a real tomboy, and climbing a tree doesn’t give me any fear.

“Wear some jeans maybe? It’s not too warm today.”

I jump and turn around.

Barnaby is standing in the doorway, watching me.

“I’d like some privacy while I get changed.”

“I’d like many things, but we don’t always get what we want.”

“Fine.”

I pull a pair of jeans from a padded hanger and pull them up under my nightdress. I have panties on already because no way would I sleep without them with this pervert roaming the halls.

“No,” he says softly. “Take the nightdress off or you won’t get to wear the jeans. Do it properly. Let me take a tiny peek. I’ve been waiting for so long.”

I stare at him, my anger rising. I want to claw my nails down his face and make him bleed.

“Do you want a walk, or don’t you?” His head cocks to one side. “I’ve practically seen it all anyway, the way you’d dress around the indoor pool.”

“I just wore a bikini,” I protest.

“Yes, so, as I say, I’ve practically seen it all. I can see your panty line too, so you’re wearing underwear. Come on; what’s the harm?”

I grit my teeth. I don’t want to flash him my tits, even if he has seen a fair bit of them in my bikini, but I want to get outside and take my chance more than I fear him seeing my boobs. I drop the jeans and step out of them. Then, holding his gaze because screw him , I lift the nightdress.

“Pink,” he says.

I frown, confused.

“Your nipples, I always wondered. It made it difficult, when I masturbated, not knowing for certain, but I thought they would be.”

Sick, sick bastard.

I find a bra in the top drawer and put it on with shaking hands.

I’m going to escape and get back to Cade. Once I know he’s safe, I’m going to find Dimitri Baranov and tell him about this awful man and the disgusting things he said. If he threatened to pluck his men’s eyes out for merely glancing at me, and stated he would wear them on a necklace around his neck, then what would he do to Barnaby?

What did Nietzsche say? Whoever fights monsters becomes a monster . Well, Dimitri Baranov is already a monster, but he’s my monster. Instead of fighting monsters, I’ll tame my own monster and set him on this one. The thought almost makes me smile. Almost, but thinking about Dimitri stirs a deep pang in me. I miss him. Despite not knowing him any length of time, I miss him.

I might not have spent long in his arms, but I knew that first moment our eyes met, if I’m being truthful, that I was somehow claimed as his.

He may not have feelings for me, the way I wish he did. Not deep down, truly, madly, kind of feelings, but he has a possessive need for me. I will use whatever weapon I have at my disposal to get out of this mess. I’ll set my monster onto this despicable sick and twisted human and let him destroy Barnaby.

There’s just the small issue of me needing to contact him somehow first.

Outside, focus on the task at hand, I chide myself.

I pull the jeans from the floor and shimmy into them. Barnaby watches my every move with a hunger like I’ve never seen before.

I watch him watching me, and decide to test my theory that I may have a little bit of power here. I run my hands up my body once my jeans are in place and cup my breasts through my bra, pushing my cleavage up high.

Barnaby’s eyes widen, and his throat swallows reflexively.

I bite back my smile. Yeah, I might have a bit more power than I thought. Barnaby is clinically unhinged, but he’s really, I mean really , obsessed with me. Obsessions like that can be a weakness. I just need to be careful not to miscalculate this.

How can I tempt him, wrap him around my finger, play for time and his trust but not sleep with him?

It’s a conundrum.

Still, I think as I grab a T-shirt from the wardrobe and then a sweater, I’m a smart girl.

I also have plenty of heroines living in my brain from years of reading that I can channel.

It’s like having hundreds of friends I can call upon to help. What would Elizabeth Bennet do? What would Katniss Everdeen do? Or, oh yes, what would Becky Sharp do? That well named, deliciously dangerous heroine. She wouldn’t be all woe is me . She’d find a way out of this. A way to come out on top and make Barnaby pay.

Sweater on, I turn to him and smile. I make it reach my eyes and his own widen.

“Umm, yes, well.” He clears his throat. “You are ready?”

“I really am,” I say.