CHAPTER 7

“Come here,” His words remained in my mind and my mouth ran dry. Holy shit. What had I just done to myself?

I froze at his words, letting them replay over and over through my brain.

He was going to kill Rosa if I didn’t do what he demanded.

I don’t know why I was defending someone who I had only just met by exchanging a few hushed words.

Maybe it was because I thought I stood a better chance then what she did. After all, I remember in the car how there had been discussions about me being ‘a good catch’ and ‘the one’. Drakov’s eyes had studied me with curiosity, he had glared at Rosa in disgust.

Why would he just kill ‘a good catch’ without even meeting me? He clearly only thought of Rosa as a slave, a prostitute and a whore.

With that in mind, I suddenly felt brave.

Brave enough to stare down the barrel of a gun and stupid enough to walk towards the man holding the trigger and ready to fire on me.

My steps were rusty, as if my legs were begging me not to move any closer, but I had to. Rosa’s life depended on my bravery. It was survival of the fittest, here, in this world, only the strongest survived. Rosa didn’t appear to be strong at all.

But I wasn’t ready to see another bullet go straight through someone else’s brain today, one death had been enough to turn my stomach on its head, another might send it out my throat.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit

My bare feet padded against the floor, the sound echoing off the walls. The men around the room stood in complete silence, watching the scene unfold.

My steps halted and the echoing stopped, my chest was pressed tight up against the gun, his finger still lingered over that fatal trigger. I was one moment from death, only one bullet away.

My body began to shake, and my knees wanted to buckle. My heart pounded against my chest, I’m pretty sure he could hear it, I definitely could.

Fear. It left a metallic taste in my dry and cold mouth as I awaited my fate. My breath hiked and my lip trembled, I was begging myself not to cry.

My eyes were plastered on his slick black and over polished shoes, one which was impatiently tapping the floor.

“Look at me,” his cold voice demanded brutally.

I brought my gaze upwards and towards his icy blue eyes that pierced my soul and made me want to run and hide.

I blinked back tears and begged my body to stop trembling.

Anyone could tell just by looking at this man that he was a killer.

A beautiful killer.

“No?” He stared at me, I knew he was questioning me, why had I said no? I gulped down the heavy lump in my throat and realized the weight of what I had done. I had told the world’s greatest mafia boss no, not even his second-hand man would have the guts to do that, I’m pretty sure that Atlas Drakov wouldn’t have even heard of the word not before.

His Italian accent was thick, it was gorgeous, to bad it was going to be the last voice I ever heard.

He pulled the gun away from my chest and twirled it in his fingers, taking his gaze from me to examine his most prized possession. He let out a sinister smirk and then a mocking scoff.

“No?” he glanced up at me, a sickening smile on his face before his eyes were drawn like a magnet back to the gun, “No I can’t kill her?” he let out a low and lifeless chuckle as if this situation was just comical.

He leaned back in his ‘throne’, crossing one leg over the other as if I was entertaining him.

“You’ve got guts, whore,” he mocked me in a degrading tone. I studied his face, his eyes still lifeless even though he wore a half smile on his face. I noticed that above his left eye he bore a scar, other then that though, his face was unimaginably perfect.

“I’m not a whore,” I breathed heavily, why the fuck did I keep speaking back to this man?

He was obviously a murderer, and he had shown his clear lack of care for human life when he shot the boy from before.

And yet I still had the stupidity to argue what he was telling me.

“Not a whore huh? You look like one,” the room erupted into a pit full of degrading and humiliating laughter. I shifted uncomfortably on my feet before regaining my stance.

“Your fuckwit friends here picked me up off the streets from my eighteenth birthday at the club, I’m not a prostitute, I’m a virgin for fucks sake,” this man thought I was a prostitute, fuck him.

For a moment he looked taken aback, before he regained his appearance of coldness, sitting up straight and gripping the handle of his gun tighter again.

“You might not be, but she certainly is,” his arm straightened out, he pointed the gun at Rosa.

My reflexes immediately kicked in and I found myself lunging at him, gripping onto his bicep and scratching my nails against his suit, begging him not to shoot.

He cocked his head to the side a little, studying me, like I was some kind of an experiment.

His eyes glared into mine, they weren’t giving anything away, they were emotionless.

I shook my head vigorously, my eyes welled with tears, begging him not to pull the trigger and shoot her.

He couldn’t kill Rosa. She was the one name I knew in this mess, the one person who had uttered a kind and helpful word to me since I had arrived, she was just another girl who had been kidnapped and dragged off the streets into this mess.

His gaze travelled back to Rosa’s small and shaking frame as she sobbed and wept, closing her eyes and trying to shield her chest. He slid the bullet into place and found the trigger.

Not the-

BANG

The sounded rang off the walls and bounced around the room, everything fell silent. I stared into his indifferent and cruel eyes, trembling, and yet still clutching his arm.

His eyes remained glued on mine; they were evil.

He had killed her.

Rosa was dead, she had been murdered, gone. She had been like the rest of us here, kidnapped by the devil and watched as the life was drained from her. This was all my fault.

If I hadn’t have stood up, tried to play the hero and save her, then maybe she would have stood a better chance. His eyes searched mine, looking for a reaction.

He was testing me, like a caged rat in a lab, I was just an experiment of his sick game.

“Someone clean this shit up,” He demanded, “And take these whores away to where they belong,”

I could hear movement behind me, but I didn’t turn around, I remained focused on the monster of a man in front of me.

The door slammed shut, we were alone, I didn’t want to be alone with him.

“You killed her,” I stuttered, running what had just happened through my mind, looking for some kind of a logical and reasonable explanation for all of this. But there didn’t seem to be one, nothing about this made any sense.

An amused smile crept across his cold and heartless face, “Yes,” his voice was brutal and dangerous, “and I would do it again,” A sickening laugh left his mouth as I stared at him in utter confusion and disgust.

“You’re a monster,” I gritted my teeth and sneered into his face.

His lips curved into an evil sneer.

The smile was gone now.

In one swift movement he grabbed my wrist and pulled me in close to his side, only centimeters from his face, locking my arm behind my back. I had never felt so powerless then what I did right now.

He brought his face even closer to mine, his lips touching my ear as his hot breath caressed my skin, I stood frozen with fear, the metallic taste still ever present in my mouth.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” he promised before I found myself hitting the floor hard, left alone curled up with my thoughts, his uncomfortable warmth gone, I was left to cry.