Free Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance by Natasha Tanner, Molly Thorne Page B

forest.
    And yet... I feel that I’m being unfair. Am I just a stupid girl for feeling that he could be sincerely trying to protect me? Maybe he got scared. Maybe he’s right and keeping away from him is the best way to ensure my safety.
    In any case, I have to accept that we won’t be together. And it’s hard. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the touch of his lips on my skin, making it shiver and bristle. I can pretend that he’s in standing right in front of me with his clear, serene eyes. I can dream he’s going to come and rescue me somehow.
     
    * * *
     
    “You forgot your brother.”
    Misha’s words sound slurry and opaque. He’s been drinking, for sure. And maybe something else. He didn’t even say hello.
You forgot your brother
, that’s the first thing he said when I took the call.
    “Misha,” I say, my heart already aching. “How are you? Where are you?”
    “You forgot your brother because you’re a whore,” he says. “You have a good life in America, while I’m stuck here.”
    “I-I don’t...” I begin, but it would be hard to explain. He keeps talking mechanically, hopelessly, with something like broken glass in his voice. I don’t even try to guess how he will pay for this call.
    “You should have come back,” Misha says. “There’s no money here, there’s no job, there’s nothing.”
    “I thought... What happened with the modelling thing? Did they...?”
    “Shut up, bitch,” he cuts me off. “Don’t judge me. You’re happy there, sure? Are you happy with your American money?”
    “Just as happy as you,” I snap angrily. “You got forty thousand American dollars from selling your sister.”
    His next words come out loaded with drunkenness and hate. They hurt.
    “You’re just a whore,” Misha says. “You’ve always been a whore. You never loved your family, only money. I hope the fucking is good.”
    “Don’t say that, Misha, sweet brother,” I implore, already crying, because his words hurt like knives in my chest. “You know I love you above all.”
    “Then why don’t you help me? Piotr says you are with a rich guy now. He’s forgotten me too because he’s a
pakhan
now. But you? How could you forget your little brother?”
    I wipe the tears with the back of my hand. It’s too much heartbreak for just a few days.
    “Please, Misha. I’m not with him anymore. I don’t work for him. You have to believe me. Please.”
    “Liar,” he spits, and his next words become incomprehensible, no more than a slurry chain of sounds. Then his speech becomes intelligible again. “You’re lying, whore. I hope you die.”
    “Misha, I have no money. I would help you if I could. Please...”
    “Then come back and help me,” he says, his voice suddenly hard and clear. “There are some rich men here too.”
     
    * * *
     
    I look at the young woman who gazes at me from inside the mirror. She looks sad, broken. So broken I wonder how she’s still alive.
    Maybe this is you
, I think, as I get sucked into the whirlpool of despair behind those dark eyes.
Maybe you’re just a whore after all. Maybe this is what you always were.
    It’s me, right here and now, but it’s also me, a frightened girl back in Arzamas.
    Mirror, mirror on the wall,
who’s the saddest of them all?
    Going back...
Going back would be the worst failure. It would mean going back to being nobody. Just a pretty doll for my brother and his friends to show around. Maybe worse.
    What does Misha want from me, exactly? I shudder when I think how much he seems to have changed. I’ve seen him through the bulletproof glass separating the prisoners from the visitors. Being in prison changes you, that much I know from experience. Some of his friends who ended up in jail before him came out different, even more jaded and cynical than before, and willing to do anything, sell anything. He got out, then he got in again. What happened in the two years I’ve been away? How much more has he changed?
    The broken girl