Enslave: The Taming of the Beast - By Cathy Yardley Page 0,3

want,” she repeated, staring at Dominic solemnly.

His smile was fierce, the action pulling the scars of his face cruelly.

“Then we have a deal.”

And without another word, he swept her up into his arms and carried her out of her father’s house, into the Las Vegas night.

“What are we going to do?” Jelena asked her father, stunned, after Nadia disappeared.

Irina was crying, loud, dramatic sobs, until her father shocked them all by slapping her sharply across the face. Now, she stared at her father, petulant and afraid.

“Nadia has bought us some time,” he said, and Jelena wasn’t sure if he was convincing them, or himself. “She’s done more than I ever could have asked.”

“What are we going to do now?” Jelena clarified.

He stared at her with profound sadness. “What can we do?” he asked softly. “Your stepmother is pregnant. We have no money.”

“You have the money from the stolen car,” Jelena pointed out, wondering how much her father had made.

Was it worth it, compared to losing his daughter?

He shook his head. “I didn’t make nearly as much as I should have—if I’d known who I was stealing from when I bargained the price…Besides, even if I gave him every dime I made, it’d be a drop in a bucket for a man like Dominic Luder. You heard him. The car is irreplaceable. We’re only lucky he decided to…” He cleared his throat. “The best we can do is make sure your sister’s sacrifice was not in vain.”

Jelena gasped as the import of his melancholy words sank in. “You can’t mean we’re just going to let her stay with that man? Let him do…” She couldn’t even begin to imagine what the frightening, scarred, vicious-looking man would do to her poor sister. “He could kill 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