INSATIABLE CRAVINGS
Insatiable Cravings – Episode 143
Subtitle; {Loving You Is A Loosing Game}
TAGS: Age-gap, Mafia, Forbidden Love, Drama, Tragedy and Betrayal.
Settings: United Kingdom, Russia and others.
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
~ Genevieve ~
If you’d told me a couple of years ago that I’d spend up to a week in forced isolation, I would have laughed in your face. Yet there I was, on day five of a bàstard’s captivity.
And not just any bastard—a calculating one, the sort whose mind was always three steps ahead.
I could feel mine fraying, my grip on composure slipping grain by grain. My thoughts were a restless swarm, leaping from one dreadful possibility to the next, each one darker than the last.
Rory, by contrast, had found a sort of uneasy rhythm to being trapped. But every so often, she released a sharp hiss of frustration that sliced through the stale air like a whip.
It was afternoon now. I was sitting on the bed, staring at the door as though I could burn it down with my glare. Rory sat beside me, equally still.
Low voices leaked through the wood—Viktor’s, the man who had slappéd me, and several others. It was too muffled to make out, and the harder I strained my ears, the more my agitation coiled tight in my chest.
Throwing my head back, I closed my eyes and let out a low groan, the sound slipping through my lips like smoke.
What the héll were they talking about?
I got to my feet, padded towards the door, and pressed my ear against it, desperate for a fragment of clarity.
“You’re seriously not planning to tell Dominic where they are?”
My heart lurched. It was the voice of the ídiot who had hit me.
“No,” Viktor replied—and God, even in that single word you could hear the smirk in his voice. “I want him begging, frantic, just a little longer.”
“A frantic Dominic does sound nice, but I think… I doubt he’ll be any less ruthless.”
“That’s why I do the thinking,” Viktor’s tone was laced with quiet authority, the sort that brooked no argument. “And Dominic couldn’t afford to be ruthless now. Not when we had the two people he cared for most.”
The other voices faded until only Viktor and the idiót remained.
“I’m just saying,” He muttered, voice lowered, “maybe you should reconsider. Tell Dominic sooner. Let him come here, you get what you want, and he gets the girls back.”
A sharp hiss, the crack of a palm against a surface. “For Christ’s sake, Ed, stop being such a girl about this!”
“I’m not being a girl!” Ed’s anger flared, then waned into something more measured. “You, of all people, know who those girls in there are. Aurora is Dominic’s sister—she could kíll half our men if you handed her a weapon. She’s an assàssin dressed as a Barbie. And the other one—Genevieve King. Henry King’s granddaughter. If the old man found out, he’d scour the earth for her. Her brother-in-law’s with the FBI. She’s pregnant with Dominic Morozov’s child—the man who—”
“Is this overwhelming you?” Viktor cut in, voice a silk-wrapped blade.
“No, I just—”
“Ed, calm down and stop being such a girl. We had the upper hand. Henry could summon every army he knew, but he wouldn’t find us. I don’t care if her brother-in-law is the FBI himself—he wouldn’t act without risking his pregnant wife. And Dominic isn’t half as ruthless as you thought without his girls safe and sound. In fact, he is a weakling without them.”
“You think so?”
“I do.” Viktor chuckled. “Now stop worrying.”
“Fine. But when will you tell Dominic where we are?”
“Let’s see if he figures it out on his own.”
Figures it out? How the héll could he—?
“The camera only shows the room,” Ed replied.
A camera?
“Exactly,” Viktor said, with that smug note I wanted to punch clean out of him. “The longer he watched his girls pacing and restless, the more it would eat him alive.”
Bàstard.
“What if that hacker of his helps? She’s good.”
“Who isn’t good in Dominic’s blóody clan?” There was venom and envy tangled in his tone. “He chose them well—that’s why that fóol Blade refused to join us after playing us.”
Blade. I knew it. I knew he wasn’t working with these cretins.
“Anyway, however good the hacker is, how will she know we’re in Canada from a single room?”
Canada.
I stepped back from the door, heart hammering, and returned to my seat with quiet, measured movements. Rory watched me, her expression taut with restrained patience.
After a beat, I leaned closer, my voice a whisper. “We’re in Canada.”
Her brow furrowed. “What?”
“We. Are. In. Canada.” I mouthed the words.
Recognition dawned, her eyebrows lifting as a small smile curved her lips. “You sure?”
I nodded. “And there’s a camera.” My eyes darted about the room.
“Oh, I know.” She glanced to the ceiling and pointed to a faint red blink. “There. I saw it the night they dragged us in.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I thought you’d seen it. It’s obvious.”
“No, it isn’t.”
The thing was cleverly hidden—only the tiny red dot betrayed it. No wonder I had missed it.
“Sorry. I assumed you’d clocked it. I thought it was just for them to watch us.”
I waved a dismissive hand. “It’s fine.” Then I shifted closer to her and she did too, until I was leaning close to her ear. “It shows the live feed to Dominic. That’s what they said.”
Rory’s eyes flicked to the red dot, then to me. “That meant Nic had been watching us all those days. He must have been feeling so helpless and useless, when he didn’t know where to find us from the feeds.”
I nodded in agreement. “But now he knows.”
The door was flung open with so much strength, lethal but as casual as ever. It had both me and Rory flinching. “He knows what?”
Viktor.
He stood at six feet, and somehow still felt taller. Like the room shrank when he entered, as though the air itself thickened in his presence. I noticed his skin was a smooth, bronze hue—rich and warm, but it never quite softened him. If anything, it only made the crúelty in his smile look more deliberate. Like sin dressed in sun.
Viktor cocked his stupíd head to the side, his ever-murderous gaze pinning me down when I didn’t answer him. Then that cocky little disgusting smirk emerged on his face, déadly but bright. “I will repeat myself again—and I really, really hàte doing that—and if none of you answer me…”
He left it like that. His threat hung in the air, unknown but dangeroús.
I was busy stumbling over the new rising fear in me to even think of something to appease him with.
However, Rory wasn’t.
“You,” she said, ever so casually. The hint of loathing still present. “We were talking about you.”
His eyes instantly—and I do mean instantly—flicked over to her waiting ones, which she was glaring at him with. “Hmm,” he let out an uncharacteristically soft hum, nodding his stupid head slowly. “Let’s say I believed you, okay, doll? What were you talking about? ”
Rory’s glare grew even deeper. I didn’t think it was possible, but more haté swirled in her honey eyes for him. “God, I’m going to kíll you.”
“But I thought we were really starting to be good friends.”
The sincerity in his voice sounded so odd. So out of place. So not him, that it even had him cringing.
“F+ck you.”
He now grinned. “If you want me so bad, then I’ll gladly give you me.” He made a show of placing his palm on top of the left side of his chest, then the other palm on the first one. “I’ve been told I’m a generous giver, after all.”
“Yeah?” She chuckled, and it was very mocking. “Let me guess, by the girls that told you you were good-looking?”
Normal Genevieve would have laughed at that. Kidnappéd, pregnant Genevieve who just wanted to go home to her fiancé? Oh no, she didn’t find it funny enough to even crack a smile.
“I like you,” he said with a small chuckle.
And want to know the shocking part? It sounded genuine.
“I don’t understand how the idíot raised you, and you’re like this and he’s like… like that.”
Bàstard.
I swear to God, if his head wasn’t rolling on the ground when this was over, then I am not Genevieve Dove King.
At the unspoken mention of her brother, Aurora flew to her feet, as furious as ever. “If by ‘like that,’ you mean so ambitious and successful and excellent that lowlife peasants like yourself thought they could amount even a grain of his greatness, then yes. Dominic was like that.” Unafraid—or maybe she was hiding it well—and undeterred, she walked over to him. “And the next time you called my brother”—the possessiveness was loud and clear—“an ídiot, you should better start counting your days, because they will be your very last ones. Do you understand me, Viktor?”
“First, it was her—” he jutted his head to me, earning an immediate frown from me. “—and her hilarious audacity. And now? It’s you and your comical bravery.” He lifted his hand to her face and I watched her fling it away with a grimace. “Does everyone who came in contact with the ídiot”—an intentional jab at her—“think that they’re suddenly untouchable?”
“It’s not my brother’s fault that you’re lame.”
“Lame?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “And pathetic.”
God…
“…Rory.”
Either she didn’t hear me or she chose to ignore me to do better things, like glare at the nincompoop in front of her.
I tried again. “Rory.” And again. “Rory?” And again! “Aurora!”
“Listen to your sister-in-law and stop mouthing off.”
“I didn’t like being told what to do,” she retorted. “You would know that if you really did your research on me. What, are you an amateur?” She did the half-scoff, half-laugh he does. “Are you planning on using those skills when you ‘become’ the don?”
As soon as her question landed, a loud slap also landed on her cheek, so heavy it pushed her off her feet.
I sprung up on my own feet and rushed to her. Her face was red, one of her cheeks even redder, the corner of her mouth bloódy.
“You’re a cóward, you know that, right? It’s only a weak man like yourself that raises his hands on a woman,” I snapped.
My restraints were finally off. Self-control switched off too.
“Want to mouth off too?”
“Why, you’re going to hit me too?” I rasped, stepping closer to him. “Is it going to feed your ego? Hm? Will you clap for yourself, perhaps give yourself a pat on the back after you’re done?”
“Maybe I will.”
“Confirming my claim that you truly are a cóward. An untrained, too-ambitious cowàrd.”
Viktor’s hand flew up again, ready to land hard on my face. I saw it coming, but didn’t even close my eyes—no, I glared at him.
He stopped midway.
“Dominic is going to skiñ you alive when he catches you,” I told him in the calmest voice I could muster. “And let’s pray you don’t have families, because he will make them pay for this foolísh act of yours.”
That did it.
In a flash, the back of his hand slammed hard on my face. I was dazed, and in less than a second his hand came down to squeeze my throat.
TBC📖✍️
