INSATIABLE CRAVINGS
Insatiable Cravings – Episode 146
Subtitle; {Loving You Is A Loosing Game}
TAGS: Age-gap, Mafia, Forbidden Love, Drama, Tragedy and Betrayal.
Settings: United Kingdom, Russia and others.
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
~ Genevieve ~
A kind of féar I had never known washed through me like a tidal wave, cold and unstoppable. I was standing on dry land, yet it felt as though I was drowning in a vast, raveñous sea—teeth, hunger and all—and the water wanted to tear me limb from limb.
I felt as though I was already in pieces.
“I’ll kíll Dominic.” Viktor’s dréadful words looped in my head, an ugly refrain that pushed me deeper beneath that suffocatiñg water. Hórrific images assembled themselves of how he might do it—methodical, certain—and they crowded my mind until it felt like an abyss had opened behind my ribs.
But I was awake. Wide awake. There were no safety nets of sleep, no mercy of nightmares that might be shrugged off at dawn.
If Dominic comes here, Viktor will do what he said. God. What can I do? I am so stupidly helpless. My thoughts were a traffic jam; nothing moved.
“Should we give him a call now?” His voice crept further up the scale, thin and deliberate, like someone turning a key in a very small lock.
The air in the room had taken on two temperatures at once—a clinical chill from the draughting windows that kissed my skin, and a furnace-heat from the dreàd coiling along my spine. Tension sat in the room as if it had lungs; every particle seemed to be holding its breath, waiting.
“When I ask you a question,” he said, “what you’re supposed to do is answer it. Do you understand?”
I blinked and kept my mouth clamped shut. I knew that one stray word could be lethal. But despite my silence, anger began to etch itself across his features, thin and patient.
“Genevieve,” Viktor ground out, voice flat, “why don’t we do it like this?”
Like this?
“You tell me exactly where the Base is in London, and I will let you go.”
“You don’t know where the Base is?” The question slipped free of me before I could swallow it; curiosity had teeth of its own.
He must have mistaken my slip for compliance, because he nodded slowly, a small, absurd smile tugging at his face.
“But I’m fairly certain you said you knew everything about Dominic… Did I maybe mishear you?”
Perhaps he hadn’t noticed the sarcasm, or perhaps he simply chose to ignore it. He shook his head and let a small, dismissive “no” escape. “That’s the one thing I never found out, no matter how hard I tried.” A gleam flared in his eyes—pure, ugly satisfaction at a mystery unsolved—and for a maddeniñg second I felt oddly glad. “Blade was no help either, so…”
He left the sentence hanging like bait.
My gaze slid across his face a fraction too long as I took him in properly, reading the desperation and hunger there for the one scrap of information he wanted. A wicked smile threatened at the corner of my mouth; I bit it away and said, cool and clipped, “No.”
“No?”
“Yes. No.” I repeated, steady as a metronome. “Why on earth would I tell you anything to assist this ridiculous plan of yours?”
“To help yourself,” he offered.
“By helping you?” I scoffed. “I’d sooner díe.”
“Oh, I can help with that.” His trademark smirk was back, smug and infuriating, and every instinct in me wanted to wipe it from his face. “Why not help yourself by helping me? It would be a shame if your devotion to Dominic led to your early end.”
“And who else would I be loyal to? You?” The words were sharper than I intended; they tasted of contempt.
“That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” He tilted his head, almost playful.
“No, thanks. I’m not in favour of taking what isn’t mine.”
“You mean the Bratva?” His tone shifted, deceptively innocent. “Is it ‘taking what isn’t yours’ when you believe it truly doesn’t belong to him?”
“And it belongs to you?” My laugh was short and scornful, laced with disbelief. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound? Are you so deluded you don’t see how unstable you are?” I paused for less than a breath, giving him room to fail at proving me wrong—which he did. “You’re màd. Insañe. Derailéd enough to think you, a sorry excuse for a man, deserve to lead the Bratva. Have you falleñ and hit your head?”
“You’re right—I am màd. Insàne. Derailéd. Because if I don’t get what I want, bodies will drop.” He spoke lightly, but each syllable came wrapped in menàce; the air seemed to thicken around us. “So, my dearest Genevieve, be sensible and choose—either tell me what I want to know, or losé your life and that of your baby.” The words were saccharine poíson, velvet masking a blade.
My stomach clenched; my heart hammered so loud I imagined he could hear it. Every breath felt stolen; every second a countdown. Panic, hot and dense, settled like a stone in my chest. My mind raced, seeking a way out. A tiny shudder ran down my spine as my eyes flicked to his burning stare.
“So—what’s your pick?”
Without hesitation I said, “Definitely not you.”
Viktor’s voice lengthened as he wandered away from me. I didn’t take my eyes off him even when he reached the desk on the far side of the room. He picked up a stainless-steel knife, toying with it, the metal whispering against his thumb as he drifted back toward me.
“Let me see if I understand you,” he murmured. “You’re saying you’d rather díe than tell me where the Base is?”
I said nothing. My silence answered for me, and he saw it. A cold, furious light flared in his eyes; they narrowed, sharp and hungry, as if trying to pierce whatever remained of my resolve.
“I don’t know if this is love or just plain stúpidity.”
What would be plain stupidity would be telling him where to go to find Dominic. If Dominic were taken unaware—infiltrated where he least expected it—that would be the end. I would never, ever help him with that.
Even under threat, my loyalty remained with Dominic Morozov—the only man who had ever had my heart. That heart felt as if it might burst from my chest; every beat thundered, enormous and all-consuming.
“Six years ago, Genevieve—you would have picked yourself, you know?”
“I don’t think so.” I shook my head. “Six years ago, Genevieve liked Dominic. She would never have betrayed him for you—not then, and certainly not now.”
“Does your Dominic feel the same?” he pressed.
“What?”
“You said you wouldn’t betray him.” A bead of blóod welled at the knife-cut on his fingertip and fell to the floor a few inches from my boots. I curled my knees tighter to avoid staining myself with his filth. He noticed and smirked, continuing, “But what about him?”
I scoffed. “What game are you playing now?”
“Nothing.” His eyes roved from my face down my body and back up again, cold as a mortuary slab. A malevolent glint lived there, as if sin itself had taken residence. “Tell me—who do you think Dominic would choose between you and his sister if I put them on the scale?”
TBC📖✍️
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