Thorn

Contents Trigger Warning Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Also by Brooke Harper About the Author Thorn © Copyright 2023 Brooke Harper Visit my books at https://authorbrookeharper.com/ All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher/author. This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. H.A.B. Publications LLC Cover Design: EmCat Designs Interior & Formatting: Jennifer Laslie Editor: The Fiction Fix Editing Proofreading: Krista Cook Trigger Warning THIS BOOK CONTAINS Dark Themes Sexual Assault/Abuse Stalking/Obsession Murder Violence Revenge Light BDSM Edging Kidnapping Age Gap (10+ years) Mafia/Gangs Torture Traumatic Past Thorn They expected me to bend. To wilt. But this rose has thorns, too. I have no family. No life. No dreams. I have nothing left. My father and Nikolai made sure of that when they made me a pawn in their mafia games. A broken woman. A tainted bride. A bargaining chip. That’s all I am to them. But things are changing. I am changing. Learning. Growing. Rising from the ashes anew. At first, I didn’t understand what Nikolai woke in me when he used my body for his revenge plot. But now? Now, I have plans of my own. He may think I’m his Rose to claim, to dominate, to control, but I am a rose steeped in war and born from bloodshed. It’s about time I live up to my name. For Amber Things will get better. Chapter 1 Rosalind Everything is pink. Barbie pink. My head aches as a sea of consciousness washes over me, and I’m met with bright pink everywhere. Groaning, I squeeze my eyes shut as panic flutters at my insides. What I want is to sink back down into blank, black oblivion, but I know I can’t, so I force my eyes open again. It’s hard to focus, especially when my stomach heaves and twists. My head pounds. I don’t know where I am. Nikolai…where…? This isn’t my room. This isn’t his place. Nikolai. My enemy, lover, captor, tormentor: a man I should hate, but the one I crave. Everything shifts as his devastatingly handsome face floods my brain. He’s not here, and I don’t know where I am, or what the hell happened. I try and breathe in, but my breath catches and twists. Calm down, Rosalind. Think. There’s so much fuzz in my head, like wads of cotton wool, that thinking is hard, but I try. Memories come back in sickening waves, crashing into me, threatening to drown me, suffocate me. Calm, girl. Panicking won’t solve anything. Last thing I remember was being in my beautiful prison of Nikolai’s home. He’d given me a sort of freedom—an unlocked door, a pitiful crumb for a pitiful and pathetic creature. What else could I do? Not fight him; he claimed he’d hurt me if I did. Not run; alarms and locks and armed guards abounded. It was more than that. Maybe it’s the fuzziness in my brain, but while I wanted to run, I wanted to stay. I wanted to tie myself to a cruel monster of a man. A man who can make my pleasure sing. I wanted to run, and I didn’t. I wanted him. I wanted the fire Nikolai set in me, a bright, seductive one I was helpless to resist. I still am because the very thought of his touch makes my body tingle and sing. The thought of him makes me yearn, makes me… miss him. Crap. Where am I? That’s the million-dollar question. I don’t remember much of that last piece of time in his place, only disjointed things, feelings. I remember looking for him, trailing through his home, thinking…I don’t know what I was thinking. That I loved him? That maybe this whole thing with us could work? How I still don’t know, but his mouth, his fingers on me make me lose my mind, that maybe we could talk because he can be sweet and I’m an idiotic fool? I suck in a breath. I was looking for him, and his place was empty. No, not empty because a man… I swallow hard. That man… Fear lances through me, down to the bone, a very different feeling to anything Nikolai set off in me. Nikolai is frightening, deadly, breathtaking. That man was ugly and dangerous. Vicious. The violence in his words—blunt edged, sadistic—makes me shake, even as I lie here, even as I can barely grab hold of them. Their meaning was dark and vile, and something that tugs at subconscious. Think, Rosalind. This is important. What did he say to me? He said…he said— Father? The word swims in, and goosebumps rise instantly on my arms. The man with the sheet from Nikolai’s bed, from when we—I think he said something about my father? It’s too blurred, too tangled, for me to work out. I clench my hands on the slippery material under me. My head pounds harder. All this damned bright color hurts. I squeeze my eyes shut against the bubblegum pink paint vomit. When I was seven, a Barbie pink dreamland bedroom would have been