Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 67534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“This woman,” Mikhail says, “was paid to leave her position at a clinic to come take care of you full time. It seems her services will no longer be needed.”
She starts shaking. “Please,” she begs. “I’m not part of any of this. I was hired to help her, but I have no loyalty to her. I’ll walk away right now. You don’t have to do this.”
Mikhail raises his hand slightly. She goes silent immediately, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Mikhail looks at me again. “I’ve been patient with you, Anya. But I don’t tolerate disrespect, and I really don’t tolerate disloyalty.”
The ache in my ribs has nothing on the ache in my heart as I watch this woman, who’s taken care of me for weeks, beg for her life. I never even bothered to learn her name.
She looks up at me, voice breaking. “Please. Please, Ms. Malenkova.”
I keep my face still. My voice stays cold.
“She means nothing to me,” I say to Mikhail. “Hurting her won’t frighten me.”
Her sob turns louder.
Mikhail’s gaze lingers on my face like he’s measuring whether I have a heart he can press on. He doesn’t find what he wants. He shifts tactics without changing his tone.
“You think I am trying to frighten you,” he answers with a sadistic chuckle.
He steps slightly to the side so I have a clear line of sight.
“I am not trying to frighten you,” he continues. “I’m showing you the scale of my reach.”
One of the guards behind him pulls out a gun. The sound is small. A click. A safety disengaging. The nurse begs again, her words tumbling out, incoherent. Mikhail doesn’t even look at her. He keeps his eyes on me.
“Tell me you understand,” he says.
I hold his gaze. “I understand that you think you can intimidate me.”
Mikhail’s smile widens, polite and wrong. “Her blood is on your hands.”
The guard raises the gun. My nurse squeezes her eyes shut. The shot is so loud in the enclosed room. Her body jerks, then collapses to the floor in a heap like a puppet whose string has been cut. Blood pools under her in a fast gush.
My stomach roils violently. I keep my face still anyway. I keep breathing shallow. I keep my eyes open. Looking away would be giving Mikhail something. Looking away would be him winning a small victory.
Mikhail watches me for a long moment, waiting for me to break. I don’t. I feel the crack in my control, sharp and deep, but I hold it in place because I’ve had years of practice holding myself together when the world tries to split me open. Tears sting behind my eyes. I refuse them. My hands stay steady. Mikhail nods once, like he’s satisfied with the demonstration.
“There will be more,” he says conversationally. “There’s no shortage of people you pretend not to care about. Viktor’s death will definitely be the sweetest.”
He steps closer, finally close enough that I can smell his intentionally expensive cologne.
“You are going to marry me,” he says. “You are going to carry that child under my name. You are going to do it happily and without complaint, because otherwise, I will kill everyone you’ve ever loved.”
I meet his eyes. “And it’ll still never make me yours,” I tell him coldly.
23
VIKTOR
Idon’t sleep for days. I sit in the control room until the feeds blur, then I pace, then I sit again, and none of it changes the only fact that matters: Anya is gone. The house is compromised. The men who were supposed to be watching her are dead. The people who took her moved like they had rehearsed it, which means someone helped them, or someone watched long enough to learn our patterns, or both.
The worst part is the quiet that follows after the violence. The cleanup. The calls. The lists. Sergei’s voice tightening as he gives me names and numbers like that is supposed to make this manageable.
None of this feels manageable.
There is a gap in my chest that keeps widening with each passing hour. I keep thinking that if I move fast enough I can outrun the grief. That if I keep making decisions and issuing orders, I can keep my hands busy enough to stop them from shaking.
My men keep checking my face to see if I’m going to crack. They keep waiting for an explosion. They keep waiting for the moment I lose control.
In my darkest moments, I embrace the explosion. I want it to bring the whole city down. Not just Brooklyn, but all five boroughs. I want my anger to destroy everyone in its wake.
“The attack team pulled back across three different routes,” Sergei tells me. “We have traffic camera pulls on two vehicles, but plates are clean. The third vehicle is a dead end.”
“Who talked?” I ask tensely. It’s the most important question that I’ll likely get answered now.