Katerina’s arms and legs are crossed as she hugs her body and tries to make herself as small as possible, nestled against the corner of the car so she is as far from me as she can physically be. I had to accompany her in the back in case she tried to pull any shit to escape. She threw a baseball bat and a gun at Maximo’s head, tried to shoot him, and then punched me in the chest all in the space of fifteen minutes, so I’m pretty sure we got ourselves a live wire.
I can sense Maximo’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror every few minutes, probably wondering what the hell I’m even thinking of bringing her to my house instead of making an example of her.
I have no answer to that question though. No reasonable explanation as to why I’m taking her as a payment for her brother’s debt instead of doing whatever necessary to make sure she doesn’t have any information that might lead me to the slippery little fuck. There’s something about her that intrigues me. I looked into her when we were trying to find Leo. She trained to be a nurse, and she worked as one in Northwestern Memorial for three years. She was good at it too. I read all of her performance reviews. Incredible with patients and respected by her colleagues.
Then two years ago, she quit, and nobody from the hospital ever heard from her again. She left her nice apartment block and moved to one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. She took a night shift, cleaning empty office blocks. Besides that, she rarely leaves the house.
She’s a mystery. A puzzle I want to solve. I’ve always been good at reading people. Usually, within a few minutes, I can figure out their story, but not her. That’s what intrigues me. It has nothing to do with her bright blue eyes and the fire in them when she stood up to Maximo and me. Nothing to do with her perky tits straining against that cleaning uniform she has on beneath her coat, or her full pink lips and how good they would look if I was fucking her smart mouth. And absolutely nothing to do with the way her blatant defiance and disregard for who I am made me harder than I’ve ever been in my life.
No. Not that at all.
When we pull up at my house, Katerina cranes her neck to get a full view of the place. It’s huge, with two wings, one for me, and one for my brother and his wife. But he’s not living here right now. No doubt, she’s looking for ways to escape though. She won’t find any.
Once Maximo has stopped the car, I climb out and walk around to her side. When I pull the door open, she scowls at me.
“You can walk into the house, or I will carry you in. And you can kick and scream for help and not one single person here will stop me or come to your rescue.”
She glares at me as she weighs her options, and a few seconds later, she steps out of the car, her jaw set in defiance even as she follows me the few steps to the house, while Maximo grabs the small suitcase of personal belongings she gathered from her place. She didn’t bring much, just a few clothes and toiletries and a photo album.
Maximo called ahead once we knew we were going to have a new houseguest. My housekeeper, Sophia, opens the door.
“Mr. Moretti,” she says with a polite nod.
“Sophia, this is Katerina. Can you show her to her room?”
“Of course, sir,” she replies, opening the door and ushering Katerina inside.
Katerina turns to me, her eyes wide and full of anxiety. I like the way she looks at me. I am the man with all the answers, and that makes her dependent on me. And I definitely like that.
“I’ll bring your bag up in a moment,” I tell her, and she nods, although her face is still clouded in confusion and uncertainty, which I guess is understandable.
She follows Sophia along the hallway and up the stairs. A few seconds later, Maximo joins me.
“You sure you know what you’re doing, D?” he asks, giving me a look that suggests he knows my motives aren’t entirely motivated by my need to recoup the money that Leo Evanson stole from us.
“Nope.”
“What exactly is she gonna be doing while she’s here?” he asks with a grin.
“I’ll think of something.”
“I’m sure you will.”
I ignore his innuendo. “She was a nurse, right?” I remind him. “Surely, she has skills that will be useful to us?”
“Sure,” he says, but he’s still looking at me like he knows I’m thinking about another set of skills she might have. “You haven’t forgotten your pop is coming for dinner later, have you?”
“Fuck!”
“You did forget?”
“I do my best to forget any things related to him.”
“Good thing one of us is on the ball though, eh?” He nudges me, and I roll my eyes at him.
Anyone else tried to ride my ass like he does and I’d put a bullet in them. But Maximo is like a brother to me. He’s a year older than I am and we grew up together. Our fathers were best friends until his was murdered when he was fourteen. He lived with us after that. There was no official adoption — it just was. I would die for him and he’d do the same for me in a heartbeat. Loyalty like that is hard to come by.
“Why do you think I keep you around here?” I say as I take Katerina’s bag from him and head to the stairs.
“Because you couldn’t fucking function without me.” He whistles, heading off to my study, while I prepare to welcome our guest.
Sophia is leaving the room when I reach it, and when I walk inside, Katerina is staring out of the window, looking at the courtyard below. She’s taken off her coat at least, so I figure she’s accepted she won’t be leaving any time soon.
“Kind of a nice room for a prison cell,” she says, full of snark.
Goddamn it, I want to throw her on the bed and fuck that attitude out of her. Perhaps, later.
“It has a lock too,” I tell her. “Not that you’ll need it.”
“Won’t I?”
“Well, nobody lives here, except me. And Sophia of course, but she lives downstairs.”
She arches an eyebrow at me and how much I would love to fuck that look off her face.
“It would take more than a lock to keep me out if I wanted in here, kitten.”
She hugs her arms to her chest, shivering as she rubs her bare arms as though she’s cold despite the warm room. Is that from fear or something else? “What exactly do you want with me? You planning on just keeping me here forever, or am I only supposed to stay here until I pay off this debt?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what? You’re keeping me here forever or until I work off Leo’s debt?”
How about both? “You’ll work off your brother’s substantial debt and then you can leave,” I say instead.
“And just how do I do that? And how long will it take? What about my actual job? My house?” she fires off the questions, arms still crossed over her chest.
“Your employer will be informed of your new circumstances. Your house will be maintained until you’re ready to return to it. And as for how long that will take, that all depends on how good you are,” I say, crossing the room until I’m standing so close to her I can smell her scent. It’s not a perfume. It’s sweet like chocolate. The cocoa butter lotion she uses on her skin. I saw her throwing it into the bag earlier.
“Good at what?” she whispers, and her lip trembles slightly.
I don’t know what makes me harder — feisty Katerina or trembling-with-fear Katerina. I’m going to have plenty of fun with both of them. But not today. Not yet.
I could pin her down on this bed and fuck her senseless and there wouldn’t be a single thing she could do about it. No matter how hard she fought me or how loud she screamed, nobody would come to her aid.
“Whatever it is I tell you to do.”
She rolls her eyes at me and I step closer until I’m invading every inch of her personal space. Her breath hitches, making those goddamn tits strain against the snappers on her uniform even more. One flick of my wrist and that damn tunic would be open and her chest would be completely exposed. I ram my hands into my pockets to stop myself from touching her. I can tell that she wants to step back and give herself a little space, but she’s too stubborn to back down.
“I am not having sex with you,” she snarls.
“I don’t force women into having sex with me. I certainly don’t have to pay them for the privilege.”
Relief shines in her eyes momentarily. “My men, on the other hand… well, they are a different matter.”
“I-I’m not having sex with anyone,” she stammers, and tears well in her eyes as she steps away from me, pressing her back against the window. “I’d rather you kill me than keep me here like some paid whore to entertain your men.”
There is a terror in her eyes that wasn’t there a moment ago. She’s hiding a secret and it’s shimmering just beneath the surface now. I can almost feel it, but she keeps it well hidden. And I find myself doing something completely out of character. “You were a nurse, right? So I’m sure you have other talents that will come in useful instead, Katerina,” I assure her.
I walk out of the room before I give her any further indication that I am anything but the monster she believes I am.
“My name is Kat. I hate Katerina,” she calls after me.
Is this what déjà vu feels like? Because I’ve heard those words before. I turn around. And suddenly it’s six years ago and I’m looking at someone else’s face as we stand in this room. We stood here just like this and she said almost those exact same words. Except Nicole preferred Nicci, and she was never my prisoner. She was here through choice. Until she wasn’t.
My chest tightens as six years of anger and the weight of all the secrecy and lies surges up from my gut, threatening to spill out until I push it all back down where it belongs.
“Are you okay?” Kat’s voice snaps me from the past reminding me that that time in my life has long gone. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“Maybe,” I mumble, and she blinks at me in confusion. “Anyway, make yourself at home until I figure out what to do with you.”
Something unreadable flickers in Kat’s expression.
“Except for my study, you’re free to explore the house. But you try and escape and I will hand you over to my men to do with as they please. You understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Sophia makes dinner around eight. You can eat wherever you like, but my father is coming this evening, so I’d prefer you eat in your room.”
“I’d rather eat in here anyway,” she snipes.
“Of course you would. Not much of a people person, are you?”
“Well, you tell me since you seem to know a hell of a lot about me, Mr. Moretti,” she snaps.
Whatever glimpse of vulnerability she allowed me to see a moment ago has vanished, and her armor is firmly back in place. Which is a good thing because she’ll need that while she’s living here. “I make it my business to know everything there is to know about my enemies, Ms. Evanson.”
I walk out of the door and close it behind me. I need to do something to take my mind off the fiery wildcat because walking around here with a semi-permanent hard-on isn’t my idea of a good time.
Maybe I should just fuck her and get it over with. Get her out of my head so I can focus. Except that I don’t want to simply take Kat; I want to own every single part of her. And the worst of it is, I have absolutely no idea why.
