He tied my hands behind my back, throwing me off balance. I could see the dead guards now, arranged against the car’s leather seats. The dead driver even had his hands on the wheel, posed in a sick parody of normalcy. Nikolai had cut this throat by the looks of it. They’d underestimated the youngest Chernov and paid the price. Hadn’t I done it, too? I supposed I should feel lucky it had only cost me my sanity. So far…
Nikolai searched the dead bodies with one hand and held me in a death grip with the other. I strained against him, waiting for a chance to run.
I studied him in the dim light, from his bloodied face to his unruly dark hair sticking up in all directions. It was mussed in the careless way designers spent hours trying to achieve in magazine spreads. Violent nonchalance was as instinctive to Nikolai as breathing. He wore it so well because that was what he was.
A stone-cold killer. A psychopath born and bred. A monster with no remorse. And now, my captor.
Watch out for weakness, Sofia. Every man has one. The voice of Tinto, my paranza corta instructor, filled my head. I’d been studying the art of knife fighting since I was a little kid. I clearly wasn’t the best student, as I was about to be taken hostage inside my home. Regardless, Tinto was right. Every man had a weakness, and finding Niko’s could help me escape.
I pushed my fear aside and tried to consider him objectively. He had dark rings under his eyes, a sign of pure exhaustion. If Gino was right—and it seemed he was—Viktor Chernov, the pakhan of the New York bratva and Niko’s father, had died last night. Whatever had gone down after had brought the younger of the two Chernov brothers here, tied up in a trunk in Casa Nera. He probably hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours. I could use that.
Nikolai straightened and tucked a gun into his waistband. He picked up another and pointed it toward me. I jerked away from him and screamed against the gag, pure liquid adrenaline shooting through my veins.
A dark chuckle met my cry.
“Don’t worry, you’re my insurance, remember?” He hauled me to his front. The cold muzzle of the gun pressed into my temple. He leaned his head against mine, and his chest expanded. “But don’t fight me, Sofia. You know it never ends well for you.”
His words scared and pissed me off at the same time. I turned a murderous look on him, twisting to communicate my fury. One of his full lips quirked upward for a moment before he propelled me forward.
Tension made me more alert than ever. Every movement heightened my senses, listening for the slightest sound. If someone could distract Niko, I could use it to my advantage. We reached the door, and he pushed me through first. My eyes burned in the sudden light of the late morning after adapting to the darkness of the garage. I glanced up toward the camera I knew was mounted above the hulking original building, the same feeds that Gino had been checking at the guard post. Gino would see. He would come.
“Let’s go,” Nikolai said when I stumbled over my feet.
My boots weren’t designed for walking well at the best of times, never mind when staggering about at gunpoint.
Besides the garage of the main house, a small alley ran toward the high wall protecting the property. Beyond it were the woods and freedom. Freedom. How odd was it that my captor’s goals aligned with mine? While Nikolai might win his freedom, fighting his way out of the hornet’s nest, I knew I was stuck forever. Locked inside the cage of my father’s ownership until he signed over the responsibility to another man.
I stumbled again over a larger rock, and Niko tutted in my ear. As he hauled me up, I let my weight drop and kicked at his knee.
Nikolai grunted and grabbed my chin in a bruising grip. The gun pressed harder into my temple. “Don’t fuck with me. This isn’t the time for games. You aren’t showing much regard for your life right now. You should work on your sense of self-worth. Maybe try therapy if you make it through this, and stop pissing me off.”
He released my face, and his mocking words brought a bubble of hysteria to my lips. I was being abducted by the Joker, and I was pretty sure no one could stop him. Nikolai Chernov was renowned in our world. He wasn’t a man to fuck with. Despite his relatively young age, his reputation was terrifying.
Hauling me up, he forced me on. I trudged toward the wall as slowly as possible. Maybe I could buy time by being as slow as hell. I focused on the wall and fought an internal scream. There had been a storm a few weeks ago, and it had brought down some trees in the woods. One had landed against the wall, giving someone the perfect footholds to scale it from the other side. Niko was right about one thing: my father was arrogant in some ways with security. Sure, he had my virginity guarded around the clock but only assigned four measly guards to escort a dangerous prisoner. He didn’t even care that there was a way inside the compound from the woods. I supposed he thought that the mighty De Sanctis family could handle whatever threat came at them. My father had always been a victim of his own hubris.
“Stop right there!” a panicked male voice called.
I felt like crying with gratitude.
Nikolai stopped immediately, yanking me to his chest harder than ever. The gun felt like a brand against my temple.
Gino stood in the narrow gap between the houses. He was holding a gun and pointing it right at us. By his pallor and look of utter terror, I realized he could get hurt trying to save me and still fail.
“Don’t move. I’ve caught you,” he called. Puffing up his chest, he jerked the gun slightly to the side. “Let her go.”
Nikolai chuckled, which only increased the tension.
Gino swore, and his hand trembled on the gun. “I’m not joking. Let her go. I’ve caught you!”
“I don’t think you have. In fact, I think you may have just got yourself in trouble. We were going to slip out nice and quiet, and no one had to get hurt,” Nikolai said and then added, “Well, no one else had to get hurt.”
I wondered if he was talking about the dead guards in the garage or my future self.
Gino shook his head bullishly. “I won’t let you take her. Sofia, come here.”
When Nikolai spoke, I could hear his cruel grin.
“I can’t decide if you’re blind or just stupid. Can’t you see my gun? If you take one more step, I’ll put a bullet in Antonio De Sanctis’ daughter’s brain, escape anyway, and leave you alive to explain to your boss why his only daughter died.”
Gino swallowed hard. “As opposed to explaining why I let a psychopath like you take her away, abduct her, to do God knows what to her? No.”
My heart soared at Gino’s resolute tone.
“Brother, God has nothing to do with the things I’m going to do to your little prom queen,” Nikolai growled, his patience seeming to run out. “Drop the gun now, or someone dies. Regardless, I’ll still be leaving here with a fucking spring in my step.”
There was no mistaking his sincerity. He meant it, and both Gino and I knew he was capable of it. In the end, I didn’t want Gino to get killed. I didn’t want to be the reason he was hurt. I locked eyes with him and subtly shook my head. Leave it. Get help. I’ll be okay until then.
He stared at me for a long moment before swearing. With a decisive nod, he raised his gun, pointing it at the sky. “Okay, I get it. Let her go, and I’ll look the other way and not try to stop you.”
Nikolai’s satisfaction radiated from him. “You’ve made a smart decision. What’s your name?”
“Gino. I’m Gino, and I just want to help Sofia, that’s all. Please, she’s a good girl… she has nothing to do with people like you and me,” he called, desperate now.
“Toss the gun, Gino, and turn around if you want her to live,” Niko called back.
Watching Gino drop his only weapon was terrifying. He was so vulnerable now, and a terrible paranoia struck me. Nikolai was going to kill Gino. Gino was going to die because of me.
A whimper escaped my gag. Niko stared down at me, his magnetic silver eyes locking with mine. A long line of tears streaked from one eye, and I blinked them madly away. I was suddenly more worried about Gino than myself.
Gino had turned his back to us, and his hands visibly shook by his sides.
“What’s wrong? You don’t want me to hurt Gino?” Nikolai mocked, his beautiful mouth twisting into something ugly as he grinned.
It was bloodthirsty. He was enjoying this, I realized with a jerk.
“What would you do to save him?” he asked, sending ice down my spine. He chuckled when I muttered powerless words against my gag. He tapped the gun against my lips. “That’s right. You can’t do anything. You can’t stop me from doing whatever I want, so listen the fuck up and stop testing my patience, or you’ll be next.”
With that, he turned and leveled the gun at Gino. The weapon had a silencer fitted. The suppressed sound and the grunt Gino let out was one I knew I’d never forget.
He fell forward and I frantically tried to see where he was hit, but Niko gave me no time to figure it out. I screamed into my gag, and my throat turned raw with pain as I screamed again and again, over and over. Gino had been shot. He’d been shot because of me. I thrashed against Nikolai, feral for a second. He locked an arm around my neck, squeezing until the airflow into my panicked chest lessened.
“Calm the fuck down, or I’ll decide you’re more of a hindrance than a help as far as insurance goes. You don’t want to test me today,” he said, while black spots swam in front of my eyes.
He turned me away from the sight of Gino and dragged me toward the wall. I twisted, trying desperately to see if he was still alive, but Niko shoved me forward ruthlessly. He must know that backup would arrive at any minute. I only had to delay him a little longer, and more De Sanctis men would descend. And more would die? I tried to push that thought down, but it wouldn’t go. No, I couldn’t have more blood on my hands. I had to get away from Nikolai myself.
We made it to the wall. Nikolai would need to put the gun away to scale it. This was my chance. He kneeled on the gravel and pulled me onto his shoulders, standing effortlessly and boosting me up the wall. It was scary with my hands tied behind my back, but once on the other side, I had a shot at getting away. A strangled cry left me as he climbed the wall, his tattooed fingers gripping the plentiful handholds on the rough rock and leaving little smears of blood in their wake.
When I neared the top, he leaned forward, sending me sliding off. Terrified, I closed my eyes and fell toward the downed tree on the other side. I had no way to break my fall with my hands bound. I passed the branches with nothing more than a few scratches and kept going. Landing hard on my side, I took a second to get my bearings. Fuck, that hurt, but I’d been lucky enough not to impale myself on any particularly pointed branches. My first lucky break today. Thoughts of Gino sent fresh tears to my eyes while I staggered to my feet.
“Help! Someone help us!” a voice floated to me from over the wall when I got to my feet.
Niko paused at the top of the wall and glanced back. It was Gino. Relief crashed into me. He wasn’t too hurt to be shouting for backup.
Nikolai hesitated. Was he going to shoot him again?
I ran from the fallen tree, and panic sent me crashing through a noisy pile of leaves and crunching twigs. I sensed the moment Niko’s attention snapped back to me.
Risking one last glance behind me, I saw him abandon Gino and slip down the fallen tree, landing lithely on the same side of the wall as me. I put my head down and ran as quickly as I could with my hands bound.
My balance was off, and I wasted steps teetering to the side and twisting my body to stay upright. My back ached, and my shoulders throbbed where they were pinned behind me. Cuts burned on my cheek from the branches.
Nikolai’s thudding steps suddenly stopped behind me, but I wasn’t dumb enough to look back. I kept going. There was little to no chance I could outrun him, but every step I took carried him further from being able to hurt anyone except me.
I would never have pegged myself as the self-sacrificing type in a life-and-death situation. It was a nice thing to find out about myself today, on perhaps the last day of my life.
Maybe then you’ll finally be free. The macabre thought whispered through my head when I entered a small clearing shrouded by trees. That was not the fucked-up shit I needed to be thinking right now.
Nikolai’s hard body caught me on the right side, knocking the breath from me. His arms wrapped around me, somehow cushioning my fall. My teeth bit hard into my tongue, held awkwardly around the gag, and blood filled my mouth. We rolled, and twigs and rocks scratched me until we finally came to a stop.
He straddled me, his strong legs bracketing my waist. I arched my back to take the pressure off my wrists, but it was futile. I was trussed up and bound for display, and there was nothing I could do about it. My chest heaved from fear and exertion. Nikolai leaned across me, and my heart pounded harder at the sensation of his body against mine. The scent of him invaded my head, woodsy and masculine. It was the same scent that had haunted my dreams and nightmares in equal measure for years after we’d first met.
“You do like the hard way, don’t you, lastochka?” he murmured.
He wasn’t breathing hard. He seemed like he could make another ten sprints through the woods and not even break a sweat, while I felt like my lungs might combust.
“If you don’t stop making my day more difficult, I’ll have to teach you a lesson in a way you won’t forget, Sofia. Stop testing me.”
I let a torrent of obscenities fly against the gag, and Nikolai’s mouth quirked again with that slither of amusement.
He tugged the edge of the gag. “If I take this off, and you scream… I’ll have to think of a more permanent method for keeping you quiet. I can be imaginative, so don’t test me.” He pulled the edge of the gag off and plucked the ball of material from my mouth.
“Don’t test you?” I demanded, my numb lips slurring my words. “You shot Gino.”
“I’ve shot many people. What’s your point?” He sounded bored at my display of emotion.
A streak of tears escaped my eyes, and I tried to blink them away, but it wasn’t working. Nikolai followed the salty trail, his striking face impassive.
“Are you going to shoot me, too?”
“Are you going to make me?” he asked softly. “If all I wanted were to shoot you, you’d have been dead when you considered marrying my brother.”
“Don’t pretend that hurt your feelings. You don’t have any to hurt,” I whispered, my words like hooked barbs, hoping to get under his skin.
He smiled, but there was nothing warm in it. “That’s where you’re wrong, little swallow in the locked cage. I know you better than you think. I’ve seen inside before you learned how to lie so prettily.”
He reached behind him, and the light glinted off the knife that appeared in his hand. He brought the knife to my cheek. I stilled, barely breathing. He softly trailed it, not cutting, just threatening, down the slope of my neck, to the top button of my shirt. A quick slice beneath the button sent it rolling away.
“Don’t forget who you’re dealing with, prom queen. I still remember how beautiful you were… covered in blood. I long to see it again.”
Prom queen. The title brought that night screaming back to my mind. “It was your blood I was covered in, as I remember,” I forced the words out, despite my urge to cower from his touch. The locked box of our violent, dark past threatened to bust wide open and spill the secrets I needed to keep safe.
“My blood, your blood, it doesn’t matter. No one sees you like I see you, and no one ever will. We’re connected, you and I, and we both know it. I would tell you to stop fighting it, but I find your fear so intoxicating.” He leaned in, pressing his face into the nook of my neck and shoulder. His hot tongue touched my skin, licking a wet, scorching stripe all the way up.
I shivered. My skin felt like it was trying to crawl right off—to get away from the madman above me, or closer, I didn’t know.
I’d long ago given up trying to understand my body’s reaction to this man. My nerves buzzed. Hate, attraction, shock, and relief hummed in undercurrents beneath my skin. I didn’t know which was which. Most of all, I thought how odd it was to feel comforted by the touch of the man threatening to kill you. That’s what happened when you isolated a person so thoroughly they became touch-starved, that even a knife to the throat felt like a caress.
He reached my jaw and trailed kisses along it. I tried to turn my head, and the knife pricked under my jaw.
“Open your eyes,” he instructed deeply.
The knife at my jugular was enough of an incentive. I opened them to find his mercurial gaze taking up my entire vision. Like I was drowning in the gray of him. Those distracting eyes were as beautiful as they were when I was seventeen, smiling at a handsome stranger in a bar, trying my best to appear older than I was. I’d had no idea I’d caught the eye of a predator who would never give up the hunt.
He leaned in and brushed his lips against mine.
“I thought I was just your insurance?” My words came out more of a breathy plea than a question, and I hated myself for it.
“Right, my insurance,” he repeated. His gaze tracked over my face, lingering on all the planes and hollows like he was committing me to memory. “You open your mouth, and I forget.”
“Forget what?”
“That I’m supposed to be escaping.”
I swallowed, casting about for words to navigate the tense and wild feeling I was getting from Nikolai. Like always, he was dangerously unpredictable.
“You could always just take me back if you’ve given up on escaping,” I muttered.
Niko laughed, his intense face transforming. He’d always been beautiful, like a rebellious Romanov prince, with his aristocratic face, a multitude of scars, and ink. His devil-may-care attitude was another draw to him. Well, it had been to the seventeen-year-old me. I’d never met someone so free and uncaring of what others thought. That curiosity had cost me dearly.
“Would you visit me if I let your father tie me up in his kinky little torture chamber?”
“Let’s try it and see,” I offered.
He laughed again. It felt safer to diffuse his dark anger than have it directed at me or an innocent bystander.
“You haven’t changed, Sofia. You’re still as captivating and strong-willed as ever,” he murmured, leaning in and kissing me hard.
With the knife preventing my head from turning, I had no choice but to open to him as his tongue forced its way inside my mouth. “Kissed” is hardly a strong enough term for the way he took my lips, biting and sucking. He wasn’t gentle, and I shivered in his arms as I realized I didn’t want him to be.
When he touched me, I forgot who he was. I forgot what he was. A dangerous psychopath. A killer without remorse. Even knowing it didn’t stop my body from warming at his touch. His brutality should scare me. It should make my body numb and cold, but it didn’t. The dark truth I harbored inside was that it had the opposite effect.
His other hand was on my neck, tracing that same pulse point he’d touched in the garage.
He smiled against my lips. “Are you scared or excited, Sofia? Or is it both? It’s okay if it’s both,” he muttered, bending his head to kiss me again just as a sound rang out above our heads.
Bark pinged off Nikolai’s back, and he cursed, rolling away from me.
I twisted to my side, trying to force reality back into my confused, overheated brain.
Shots. Someone was shooting at us. Someone was shooting at him. He was moving away from me in a crouch, his stolen gun gripped in his hand, He peered around a thick trunk and stared into the woods where the shots had come from.
“Stay down. There’s no way that shooter can see shit,” he muttered.
But I was already up. I wasn’t about to miss my opening to run. “I’ll take my chances,” I said as he turned and looked at me.
He nearly got to his feet and chased, but another round of shots echoed through the woods, sending him back behind the tree. “Don’t run from me, Sofia. If you do, you won’t like it when I catch you,” he warned in a low voice, his eyes shrewd and calculating.
The promise of violence in his eyes was the last I saw of him before I turned and ran.
