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My stomach churns before I can even get the words out. But I dip my chin and look up at him. “Whatever you want.”
His eyes scrape over me again, but it’s different from the way the guards look at me like they’re rabid animals looking for a haunch to bite. Akim’s gaze is calculated.
I’m not a naked woman in front of him—I’m a pawn. I’m the tool necessary to make Yakov suffer. Now that he knows I’m pregnant, I’ve become even more precious to him.
“Nothing you say—or do,” he adds with a grimace, “will change what’s going to happen to you.”
“You say it like it’s fate. Like it won’t be you doing it to me.”
“It is fate in a lot of ways,” he says thoughtfully. “Yakov and I have been heading towards this moment for years. I’m not going to rush my way through it. I need to savor it.”
I drop down on the edge of my thin mattress, too weak to stand another second. “Are you here to kill me?”
“Not yet.”
I blow out a shaky breath. “How are you going to do it?”
“I told you not to ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”
“Will it be bad?” I ask anyway.
I don’t want to beg again. Not if it won’t do any good. I want to be prepared for what’s coming so I can face it with dignity.
“I’d promise not to make you suffer, but I would be lying,” he replies, tilting his head to the side to study me. “Especially if Yakov is there to watch. If he’s there… it will be bad for you, Luna. You’ll be in agony. But that’s the only way I’ll be able to enjoy my revenge.”
He thinks Yakov is going to come for me. It’s a tiny drop of good news in a sea of shit. But even if Yakov gets to me, Akim will kill us both.
My body clenches. I twist towards the corner and throw up the tiny amount of water in my stomach. It’s a few drops, if that.
When I wipe my chin and sit back up, Akim is gone.
4
YAKOV
I hit the elevator button with a swollen, bloodied finger. I washed my hands in the hospital lobby bathroom until the water ran red, but there’s still blood under my fingernails and in every crease of my knuckles.
Going home to change wasn’t an option. Not when every man in my Bratva is scouring the streets for Luna. I should be out there looking for her, digging up more leads, following her trail before it goes cold.
The only thing that could pull me away from that is Mariya. She deserves to know about Nik. That he’s gone. That he isn’t coming back.
A wide-eyed nurse behind a half-moon desk on the fourth floor points me towards Mariya’s recovery room. Her hand shakes and she tries to hide it by tucking it behind her back. I must look as bad as I feel.
But I forget about all of that when I walk into the room and see Mariya slumped down in a hospital bed.
She looks over at me, her eyes narrow slits. “I know, I know,” she grumbles weakly. “Hospital blue is not my color.”
She wants me to laugh, but none of this is funny.
“Hospital blue is better than bloody red.”
I should know. I’ve seen a lot of it today.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” She chews on her pale lips to disguise how her chin wobbles with emotion she doesn’t want me to see. “Have… have you found her?”
I don’t have to answer. As soon as she looks at me, she knows. Her face crumples, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.
“If there’s anything else you can remember, I need to know now,” I tell her. “Anything at all. What the men looked like, the color of the van… anything.”
