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“You used to like it when I bit you,” he sneers, “or does he do it better? Your fiancé?”
“Go to hell.” I kick at him..
He snags my bare ankle and yanks, dragging my ass across the floor toward him. The carpet burns my skin, but I’m too focused on getting the fuck away to care. I grab the first thing I find—Celia’s purse—and throw it at Liam.
It bounces off his face, and he growls. “Your bruises have faded, Valentina, but don’t worry. I’ll give you new ones.”
I break a nail on the carpet as he drags me closer. “Fuck you! Get off me!” The chair topples over as I try to grab on to something, and the mirror falls next. Glass shatters like cracking ice, slicing into my skin.
Liam hisses as one of the larger pieces nicks his calf, cutting through his slacks and making him bleed. “Fuck! Why do you have to be so difficult!” He snags my hair and pulls me up onto my knees. Something silver flashes through the air in an arc, and a sharp stab hits my neck. I try to scream, but no sound comes out. The room starts to spin, and I groan as my muscles go slack.
“That’s it,” Liam huffs, tossing a syringe out of his hand. “Go to sleep, moya zhena. You’ll feel better once we’re home.”
Home. I think of my room at the estate. Andrei’s bed. Mikhail’s warm arms. Ezra’s shower.
Nothing about home screams Liam fucking West.
The last thing I feel is rage pumping through my heart.
My boyfriends will make Liam bleed for ruining our wedding. And if they don’t, I fucking will.
Chapter 31
Valentina
My body rocks back and forth with the ocean tide, rushing out across the shore as the waves spill over, only to be gently pulled back into the surf. An endless, weightless lullaby.
This dance continues for hours, and the longer I’m there, the more painful it becomes.
Sand scratches my skin, burning my knees; shells scrape my palms, making me bleed. The crashing waves fill my head with noise. So much noise, like buzzing static. Like bees, pricking my body in anger, so much anger, rolling through me in hot waves, thick and heavy and?—
I gasp in a breath and moan.
Heavy. My body is so heavy.
I try to open my eyes, but I can’t. Each beat of my heart brings a new rush of pain to my chest, pounding, pounding, pounding?—
“You didn’t have to maim her.”
The voice is familiar. Pinched. Female. Critical. Stern.
“She didn’t have to fight so damned hard.”
“That’s your fault for not securing her sooner. You let her slip through your fingers. Five years, I gave you.” The woman says something in a harsh Russian dialect, clicking her tongue like a disapproving mother.
Or a disapproving grandmother.
My eyelids flicker as I try to open them. The pain intensifies as I drag in a lungful of air.
“Ah. She’s waking up.”
Weight by my side makes the floor dip.
A cold hand brushes hair from my face. “Ditya. It’s time to wake up now. We have much to do and not a lot of time. Come, now.”
“The drugs won’t wear off that fast.”
Katya Baranova snaps back in Russian. It’s a word I know well.
