After sliding into the back seat of the SUV door Eight is holding open for me, I instruct the driver to go. Once the tail lights are at a safe distance, Nikolai will command for his men to pull back. Then he’ll meet us at the airport that has a private jet idling on the tarmac.
As the sound of a helicopter hovers over my head, I peel K off my chest to check her for injuries. Her neck is marked up and bruised, and she’s far too skinny, but those are the least of her problems. Her eyes are open, but just like the pair that stared back at me only minutes ago, they’re lifeless and blank.
“You’ll be alright, K. I’ll take care of you.”
When I unscrew the cap on a bottle of water, Mikhail slides down the privacy partition separating the front half of the SUV from the back. I originally wanted Roman to fill in the spot of evacuation driver, forgetting Nikolai couldn’t leave Justine without an army of her own men. Roman is the perfect leader for that group. “Don’t force-feed her water. If she shuts down, the water could end up in her lungs. You’ll drown her thousands of miles from the nearest ocean.”
Although I’m still pissed at him, I jerk up my chin before placing the water back in its holder. I want to help K, not hurt her more.
Seemingly hearing my private thoughts, Mikhail says, “We’re two miles out from the airstrip. Dok is waiting in the hangar. He’ll give you more of an idea on how you can help her.”
He waits for me to lift my chin for the second time before he returns the privacy partition to its original spot, freeing up some privacy. I use the time well. I drink in K’s perfectly straight nose, her plump lips, and eyes as calm as an ocean.
She stares at me just as intently, however, her eyes don’t blink or move. They don’t even gloss over. They just stare and stare, even more so when I track my thumb over her lips to remove her ruby red lipstick.
“You don’t need all those gimmicks, do you, Duchess? You’re regal even with your crown missing unnecessary jewels.”
* * *
Istop staring at my reflection in K’s pupils when Mikhail pulls up beside one of the Popovs’ many private jets. I wasn’t staring at myself because I’m a pompous prick who thinks he’s pretty, I was striving to work out how a man I’ve never met before was staring back at me in K’s eyes.
I’m a monster, a cheat, a thief, and a liar. The man staring at me from K’s eyes was none of those things. He was a stranger, but a man I’ve always hoped to become.
Dok dips his chin when I nudge my head to the stairs of the private jet. Our mode of transportation is heavily guarded to ensure nothing will come between Nikolai and hisAhrenat the end of our raid, however, I don’t want Dok examining K with a heap of witnesses.
While I place K down in the middle of the double bed at the back of the jet, Dok digs a stethoscope and a thermometer from his medical bag before pivoting around to face me. “Can you give us a minute? I don’t work well under pressure.”
I want to tell him to go to hell, I want to smash his teeth in, but instead of doing either of those things, I grip the lapels of his jacket and drag him to within an inch of my face. “Make it quick.”
I’m not bowing under pressure, I am taking a breather before I do something I’ll regret. K hasn’t budged an inch in over ten minutes, hasn’t murmured a peep. I can’t even hear her breathe. It’s as if I was too late, and the mirror ripped through the vein in her neck instead of my hand, and don’t get me started on what the sick fucks did to her to have her so desperate to die.
She’s been a sex slave for six years.
What could be worse than that?
* * *
I’m pacing the floorboards of Nikolai’s private jet when he arrives off the battlefield. His grubby face reveals he got in the nitty-gritty, much less his smirk. He loves killing fuckfaces as much as me. “How is she?”
I wait for his eyes to stray from the closed bedroom door to me before shrugging. “Dok is with her. She’s… ah…”
“Quiet?” Nikolai fills in when I fail to find the right word. When I jerk up my chin, he scrubs a hand across his before he plops into a cream reclining chair like his pants aren’t covered with blood. “I was worried about Justine’s mental stability after our raid of Vladimir’s compound too.” He undoes the laces on his boots before raising his eyes to mine. “Little did I know, my panic hurt her more. They’re stronger than we think, Trey. They have to be if they want to be queens.”
After three years of working under him, it should seem foreign that he continues talking about me as if I’m his equal, but since it’s coming from Nikolai, it doesn’t. He knows I don’t have to work for him if I don’t want to. I do it because I’d rather work beside him than across from him. That would haveneverbeen the case if my father’s raid of Prague had been successful.
The world works in mysterious ways, and my friendship with Nikolai is proof of this.
Recalling Nikolai’s earlier offer for us to return to Prague one day to restore my family’s name, I ask, “Achim?”
I could say more, but I don’t need to. The first syllable of Achim’s name had only just left my mouth when Nikolai’s jaw tightened to the point of cracking. I assume it’s a bad tightening until he opens the bag Nero entered the jet with. Achim’s head is inside of it. The fact his eyes are still open reveals his death was quick, but the expression on his face exposes it was also painful.
That appeases my annoyance for now.
My eyes drop to Nikolai’s when he says, “His wife wasn’t at the auction. That’s why it took me so long to give the word to strike. I’m wary she somehow got word about our raid.”
“By whom?” It’s clear from the information Nikolai shared during our eighteen-hour flight to Czechia that India is well-aware of Achim’s kinks. That’s one of the reasons she agreed to marry him. With his family money, the Dvoráks became untouchable.
Well, so they thought. If the number of bodies I trekked past during my sprint for the evacuation vehicle are anything to go by, they just lost several key members of her crew.
