“What the fuck happened to you?”
My response is a growl as I grab a set of keys from the collection on the wall. “I need a drink.”
Dmitri eyes me but doesn’t say anything, following me to the car with only two seats and far more horsepower than the LA streets need. I don’t care. I’ll do anything to leave that damn woman behind in the dust.
5
EVA
I’m supposed to be working, typing at my computer, installing backdoors and exploiting weaknesses to access forbidden files. Why? I have no idea. That’s above my need-to-know. Orders came down from on high, and now I’m breaking into the files of some genuinely terrifying people.
Still, no one is as terrifying as the man who stormed into my basement only days ago. The man with a gaze sharp as ice, with very little humanity behind it. The man with the horrible scars on one side of his face, the side he kept in shadow that night at the club.
What had happened to the hot, charming Mr.Giant who’d fought off Jordan’s attackers and patched me up so gallantly? I honestly thought I was going to die, with every fiber of my being. I was waiting for the bullet, praying Katie or my father wasn’t the one who found me.
The man who stormed into my house? I assume he’s Evgeny Kucherov, head of the Kucherov Bratva. He believed I was hacking to cause trouble. Apparently, he’d even tied that to myappearance at the club, thinking it was somehow part of my plan to…
What?
I have no idea what. No one has told me a thing since I arrived. I get meals and orders, and that’s it. At least one armed and very grumpy man stands outside my door at all times, so I’ve been confined to this set of rooms, and only these rooms, for three days now.
I should be working, but instead I’m staring at the ceiling over the enormous bed Ihaven’tslept in because I haven’t been able to shut my brain off. I don’t want to show all those men out there how terrified I am, but every time I close my eyes, my entire body shakes, the tears come, and my breath is short as the walls close in on me.
I try very hard not to think about the fact that I’m a prisoner in this palatial house. I have a feeling I’m going to spend the rest of my life here.
And I don’t even know how long that’s going to last.
Will I ever see my family again?
The sound of the door unlocking echoes through the sparse rooms, bouncing off the cold, bare sandstone, and I scramble off the bed. I can’t make it to the computer in time to pretend I’m busy and fool the bear who stalks in.
He’s easily one of the biggest guys I’ve ever seen, towering over me, his shoulders half as wide as I am tall. The top of my head barely comes up to the center of his chest, and I feel suddenly childish standing in front of him.
“You’re supposed to be working,” Dmitri grunts.
“I’m taking a break. My eyes hurt.”
The way he watches me, eyes narrowed, mouth a thin line, makes it clear he doesn’t believe me.
“Do you want me to say I’m having an existential crisis because I’m being held against my will until your boss decides he has no more use for me?”
“Actions have consequences,” the big man says, his massive shoulders rolling in a shrug.
I blink, open my mouth to reply, then close it again because he’s not wrong. I just didn’t understand how bad the consequences of my actions would be.
“Don’t try to take on the Kucherov Bratva next time. Now come on,” he says, jerking his head toward the door.
“Uh…”
The room I’ve longed to leave is suddenly the only place I want to be. But Dmitri gestures again, this time sharp with impatience, and I drag my heels as I follow.
The guy at the door, the one holding the very large gun, doesn’t look at me as I pass, but he does turn his head toward the big guy I’m following.
“We’ll be back,” he says to the guard, and I take heart that he saidwe’llbe back and notI’llbe back. Maybe it means I’m going to live.
For now, anyway.
We walk in silence down the hallway, then turn into another before my curiosity and anxiety get the better of me.
