“I am not your property,” I say harshly. “I have never been your property.”
“You, my dear, are whatever I say you are,” he says, pleasantly. “That is how the world works. That is how it has always worked and you are well aware of that. Which is why you spent eleven months planning your escape rather than simply walking out the front door.” He stands. “You will marry Pavel Breshnev and give me the alliance I need to further my reach in their organization. You will do your job, which is to be useful, which is the only job you have ever had in this house or anywhere else.”
“No.”
He moves faster than I can react, knocking the table over as he reaches across it and slaps me.
Not hard enough to knock me down, but hard enough to make the room tilt, hard enough to break the cut above my eye open again, and I taste blood at the corner of my mouth. The ringing in my head doubles.
I glare at him.
“You have forgotten your place,” he growls. “I can see that three years of playing house has given you the idea that the choiceswere always yours.” he straightens his jacket. “That will be corrected.”
“Victor is coming,” I say, my voice steady. “And when he gets here, you are going to wish you had never come looking for us in the first place.”
He considers me a moment, then turns to his men at the door. “Keep them separated. No visitors for this one.”
The door closes behind him, and only then do I sit. But not in the chair, instead I slide down to the cold floor. He will come for us. I know it. We just have to hold on long enough for him to get here.
Chapter Twenty-One
Victor
The Koshkin estate is on the north side of the city. It takes up half a block and has been in the family since Nikita’s father brought the organization to the city thirty years ago. I’ve been here only once before, in a professional context, a dinner ending in a handshake that meant nothing more than deciding then and there that I would never trust Nikita Koshkin.
Now, here I am because he has the two people who matter most to me in this world.
David has wrapped my wound tightly enough to allow me to function, which is all I require right now. He had wanted me to go to the hospital, have the bullet pulled out, and have the wound tended to. I’d refused.
My men are positioned around the perimeter — more than I’d expected had answered the call to arms. These men are loyal to the Pakhan and would follow my orders to the grave. I told them to hold until I give the signal.
I go in the front door, with David and several others at my back. I want Nikita to see me coming. I want him to understand that I will come for my girls, no matter where they are. I want him to understand before a single word is spoken that there is nowhere on this earth that he’ll be safe from me.
The men inside react faster than I would like. Two in the entryway, both armed, both moving the moment the door opens. I take the first one out before he has finished pulling his weapon. A throwing knife straight through his throat, my aim true, he goes down in seconds, sputtering as blood spurts from the wound.
David handles the second one. Two shots fired. Signaling the men waiting at the perimeter that the siege was underway. We move through the house, dispatching guards as we come across them. I know the base layout from my visit, and David had pulled the schematics in the car on the way here. Twelve rooms spread across two floors, security concentrated on the front and east side, which left the west corridor as the easiest access point for the rest of our men.
Yuri’s voice comes through my earpiece, crystal clear. “East side down. Two men. Stepan is moving to the second floor.”
“The girl?” I ask.
“Working on it,” he says. “She’s on the second floor. We’re almost there.”
I keep moving, listening as I clear rooms, careful as I turn corners. The west corridor opens into the main reception area, which is where I find Nikita. He has two men with him, a phone to his ear, that he lowers the moment he sees me. A series of emotions plays across his face as he stares down the barrel of my gun — shock, evaluation, and combined with the composure of a man who has spent sixty years as the most powerful man in the room.
“She said you’d come,” he said, looking at the men behind me. “It seems I underestimated her. Again.”
“Where is she?”
David’s voice sounds in my ear, “We have Evie. She’s safe.”
Good,I think. Giving no external indication of the situation change.
“You have no right to be in this house,” he says instead of answering my question, “and you're bleeding on my floor.”
“Where is she?” I ask again, this time it comes out as a hiss, a veiled threat.
“Yarina or Evie?” It isn’t genuinely a question; it’s a taunt. “You have no claim —”
