"Let's go have a chat with him."
The interrogation room is in the basement, soundproofed and equipped with everything we need to extract information. The man is tied to a chair in the center of the room, his face already showing signs of a beating.
"Who sent you?" I ask, circling him slowly.
He spits blood on the floor. "Fuck you."
I nod to Matvey, who steps forward and drives his fist into the man's face. I hear the crunch of his nose breaking, and blood pours down his chin.
"Let's try again," I say calmly. "Who sent you and why?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Another nod. This time, Matvey goes for the ribs. The man screams, the sound echoing off the concrete walls.
"You're making this harder than it needs to be," I tell him. "Just answer the questions, and this ends."
We go on like this for another ten minutes. Matvey breaks another rib. Then he starts on the fingernails, using pliers to rip them out one by one. The man's screams turn to sobs.
"Okay, okay!" he finally gasps. "My Pakhan sent me. He wanted intel on the girl."
"What kind of intel?"
"Everything. Who she is, why you have her, how well she's guarded." He's crying now, snot and blood running down his face. "He wants her for himself. Says she's valuable."
"How does he know about her?"
"I don't know, I swear. He just told me to scope out your place and report back."
I believe him. Low-level soldiers like this rarely know the full picture. "Who else knows?"
"I don't know. Maybe other families? He was talking like it was common knowledge."
Shit. This is worse than I thought. If multiple families know about Mariya, the threat level just increased exponentially.
"Take him to the holding cells," I tell Matvey. "We'll decide what to do with him later."
As Matvey's men drag the sobbing man away, my watch vibrates against my wrist. I glance down at the alert and frown.
It's not the perimeter alarm. It's not someone trying to break in.
It's the tracker I had installed in Mariya's room.
She's trying to escape.
17
MARIYA
The door creaks as I ease it open, and I freeze, my heart slamming against my ribs. The sound echoes through the quiet hallway like a gunshot, and I hold my breath, waiting for someone to come running. But there's nothing. Just silence and the faint hum of the estate's heating system.
I glance down at the guard slumped against the wall beside my door. He's still unconscious, his chest rising and falling in steady breaths. I hadn't expected my attack to work so well. He'd been standing there, bored and distracted, scrolling through his phone when I'd called out that I needed help. The moment he'd stepped inside, I'd brought the heavy base of my bedside lamp down on the back of his head.
The guilt twists in my stomach, but I push it away. I don't have time for guilt. I need to get out of here before Andrey realizes what I've done. My mind drifts to the kiss we shared earlier, to the soul-wrenching orgasm he gave me, then I shake my head. Now is not the time to think about that, even though it is the reason I'm taking the risk to try and escape.
I can't marry that man!
I clutch my mother's jewelry box tighter under my arm and step into the hallway. The marble floors gleam in the dim lighting, and I move as quietly as I can, keeping close to the wall. Every shadow makes my pulse spike. Every creak of the old house makes me want to bolt.
