“I mean it,” he warns, his expression impenetrable, his voice made of ice. “One foot out of place, and you’re going back to brother dearest with an extra hole in you.”
“You sure do know how to make a girl feel safe and secure, Andriani,” I grit, scooting my ass off the bed.
Walking again is a little wobbly. But I take the handful of steps to the bathroom door and then step inside. A green toiletfrom the seventies has never looked so appealing. It’s sitting in the outdated bathroom, beckoning to me from the hodgepodge of random mismatched shower, tile, and vanity that’ve been arranged within.
But when I try to close the door at my back, something stops me.
I turn around to find his foot lodged there. He’s wearing expensive Italian loafers that definitely don’t belong in this hovel.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
A big, tatted hand flattens on the paneled door, opening it all the way to reveal my tormentor. “I told you that you can’t be in here alone. The door stays open.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Is this a kink of yours? I don’t kink shame, but if it is, count me out.”
I’m still goading him, because I can’t help myself. Even as the pee is about to explode and trickle down my leg in humiliating style. Infamous Sidorov pride. We can’t allow anyone to have the last word or the upper hand.
“Very funny.” His ice-blue glare is enough to cause frostbite. “Make it quick. I have shit to do.”
I wonder what he could possibly have to do here in the middle of nothing. He blindfolded me for the drive here, but I could easily see last night that there’s nothing but dense, forested hills all around. No lights anywhere.
“Right,” I say agreeably, “more heinous kidnappings to plot.”
And then I finally surrender to the need before something terrible happens and I humiliate myself in front of the sexy bastard who is holding me hostage. I move to the hideous toilet, prepared to pee in front of him since I apparently have no alternative. But my fingers are still half numb as I struggle with the button on my jeans. I can’t get it pulled through, so I start doing a little dance.
“Madonna.”
I have no time to prepare myself before Andriani is towering over me in the tiny bathroom, shoving my hands out of the way to open my jeans.
Kill me now.
I’m not sure which is worse, the fact that he’s helping me unbutton my pants so I can relieve myselfin front of him, or that his fingers graze my bare stomach and send a white-hot bolt of something dangerous and unpredictable straight through me.
If he felt it too, he gives no indication.
Just as quickly as he closed the distance between us to offer his assistance, he’s gone back to the threshold. His Glock is pointed at me again.
“Do it,” he bites out.
Heart pounding, I manage to get the zipper down. My tee is short. Too short for modesty, but I do my best to cover myself as I whip down my panties and jeans. When I sneak a glance in his direction, I see that he’s averted his gaze.
“What a gentleman,” I grumble to myself, mortified by the sound of myself peeing filling the air.
“If you would have behaved yourself, this wouldn’t have been necessary.”
His voice holds a note of lethal warning, but I don’t care as I finish up and flush. Turns out, this toilet doesn’t need any kind of handle-holding magic. It’s just good to go. Thank God. The sooner I get out of here, the better.
“If you wouldn’t have kidnapped me in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to worry about any of this,” I counter as I haul my jeans and panties back up my hips.
Because hell no, he’s not pinning this on me. He hijacked me off the street. Scared me senseless. And I still don’t even know why or if I’ll make it out of here alive. He expected compliance? If he did, he kidnapped the wrong woman.
I zip and leave the button. My fingers are still too DOA to function. Then I head to the sink. Thank God there’s soap. I grew up in a house of men and boys. Soap was a luxury, not a necessity. Until Svetlana came into our world, that is.
“If yourstronzobrother wouldn’t have blown up one of our restaurants in broad daylight in the middle of the fucking city, I wouldn’t have touched you,” Andriani returns as I turn off the water and reach for the towel.
It’s black like his heart, and soft and luxurious. Expensive. Like the hot, angry Mafia kingpin breathing fire from the doorway, the towel doesn’t belong here. It must be his.
I turn back to him. “So that’s why you’re holding me hostage at gunpoint? Because Misha blew up some shitty restaurant of yours?”
