The staff who came to this guest house didn’t treat me like I was a captive.
Yet.
Instead, I met all of the men who assisted Adrik. Maksim was the one who’d been in the car with me. He came with the others to interrogate me, warning me that if I lied, it’d show up with his research report. Investigators were checking me out, and I didn’t have the energy to laugh at that.
“Then prepare yourselves to be shocked by how little of a life I had,” I joked weakly.
I cringed after the self-deprecating moment. Then again, it wasn’t like I could sink any lower than I had. I was held ata Mafia family’s compound. Perhaps sentenced to be killed. Stuck with this identity of being complicit with knowledge of dangerous men’s businesses and financial records.
Viktor seemed like a smartass, not that I was in any position to judge. Nikolai struck me as an easygoing guy at first, but after a while of him checking me out, I felt flustered and naïve to have so quickly dismissed my worries of being raped.
Lev was quiet, more perceptive than any of the others, while his older brother looked like a grumpy hard ass. Alexei was the one who seemed the hardest to convince of my story.
“It’s not a story,” I told myself when I woke up. Astoryimplied fiction. And I hadn’t made up anything. Just like I hoped that being useful to them would make them not want to kill me, I prayed that being honest and upfront would enable them to believe me.
Or to start believing me.
An array of clothing was delivered to me with breakfast. No matter what I told the butler—or maybe he was another guard—I couldn’t reject any of it. It was too much. Designer garments. New shoes! My God, that was the surest sign of how no one had ever pampered me. I wore out shoes until they were practically coming apart. My father had never paid me well, or even competitively, and I was frugal to live within my means and salary.
After I tried things on, I settled on a new outfit. I left the tags on the majority of the things so I could talk sense into one of them and they could return the surplus.
When Adrik arrived, though, I wondered how I would be seen now. I refused to lower my guard despite having a wardrobe,food, and privacy to reside in a wholehouseall to myself, not an apartment bordered by loud neighbors.
He stood at the door, sizing me up, and I struggled with the worry that he was interested. Or that he wasn’t.
God. What am I even thinking?
My thoughts were scrambled. His proximity could do that to me, and I warned myself away from letting my mind be screwed up with the long looks he gave me.
“You left the tag on,” he observed coolly, neutrally and almost deadpan.
My cheeks heated up and I twisted at the waist to see where.
He reached out, his big hand coming toward my neck, and I froze in fear. When his long fingers snaked over my skin, I prayed that he wouldn’t notice how I shivered. I hoped he wasn’t so observant as to notice how I responded to his touch at all.
With a deft snap, he removed the tag and shoved it into his pocket.
“It seemed like too much,” I admitted.
“Not used to people caring about you?” he asked as he let himself in. Snapping his fingers, he wordlessly prompted a couple of men to bring in boxes.
I stepped back, watching them enter and set the things in the dining room. Quickly enough, I recognized the basics of a PC system.
“I…” Shaking my head instead of answering with words, I watched them efficiently set up a computer station.
No. I’m not used to people caring about me.
I’m not familiar with the concept at all, actually.
And nothing you do or say is going to trick me into thinkingyoucare about me.
Adrik Volkov was an enigma, but he was also the man my father had quite literally given me to.
I’d tread carefully. “Are you interested in my offer, then?” I asked as I came into the room.
“Perhaps.” He gestured for me to sit, and I followed his order. When he pushed the chair in for me, I resisted another shiver of his fingers near me, this time as they curved over the top of the chair.
Within minutes, the men had set up the computer system and tested that I was connected to their secure network.
