Page 107 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“Oh, you mean that street hustler we picked up?”

“I mean the man you abducted after murdering his guard.”

King shrugs. “Once a whore, always a whore. I’m sure he’ll make the best of it here. You did, after all.”

I want to get out of this chair and hurt him. Instead, I lean forward as far as the cuff allows. “Keep me and let Sammy go. He’s worth nothing to you, and I’m worth…” I tilt my head. “Well, at least ten million, as we’ve previously established.”

“And what are you offering me that I don’t already have?”

“I’ll cooperate. Whatever arrangements you want to make, I won’t fight you. Just let me see him first.”

King smiles. “I think I’ll keep you both.”

I knew it was coming. But there was still a stupidly optimistic part of me that hoped it might be that easy—that King might let Sammy walk out of here.

I let my shoulders sag, showing King enough disappointment to please him, and try again. “Then at least tell me if he’s hurt.”

“You’ll find out.” He gets up and comes around the desk. “You have become quite a thorn in my side, Mr. Clemenza. You brought Orsini into my establishment and left one of my guests—an old friend—dead in your wake. Do you imagine there won’t be consequences?”

Grisha. King stops beside my chair, close enough that I have to look up at him. His gaze settles on the bruise on my shoulder. I hope it tells him exactly who I belong to.

“I have friends who will be very interested in seeing you again,” he says. “You and your owner have caused them considerable inconvenience.”

“Please,” I say. “I just want to see Sammy.”

For a moment, King lets me sit with it. Then he presses a button beneath his desk, and the guards return. “Take him to the holding area.”

They release me from the chair and haul me upright. I’m careful not to look relieved as they take me out, although that lasts only until we reach the elevator at the end of another long corridor. One guard stays behind while the other takes me in and touches a keycard to the reader.

The basement button lights up.

“Is it—is it dark down there?” I ask the guard.

I immediately wish I hadn’t. He pushes me back into the wall and leers down at me. “Don’t worry,” he says in heavily accented English. “Whatever is done to you will be done under a spotlight, I promise you that. I hope they’ll give me first go, little emperor.”

Shit. Even these low-level thugs know who I am.

I drop my eyes and stay as still as I can, hoping it will avoid triggering further menace. Somewhere above us, Dami should still have my signal. I have a way to call him if I need to, and I make myself think about that instead of the doors closing behind us.

When we get to the bottom, the door opens on darkness, and I don’t have to fake trying to claw my way back into the elevator when he drags me out.

He throws me to the floor in the end, and I barely get my hands up in time to catch my fall. Before I even register the pain shooting through my arm, he drags me upright and shoves me down the short, dark corridor to the next door. This one also opens with his keycard.

Beyond it, two men wait in a small, brightly lit room. There’s a metal table, a box of gloves, something that looks like a surgeon’s tools…

They’re not a surgeon’s tools. Not in a place like this.

There’s another door at the other side of the room with another keypad next to it. Sammy could be behind it.

I have to hope he is, anyway.

My escort says something in Russian. One of the men answers without looking at him, already pulling on gloves. Then he points at a spot on the floor. “Stand there,” he says in English. “Arms out.”

I obey. They check my hands and between my fingers, make me lift each foot, turn me under the light. When one grips my jaw and tells me to open my mouth, I do that, too. He checks beneath my tongue and along my gums while the other man works his way around me, inspecting every inch.

I’m starting to sweat, and not from the heat of the blazing light overhead.

I haven’t seen Sammy. I haven’t heard his voice. I could call Dami in now, but Sammy might be on the other side of that door. One more minute. Just let me get through it.