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“Afraid of you, little bird. Never,” he hisses.
I walk closer to the steps and peer into the basement. He stands out of sight but I see his shadow on the wall. “After all these years, you’re still hiding in the dark. Why don’t you come up here and face me?”
“I’m standing in the light, Jessica. Come down here and see for yourself.”
I take a deep breath. I know this must be a trap, but I want answers and he is the only man left to give me any. I can’t go on living half a life.
I walk down the stairs, with my gun pointed straight at his head. He places his hand over his heart as though he is deeply wounded by the fact I’d love nothing more than to shoot him in the face. “Is this what we have come to, Jessica?”
“You must know I want you dead?” I arch an eyebrow at him. “This time I’ll make sure to finish the job.”
He rubs a hand over his throat, his fingers curling through his thick beard as he glares at me. “Hmm. That was a nasty scratch.”
“How did you survive?”
He starts to laugh as he takes a step toward me. “I have survived far worse than that before. You think that you have the power to kill me? I am the Wolf!”
“You are Paul Ryan. A man who pretends to be something more is still just a man.”
I point the gun as he takes another step and he looks above my head. I look up too and see the red spot on the door above me. That’s when I notice the small black box in his hand. “I have them all over this room, Jessica.” He holds up the box and shows me his finger over a silver button. “You’ll be dead before you can squeeze off a round. As soon as your rescuers come for you, they will walk straight in here and meet their deaths. It seems everyone around you meets a similar fate, doesn’t it? Perhaps you are cursed?”
“Fuck you!” I hiss.
“Hmm. We’ll get to that later,” he leers at me and the bile rushes up from my stomach and burns my throat.
“Why did you take me?” I ask as I walk further down the steps. I’d take my chances with dropping him before he has a chance to press that button, but I still want answers before I kill him.
“What?”
“Why? Why didn’t you kill me like you were supposed to?”
He frowns at me. “I saved your life.”
“No. You chose not to kill me but kidnapped and tortured me instead. Risking everything you had built. Why?”
“I risked nothing,” he spits. “Money and houses and things are not everything.”
“I know. But your reputation. Your livelihood. Why did you give all that up?”
“For you, Jessica.”
“No,” I shake my head. “You didn’t even know me. Tell me why.”
“I didn’t have to know you to see that you were special. Alexei didn’t deserve you. Your parents could not protect you. I could. I did.” He beats his own chest with pride as though he actually believes that. “My nephews think they are powerful men, but they couldn’t protect you either.”
At the mention of his nephews my heart breaks a little inside. I wonder if they’ve noticed I’m gone yet.
“I wasn’t yours to take,” I say, my voice cracking.
“But you have always been mine. As soon as I saw you I knew that you were made for me. We are bound together. Why do you think it was my nephews who found you? So that they could bring you back to me.” He looks at me with such a strange look of anguish on his face that I think he actually believes some of that bullshit.
“You’re crazy. One hundred percent deluded.”
“You know that we belong together. I was your first love. Your first everything. That has connected us beyond anything else ever could. I taught you how to experience true pleasure.”
I feel anger bubbling beneath my skin, threatening to burst out of me at any moment. It took me a long time to deal with the shame of what he did to me. Of how he could manipulate my body into climaxing, which he used as justification for his sick and twisted torture. “You raped me, you fucking maniac!” I spit at him. “I enjoyed nothing of what we did. Nothing.”
I stare at him and feel so much venom that it seeps from every pore in my body. The sound of the door breaking down and footsteps can be heard above us and my heart sinks. I can’t believe I have lured the men I love to their deaths. I can’t believe I thought I could beat him after all this time.
