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I can still feel his strong arms about me, and even though I knew I was in danger, I had a strange sense that I wouldn't be accidentally hurt.
No. If this man hurts me, there will be nothing accidental about it.
I'm still too drugged and disoriented to really appreciate where I am. I know that it's a large room, with very few windows. It's definitely not a cell, or underground, or really hidden anywhere. The faint touch of blue hints at sunrise out the window.
The smell of coffee and toast makes my stomach rumble.
Asshole. No one should turn the smell of morning coffee and toast into a negative thing.
"You're waking up.”
I know that voice. I hate trying to piece things together like a toddler with a puzzle, but I can't help it.
I'm too drugged. Too disoriented.
I open one eye. So it definitely wasn’t a hallucination or a dream. Mikhail Romanov didn’t send one of his henchmen, either, but apparently took it upon himself to keep guard over me.
Dressed in faded jeans and a black shirt rolled up to his elbows, he’s leaning forward, looking at me.
“It will take a little while for the effects of the drugs to wear off." He says it so casually, as if it's not terribly wrong.
I shiver uncontrollably, unsure of what’s going on. “Wh — where am I?” My teeth chatter, and a full-body tremor makes my teeth clang together.
“You’re in my home,” he says.
His home. He took me to…his home? Why am I here?
“Are you cold?” he asks when I shiver again.
“Fr-freezing,” I chatter. The fact that I can’t speak properly makes me want to scream. I take pride in having complete control over myself.
“Hmm,” he says thoughtfully. Leaning forward, he lifts a second blanket from the foot of the bed and tosses it over me. “Coffee?”
I shake my head because I don’t trust my voice. What is goingon?
“While you’re not yet capable of talking fully and you’re still disoriented, I’m going to catch you up to speed, little hacker.” Because he has the decided advantage right now, in every possible way.
Little hacker.That’s right, he said that when he first took me.
Took me.Mikhail Romanovkidnapped me.
I swallow, my throat tight. He knows. He knows I manipulated his online scheduling system so I could get in to see him. I’ve been so foolish.
If he knows I hacked into that, what’s to stop me from hacking into damn near anything else?
Nothing.
He walks over to the side table and retrieves something slender. My heart beats faster when I realize he’s holding some sort of silky rope. With effortless ease, he reaches for my wrists and begins to casually bind them. I hate that I can’t stop him.
I push through the fog and try to protest. “What did you do? Who do you think you are, taking me like this?” I wish I could threaten that when someone — some unnamed, mysterious someone who actually cares about me — finds out I’m gone, there’ll be hell to pay.
But it isn’t true. It would be a lie, and he’ll call me on my bluff.
Leaning back, Mikhail scowls at me. I noticed he was unnervingly skilled at binding my wrists.
“The punishment for violating security in my family is execution.”
My heart nearly bursts through my chest. I look down at myself, still barely clothed, and realize how vulnerable I am. How easy it would be for him to torture or kill me.
