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The idea almost made me drop the gun, but I couldn’t. I didn’t mean anything to him. I was a chess piece. And I couldn’t survive being played anymore. “Please, Ronan—” “Don’t say my fucking name.” I flinched. “I won’t,” I promised. “You won’t even have to see me again. Just let me go.” There was nothing but my tears and silence for a second—this massive void of silence that would devastate anything alive. And then he called my bluff. He moved toward me, closing the distance so quickly I jumped back a step, and that was when my clammy finger slipped on the trigger. Click.
I just pulled the trigger on him. The gun wasn’t fully loaded. I didn’t mean to do it. Ronan laughed humorlessly. “Guess I got really narcissistic tonight.”
The outbuilding where Mila was locked up pulled at every muscle in my body like a magnet. She’d been out there for less than ten minutes, and each tick of the clock tightened an invisible noose around my neck.
“She will die out there.” I didn’t even hear Albert enter the room until he spoke. This was how men got killed in my position, but I didn’t give a shit right now. If the cold feeling spreading in my chest was anything to go by, I was already six feet under. “Get out,” I ordered.
The words ate at my veins, but I told myself it didn’t matter to me. Mila had played me. She got under my skin, made me do shit I never did, and then she stabbed me in the goddamn back.
Earlier tonight, I felt sick to my stomach when I had a barrel pressed to her head, and it had been an accident. The fact she could do the same and say I never had to see her again . . . I’d never felt so betrayed in my life. I wasn’t thinking when I dragged her out to the kennel, and now everything was sinking in, regret pounded at the walls of my chest.
When I entered the kennel and saw Mila lying beside Misha, shivering, it felt like a knife to the chest. Without a word, I lifted her in my arms and started back to the house.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered in my neck. “I swear I didn’t mean to do it.” Her words were a punch to the gut—especially because I believed her. I knew it before I even dragged her outside. Truthfully, I couldn’t blame her if she meant to pull the trigger;
A shiver wracked her, and the pressure in my throat expanded, compelling me to skim a kiss across her cold thigh and roughly say, “Izvini.” I’m sorry.
It was then I learned apologies were nothing but useless words, though Mila felt differently. And she could have whatever she wanted from me right now.
She sighed in relief at the warmth. “You know I didn’t mean to do it, don’t you?” I knew. That was the problem. The knowledge had forced me to apologize and feel all sorts of awkward things. I’d wanted her body. But now, I wanted her loyalty even more. “I know, kotyonok. Now, go to sleep.”
Ronan sat in a chair beside the bed. His eyes were lowered, and his elbows rested on his knees as he twisted my heart-shaped earring between his thumb and forefinger. A single turn of the synthetic diamond symbolized our relationship: He held my heart in the palm of his hand, bringing it out to play sometimes before putting it back in his pocket to be forgotten.
“Just tell me what you’d like me to do in those situations, and I promise, I’ll do better next time.” “You can start by not pretending you don’t give a fuck.” When he released me roughly, I promptly turned my attention back to my plate. I knew he was talking about last night, but I played dumb. “I don’t care what your servants think of me.”
“You shouldn’t have fired Kylie,” I told him coldly. “She’d appreciate your evasiveness and peach emojis more than I ever could.” “She’s a manipulative bitch. And I didn’t like the way she was talking to you.” “Please,” I scoffed, turning away from him. “What she said was less insulting than what you’ve said to me.” “You want me to apologize for that too?” I spun to face him. “I want you to let me go!”
“I don’t regret a lot of things, kotyonok, but I do regret what I did last night.” “Because you almost lost your collateral,” I replied emotionlessly. “No,” he said harshly. “Because you could have died.”
“Tell me what you really want from me, kotyonok. You can have it. Anything besides letting you go.” A part of me desired to say I wanted nothing else from him, but it was a lie. It seemed I couldn’t force those words past my lips even to save my own soul. It was already his. “You want to make it even and shoot me for real?” He pulled back and forced cold metal into my palm. “Go for it. It’s fully loaded this time.”
“A treasure chest of fake diamonds?” He wiped a tear away with a thumb, and the caress pulled honesty from my throat. “I want you to care . . .” The words settled so thick and uninvited in the room they made my ears ring. It went so silent one could hear a pin drop. Or a heart-shaped earring. Ronan’s hand dropped from my face, and with a harsh sound, he pushed away from me. “You’re a goddamn headache, you know that?”
“You pull a trigger on me, and I can’t even leave you out in the cold for fifteen fucking minutes. So you tell me, Mila, who cares more here?”
“You were going to catch a plane home without saying a word to me, weren’t you?” I swallowed. He knew I was planning to leave after the night I spent with him in my hotel room.
“Am I that easy to leave, kotyonok?” My breath shallowed at the angry vulnerability he let me see. The worst part was, I shared it: the fear of being abandoned; of not being good enough. This weakness of his twisted my chest. It forced me to change my view of him forever. I’d never again see him as the monster I’d once thought he was but as the hungry, abused boy the worst part of humanity had shaped into a cold-hearted man.
“You wanted my misery, but I’m giving you my forgiveness,” I breathed, voice thick. “When you let me go, I won’t turn you in even though I should. I can’t be the person to send you back to prison . . .” I inhaled raggedly. “I’ll walk away when this is over and I won’t look back—though not because I hate you but because I don’t. Not even a little bit . . .” The words settled around us for a beat before he said drily, “This is getting too close to a Nicholas Sparks movie for me, kotyonok. I just wanted to convince you to let me fuck you again.” “I’m an emotional fuck,” I replied. “Get over it.”
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“I’m a rough fuck,” he returned. “Get over it.” The look in his eyes turned turbulent. “If you want to turn me in, so be it. I’d go back to prison for you, kotyonok, but when I get out, there’d better be an ocean between us.”
“Because this body is mine, and I need to know who’s fucked with it.” His fingers were still inside me, and it was seriously distracting.
“But be careful. One of them might end up meaning something to you.” The words seared like acid on my tongue. He watched me for a second. “Ya dumayu uzhe slishkom pozdno dlya etogo.” I didn’t know what he’d said, but the significance of his voice made my throat thick. The words felt . . . oddly touching in a way, even while he was manipulating me to submit by use of sexual torture.
After a moment of silence, Ronan pulled back to see the tears rolling down my cheeks. “Fuck,” he cursed softly. “I told you, nothing happened to me.” I shook my head because the fact he could see it that way and be so indifferent to it told me he’d been through things nobody should ever have to go through.
D’yavol may have stolen my breath. But I gave him my heart.
“Don’t you have to go to work?” I felt his smile. “Right now, I’m getting paid to fuck you.” “Like a salary sort of situation?” He chuckled. “Da.” The sound of his laugh did such heavy things to my chest, I turned my head and caught his lips with mine. He groaned into my mouth and fucked me slowly. My fingers traveled down his back, infatuated with the feel of him. I didn’t think I’d ever get enough—no matter how much I touched him or how close he was.
“You really shouldn’t be letting me fuck you.” I realized he did feel guilty for taking something he thought he didn’t deserve. The more he said, the harder I fell.
“I know what you were trying to do. And it was sweet. But there’s still a big difference between you and me.” The nautical star tattoos on his shoulders glinted black in the sunlight. “You’ll never ask me for more than I can give.” Darkness clouded his eyes, and his hand collared my throat, a thumb running across a hickey he’d put there. “I’ve already taken everything you have to give.” I held his gaze, my heart a battering ram pounding against the wall of my chest. “And now, I’m going to take a little more.”
I wanted to trace every line of ink on his skin with my tongue. Another desire rose and burned in my chest with a desperate emotion: I wanted to call him mine.
Madame Richie’s cigarette smoke and laughter swirled behind my closed eyes, clouding my mind with the smell of cloves and ruin. I wasn’t sure if it was the shower water or tears running down my face when an arm wrapped around my waist. I swayed into the contact, not resisting as Ronan pulled me back against his chest. Disaster loomed in the distance, but the heat of his body washed away the coldness inside me. I used to despise his size and strength; now I leaned into it knowing he wouldn’t let me fall. Yet.
Ronan pressed his face against my neck with a low groan. “Inogda bol’no smotret’ na tebya.” He wasn’t going to translate the statement for me, but he didn’t need to. I understood what he said. Sometimes it hurts to look at you. And now I knew it wasn’t only water running down my cheeks.
All along, this man had been on the other side of the Atlantic. And maybe . . . just m...
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his lips at my ear. “Moya. Vse moya.” Mine. All mine. Inked fingers braced on the wall beside my own. Suds and skin and a raven called Nevermore. My chest held a brittle paper heart knowing, soon, this man would slip through my fingers like another lost Lenore . . .
Then his mouth touched mine so softly my chest ached. So softly, it wasn’t a kiss at all. It was all the words that could never be said. His lips left mine, the air so heavy and thick it put pressure on the backs of my eyes.
Karma could have given me something easier to deal with—like an impending atom bomb or a nuclear disaster. But no, the comeuppance karma had dealt me was feelings. What a cunt.
“I couldn’t get you to wake up!” she cried breathlessly. “I thought—I . . .” The sight of tears streaming down her cheeks tightened my throat. She’d thought I was dead. No way I’d go down half-naked lying on a loveseat. The idea would almost be amusing if seeing Mila cry didn’t make me feel like shit. Though the fact those tears were for me sent a warm sensation to my chest I could only associate with Christmas cheer. I didn’t even like Christmas. “I thought you believed I couldn’t die, kotyonok,” I said roughly.
Her tears, her trusting eyes, her fucking existence—all of it made it impossible to imagine her walking away from me while I watched from a distance, my palm containing a remnant of sticky yellow Play-Doh I’d never be able to wash off.
She glanced up at me. Her eyes were a window to her soul. I suddenly knew, if I ever died, those eyes would have something to do with it. Somehow, it sounded acceptable to me.
I brushed another tear from her cheek and said, “Now sit on my face.” Her brow furrowed. “I didn’t do that to get something in return. This . . . was just for you.” I smiled. She was cute. My perfect little martyr. But she had something wrong. She squealed when I grabbed her thighs and pulled her to straddle my face. “This is for me,” I said with a growl, pulling her thong to the side and sucking her clit into my mouth.
and another an inch away from my heart, which was the scar Mila drew her fingers across. The touch made my skin crawl but was warm nonetheless.
I fell asleep to the thought of seeing Mila on the streets. I simply picked her up and carried her home to my Russian fortress, where I hand-fed her pomegranate seeds so she’d never be able to leave.
The pressure in my chest released when Mila slid into bed beside me and rested an arm on my chest and her head on my shoulder. My perfect little martyr, lying in her father’s executioner’s arms. I had a job to do, and she was the chess piece needed to win. The problem was . . . I didn’t think I could ever play her.
I leaned against the headboard and watched them with a sense of awe. This was another side of Ronan I hadn’t seen, and I had to say, this gray part of him was . . . one I undeniably loved. I realized it last night. With his hands in my hair, the carnal taste of him in my mouth, and his eyes on mine. I’d almost said it then . . . I’d almost let those three words escape, but something had blocked them from coming up my throat. I loved him. I couldn’t love him.
I’d never thought much about having children, but seeing uncle and niece interact filled my chest with a warm yearning. Though the feeling faded when I recalled this happy moment would just be a memory someday, and any kids I had would never be Ronan’s.
Christian looked like Gabriel the archangel. Ronan was every part D’yavol. I knew if they stood on separate sides of an alley and I was running from danger . . . I’d jump into D’yavol’s arms.
Ronan grabbed the phone and ended the call. Numb, I sat there, ice spreading through my veins. Because I knew the truth. I knew my papa killed my mother. I knew it was her blood that stained my stuffed animal and childhood memories. And Ronan knew too.
What came to the forefront was what Ronan was trying to do for me. He couldn’t act like he cared now I loved his every shade of black. He couldn’t throw out so much gray while I already struggled to contain the expanding heart in my chest.
“You’re truly the worst kidnapper I’ve ever met.” His eyes flashed before he looked away to continue washing off the priest’s blood on his chest. “Coming from the girl who gives all captives a bad name. Spreading your sunshine all over my house, apologizing every step of the way. Let’s not forget the part where you came to your kidnapper’s room and begged him to fuck you. At least you’re not a cliché.”
I’d given this man my virginity and multiple other firsts. Didn’t he know he would haunt me forever? Apparently, it wasn’t enough for him. He had to control me from afar, guaranteeing I’d never forget or replace him while he moved on with others like Nadia. The idea roiled in my stomach, making me nauseous.
