Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
He sold me. His only living child. Sold me to the highest bidder, like I was livestock. Determined to get the money to wage his war.
One day I was at school, earning a degree. The next I was shoved into an ugly wedding dress that was made for another woman and delivered to the priest.
The man who paid for me was an eighty-year-old psychopath who had already been widowed twice. Both of his wives dying under mysterious circumstances.
In our world, a woman dying under mysterious circumstances was simply code for she got old, or nagged too much, or she just didn’t make her husband’s cock hard anymore. Whenever a man was tired of his wife, he got rid of her and bought a younger woman to warm his bed.
Thankfully, that monster underestimated me, too.
I did my homework. He thought he was buying a sweet, innocent little virgin who would open her young, pretty thighs for him.
He was expecting a mafia princess whose father raised her to do what she was told. Bred and sold to cook, clean, and raise babies.
I’d never held a baby. I didn’t know how to cook much, and I would sooner die than scrub that old bastard’s toilet.
But I knew how to survive. I was prepared on my wedding night.
He made it so damn easy. Why would he ever suspect that his innocent, barely legal bride would bring a knife to her marriage bed?
His was the first life I ever took. It wasn’t the last.
I stared down at my pale hand, remembering how it was stained red after I slit my husband’s throat. I could still feel the sticky warmth even though I had scrubbed my hands over and over until the blood running down the drain was mine.
How much more was going to stain my hands before I was satisfied?
I forced the memory away. Now wasn’t the time for ghosts.
Pavel Ivanov was now in my custody. Tied to a chair, still unconscious.
His passenger had seen us take him. Mateo had fucked the plan so thoroughly that not only was there a witness, but physical evidence in the form of his car which went skidding off the road would be found. There was no way to hide that accident scene.
The Ivanovs would be looking for him sooner than I planned, and they would spare no expense.
Because of Mateo’s recklessness, I was also down four men—three dead, one gravely wounded—and my brand-new helicopter was filled with bullet holes.
And that led to my biggest problem. The man with the dark eyes who almost ruined everything.
Who was he?
How did I find him?
He didn’t recognize me… but he didn’t have to.
I’d just taken his cousin.
And as I watched him through that windshield, dread slid beneath my carefully constructed calm.
Not fear.
Not regret.
Just the chilling sensation that I’d miscalculated.
A rare occurrence.
He wasn’t collateral damage—he was a variable I hadn’t accounted for.
An unknown threat I hadn’t seen coming.
And that made him dangerous.
CHAPTER 4
ROMAN
“Her name is Zoya Vladislava Novikova,” I said, tossing a manila folder of photos onto the conference table between Gregor and Artem.
I took a seat across from Gregor and crossed my arms over my chest.
Damien leaned forward, flipping the folder open and plucking a photo out to examine it. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I answered, picking up a small mother-of-pearl spoon to slather caviar on an unsalted cracker.
“No.” He put the picture back into the folder and chose another. “There is no way this woman is Egor’s daughter. It’s not possible. Egor’s daughter would be under a bridge somewhere tormenting hikers for tolls. This woman is beautiful. She looks nothing like her brothers, Dumb and Dumber…what the fuck were their names?”
Mikhail spoke up. “Leonid and Lenin.”
I stared at the photographic image Damien dropped on the table. And admitted I had my doubts at first, too.
A woman with vivid green eyes and golden blonde hair stared out of the picture. The expression on her heart-shaped face was a deceptive mask of innocence. She looked like she was plucked from a fairy tale—not the real Russian fairy tales that warned children of the dangers of the world, but the commercialized ones where everything was beautiful and ended in a happily ever after.
“It’s her. I saw her. She was the one piloting the helicopter.”
I had been reluctantly impressed to learn she had a pilot’s license. Piloting was a unique and useful skill to have, especially for a woman in our world. It had been a smart move on her part. It granted her control over a formidable method of escape. Cars could be chased down; helicopters, not so much. As I learned the hard way.
“How could you possibly know that?” Artem asked, a lethal edge to his tone that questioned my word.
I would forgive him this time since his brother was the one whose life hung in the balance.