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 has a point,” Mikhail added.
No one paid him much attention.
“That’s the deal, cousin,” Gregor said. Still grinning like he’d won.
“She says yes willingly—or she’s gone.”
CHAPTER 25
ZOYA
Iknew this moment would come eventually.
It honestly surprised me it took this long.
The first few days after being locked in this room, chained to this bed, I slept. Consciousness faded in and out. When I did sleep, it was deep, cold, and dreamless.
But when I was awake, all I could do was think about him.
Roman.
Where was he?
Why wasn’t he here?
The only people who came were the girls who helped me get cleaned up or brought food. The doctor stopped by every few hours in the beginning, but less and less after that.
As far as I could tell, I’d been in this room for a little over a week. No one answered my questions or said anything useful, anything that might give me a sense of how much time had passed or what Roman’s plans were.
No one except the man who stood at the edge of my bed and glared at me.
Gregor fucking Ivanov.
When heavy footsteps echoed down the hall—too loud to be a woman’s, too firm to be the doctor’s—I hoped it was Roman.
I had been waiting for him. Waiting to see what would happen. Waiting for an answer to why he saved me.
My heart pounded in my chest, my mouth went dry, but when the door opened… my hope deflated.
Gregor walked in, moved to the foot of the bed, and just stood there, staring at me like a disappointed father waiting for his child to confess their sins.
It was a mind game; an old one.
He wanted me to speak first, to fill the silence.
Joke was on him. I preferred silence.
My back was against the headboard, wrist still cuffed to it. I shifted slightly, stretching the chain just enough to rest my hand casually on the carved wood of its frame.
My fingers traced the ornate curves as I waited. I would’ve preferred to tap my nails on the table beside me, or my foot against the floor, but that wasn’t an option.
I would take whatever control I could get.
The longer Gregor stood there and stared, the redder his face became.
I took more pleasure than I should have in my petty defiance. Just knowing he came in here to get under my skin and instead I had turned the tables and was getting under his felt good.
Finally, he broke the silence.
One point for me.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.
I recognized his voice. He was the man Roman argued with the day I arrived. He didn’t want me here. Roman had gone toe to toe with the head of his family…for me.
That had to mean something. I just didn’t know what.
“Because you haven’t killed me yet? Wanted to nurse me back to health before torturing me?”
He snorted, the corner of his lip twitching.
“No, but I like the way you think,” he said, face shifting back into its usual stone mask.
There was a table and chairs beside the bed, but he didn’t sit. He wouldn’t lower himself to my level.
In another overused power move, he wanted to loom over me. Use his size to intimidate me.
More mind games.
It was like all Russian bosses read the same outdated 1980s power-and-intimidation playbook. I bet he did power poses in the mirror before walking in here.
I wasn’t about to give up control. Not to him. Not to anyone. I didn’t care how long they stood in front of the mirror with their chests puffed up like Wonder Woman.
“Well, if not to torture me, kill me, or feed me…” I glanced around him pointedly. “Then I have no idea why you’re here.”
“I’m here to give you a choice,” he said.
I doubted that.
Men like Gregor didn’t ask questions they didn’t already know the answers to—and they didn’t offer choices unless they knew what you’d choose.
“Firing squad or guillotine?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow. I wanted him to see I wasn’t afraid.
It was a lie.
I was fucking terrified.
But he didn’t need to know that.
No amusement this time. His face was expressionless.
I couldn’t imagine him married to Samara. She didn’t come every time, but she was here the most. None of the women were unkind, just stand-offish, but she seemed the most empathetic. Something about her just felt…softer. Without Nadia’s timidness.
“You are at a crossroads—” he began.
“Really? Because I thought I was handcuffed to a bed.”
Being a smartass probably wasn’t wise, but it was how I kept control.
It was how I showed him I could handle whatever came next.
“You have two choices,” he repeated, his voice sharp, each syllable deliberate. Daring me to interrupt again. “You return to Russia, under watch. You will never set foot in my territory again.”
“What’s option two?” I asked.
I didn’t want to go back to Russia.
Leaving that place—and the girl my father raised me to be—was the whole reason I came here.