Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83221 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83221 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
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 going on?
“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 Romanov kidnapped 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.
But if he were going to do that…wouldn’t he have done the job already? Why bring me here first?
“You broke a rule that in my world gets you punished.” Casually, he opens a drawer and pulls out a gun. He strokes it lovingly before he places it on the bedside table. “I’ve killed men for far less than that.”
I believe it’s true. Based on what Tatiana told me about him, I know he isn’t lying.
My heart is in my throat as I look at the gun. Hear the casual way he talks, as if this is just the way things go. You did X, therefore Y. As if things like my world and punishment and execution aren’t wildly wrong. As if the casual admission of having killed people just makes sense.
Tatiana warned me. They stop at nothing to get what they want.
“You offered me your services. You demonstrated such services, and I won’t lie — it’s impressive.”
I watch him like a hawk, as if he’s going to strike at any moment.
He looks so different than when I saw him before. When he leans forward, his biceps stretch against the black fabric of his shirt. If I wasn’t afraid this man was a psychopath, I’d find him hot. It’s not my fault, though. I mean, any woman would.
Everything about him exudes raw, masculine strength and virility — the muscles that bulge against the tee, the definition in his shoulders and arms. Tattoos scatter across his neck and look like they go down his back, a stark reminder of his allegiance to the Romanov brotherhood. His perfect, ruggedly handsome face that would be model-perfect if not for the coldness in his eyes.
He’s crazy, though, and he kidnapped me. So while he may have rules in his world, in mine? He’s insane.
“So you drugged me,” I say, my words still slurred as if I had an all-night bender with my sorority sisters. I rarely drank in college, so the effect is quite insulting. And you think that’s okay? I want to ask him. It doesn’t seem like now’s the time to question him.
I wonder briefly if there’s ever a time to question him.
With a shrug, he tips a finger under my chin. “I did. It made my job easier, for now.”
When his phone beeps he looks at the screen with a scowl. Swiping it on as if it personally offends him, he rasps something out in Russian. The voice on the other end is plaintive and apologetic, but he cuts them off and hangs up. I don’t even know Russian, but you can tell a lot from someone’s tone of voice and body language.