She’s right, though. I know her father won’t come. I hoped, maybe, that her value would exceed his pride. But we landed in Russia hours ago, and there’s been nothing but radio silence from the great Viktor Desyatov.
It’s an easy enough guess why. Rumors of Annika and Viktor’s splintered relationship have come to me in waves over the years. Then, of course, I thought the violent, cold-blooded creature in the stories was a stranger, not the familiar girl sitting before me now.
But even though I know Viktor won’t answer my calls, much less show up in person at my office, I want Annika to take this seriously. I want her to know that I meant what I said.
I want revenge.Even—perhaps especially—if it costs her life.
“Did you know?” she asks after another stretch of silence. When she looks at me, her eyes are so piercing they take my breath away. “All those years ago, in the bar, when you came up to me, did you know who I was?”
Is there any point in lying? Something to be gained, some power over her, some fear I can set into her bones?
I sigh, standing, careful to keep my distance. Whether or not the rumors of her violent nature are true, I don’t trust her near me—or the pistol under my arm.
“No,” I admit finally. I open the door and gesture for her to rise. She does, smoothing her coat and brushing past me into the hall. Two of my men, waiting on the landing, take her by an arm each. “Did you?”
Annika smiles over her shoulder. “Then you were only a young wolf,” she says. “A nobody. Of course I didn’t know who you were.”
But by the amusement in her voice, she could easily be playing me. As easily as she could have been playing me three years ago. I nod to my guys, and they take her downstairs to the car.
Why the fuck did it have to be her?
Walking into that office building in Seattle, the landscape lush-green and rain-slashed, I could have found any nameless, faceless girl behind a computer. But instead, I found the only one in the world that has occupied some deep, buried chamber of my mind for the last three years.
Annika Desyatova.
What the hell am I going to do with you?
Chapter Two
Annika
Daughter of the Snake.
I hear those words, that vile name, over and over and over, echoing endlessly off the cold, hard walls of my skull. Outside, wet, feathered snow pours determinedly from the clouds, rendered bright and heavy and close by the city lights.
Fucking Moscow.
I promised myself I’d never come back here. I should have known the country of my father and his father and his father’s father had bigger plans.
Maxim’s men fold me into a gleaming black Escalade with astonishing tenderness. For a prisoner—is that what I am? Or a ransom? A hostage? Simple revenge?—they’ve all handled me courteously. Nothing like my father would.
The door closes and Max climbs in opposite me, his driver whipping into traffic without him even having to give a direction.
He’s grown, Maxim. Three years ago he was more wiry and slim, with the soft eyes of a man who’d not yet sold his soul. Now…
He’s on his phone, and I exploit the distraction to drink him in.
Thick black waves and features sharper than arrows: nose, cheeks, brow, jaw, chin. He’s bearded now, and the effect makes him look wilder than the circumstances should allow. All these fine things—cars, clothes, guns—can’t make him look fully tamed. He’s always been tall and broad-shouldered, but every inch of him is filled out, his body armored in muscle.
Ink peeks out of the collar of his black jacket, and I imagine it’s all over his skin now. When I met him he had only one tattoo, the Sacred Heart, on the inside of one bicep.
I realize with a horrible thrill that I’d like to explore that body again. I’d like to see what the last three years have really done to him.What he’s learned.
He’s risen far, I remind myself. He was nowhere near this high on the Bratva ladder last time I was in Moscow. Yes, he’s risen, and inherited a gang that has rivaled my father’s for decades.He had to have known. Maxim had to have known who I was all those years ago.
But when he appeared in Seattle a few days ago, muscle-strapped and cold-eyed and unbending, I could have sworn I saw a flash of surprise in that icy face. He knew my name, knew my location, knew who I was and how valuable I could be to him.
Is it really possible that Maxim Volkov didn’t know or care who I was all those years ago? I could almost laugh. That would make him perhaps the only person in my entire life who didn’t see me for what I was—the Daughter of the Snake. Only a girl in a bar on a snowy night, seeking strong arms around her and a moment’s respite from the blackness of reality.
