And then I saw her.
Lying still in the snow, her body crumpled.
For one terrible, infinite moment, I thought I was too late.
That she was already gone.
And the fear that ripped through me was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It was primal and devastating and it made me want to tear the world apart with my bare hands.
But then I reached her, touched her face and felt the faint warmth of her breath against my palm, and the relief nearly brought me to my knees.
She was alive.
Now that she’s back at the lodge and safe, the rage is rising in me.
Hot and fierce and absolutely lethal.
Because Andrei did this. He left her to die in the cold. Left her bleeding and unconscious and alone.
"Nikolai?" Dmitri's voice pulls me back. He's watching me with concern in his eyes.
I force myself to breathe. To push down the violence that wants to erupt.
"Are you okay?" He asks.
"When this threat has passed, we find thepizdawho left her to die.”
“Holly told you who took her?”
“In the car on the way back to the lodge. She said she had called Andrei to pick her up. Asked him to take her to a hotel but he refused. Said he was taking her to a man who paid him to spy on what was happening here at the lodge.”
Dmitri’s expression remains neutral as he nods. But I know him well enough to know he is picturing the calm and calculated way he would kill Andrei.
But he won’t get the satisfaction.
Because Andrei will feel my wrath when the time comes.
I take the hot cocoa and head back to Holly, my mind already working through what comes next.
Finding Andrei is a priority. He won't have gotten far, not in this weather. Not with the men I have already mobilized to hunt him down.
And when I find him, he's going to pay for what he did.
He's going to learn exactly what happens when someone threatens what's mine.
And it won't be quick.
Or clean.
It will be a lesson that echoes through the Bratva for years to come about the consequences of touching Nikolai Morozov's wife.
But first, Holly needs me.
I round the corner and see her huddled under the blanket, still shivering, her face pale in the firelight.
And despite the rage still burning in my chest, I gentle my expression as I approach.
Because right now, what she needs isn't the monster.
