"Would tears change anything?"
"No." He stops directly in front of me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. "But they would be normal. And you, Miss Rosetti, are being decidedly abnormal."
His finger comes up, not quite touching my cheek, tracing the air beside my face. The almost-touch sends electricity skittering across my skin. "Your brother's fake wife, Emma, screamed when she was shot. A very normal reaction to bullets tearing through flesh. But you… you didn't even flinch when my men surrounded you."
Emma's scream echoes in my memory—the sound she made when the bullet tore through her shoulder, the blood spreading across her white dress like spilled wine. My fault. Always my fault. Guilt floods through me, sharp and sudden, a familiar companion these past three weeks.
"Emma survived," I say, voice steadier than I feel.
"This time." His pale eyes study me with an intensity that makes me want to step back. I don't. "But how many more will suffer for your sins? How much more blood needs to be spilled before the debt is paid?"
I meet his gaze directly, letting him see something real in my eyes—not fear, but understanding. "Panic rarely improves any situation, Mr.Volkov."
Something flickers across his face. Surprise, maybe, or respect. "No," he agrees softly, "it rarely does."
The moment stretches between us, charged with something I refuse to name. Then he steps back, gesturing to the car with mock gallantry.
"Shall we, printsessa?"
I could run. Even now, even surrounded, I could probably make it back to the museum before they caught me. One scream would bring security. One phone call would have my brothers here in minutes with enough firepower to level a city block.
But I don't run. I don't scream.
I choose to walk to the SUV, each step deliberate and voluntary. The leather creaks as I slide in. Underneath the new-car smell, something faintly metallic. I don't let myself think about it. I slide across them like I'm settling into a limousine after a gala, not entering my enemy's vehicle by choice. The voluntary nature of my movements clearly unsettles Alexei's men—I see them exchange glances, confusion written in the set of their shoulders.
Alexei enters after me, sitting close enough that our knees almost touch. The door closes with a sound like finality, and the driver pulls away from the curb.
We pass through familiar Chicago streets that look different from behind tinted windows—Michigan Avenue's glittering storefronts giving way to darker territories. I know these routes. I've killed in some of these alleys, left bodies in dumpsters behind these warehouses. But tonight I'm not the hunter.
Tonight I'm choosing to be prey.
"You're not what I expected," Alexei says, his voice barely above a whisper.
I turn to look at him, finding those pale eyes already on me. "What did you expect?"
"Someone softer. More breakable." His gaze drops to my hands, still folded perfectly over my clutch. "Someone whose pulse would be racing."
He can't feel my pulse from there, but somehow he knows it's steady. Just like somehow I know he's not going to kill me. Not yet. There's something between us, electric and unnameable, that makes this feel more like a dance than a kidnapping.
A ghost of something crosses his face—surprise, maybe, or the beginning of respect. "Rosetti training," he murmurs, almost to himself. "They raise their women cold."
Let him think that. Let him think my family made me this way, that I'm simply performing the role of untouchable mafia princess. It's easier than the truth.
"I've met your brothers," he continues, still studying me. "Marco, who kills without expression. Dante, who signs death warrants between kisses to his wife. I expected their sister to be… protected."
"Protected doesn't mean weak."
"No," he agrees, and there's something new in his voice now. Interest. "It doesn't."
The silence that follows feels less like a threat and more like an assessment. I've surprised him, and he's recalculating. Good. The longer he underestimates why I'm really here, the longer I have to find my answers.
The compound gates loom ahead, industrial and forbidding. As we approach, I feel the weight of my choice settling over me. Once those gates close, there's no going back. No escape. No rescue. Just me and the monsters I've chosen to face.
The gates close behind us with the mechanical precision of a tomb door sealing, and despite everything, I feel more alive than I have in years.
Alexei is studying me again, those pale eyes calculating something I can't quite read. The leather seats creak as heshifts, angling his body toward mine in a way that should feel threatening but instead feels like recognition.
"Most women would be bargaining by now," he says. "Begging. Offering things in exchange for their freedom."
