Ivan was guarding Cassandra.
I’ve never been this scared in my entire life, and my entire body vibrates, not knowing how to handle the feeling.
“What did you do with them?” I rasp out sharply. The dead fucker chuckles against my ear.
“Don’t worry, they’re still alive. It’s been a while since I’ve had possession of something so young and pretty. I guess I can see what you like about her.”
“You better keep your fucking hands off them, Cassio?—”
“Ah ah, it seems I’m the one holding all the cards, young Solokov.”
“What do you want?” I cut to the chase, storming out of the hotel lobby and towards our horde of cars.
“To finish what I started. Ending the Solokov line.”
I slam the car door closed, switching the call to speaker so Andrei can listen in.
“I’ll send you the location at 8 PM tonight. Come alone and unarmed, or your pretty thing gets her throat slit faster than you can shoot me down.”
“Fine. I’ll be there,” I promise.
“I can’t wait to see you.”
Mikhail
He has her.
The man who tore each member of my family apart, the man who sent my brother back to me inpieces, has the woman I love.
And I may not even get the chance to tell her how I feel.
I’m not sure when exactly I realized the state of my love for Cassandra, its endless nature, engraved into the very etchings of my soul. Perhaps it was the very first time I met her, and I just didn’t know how to recognize the feeling.
A man like me was never built to recognize the feeling.
All I know is I don’t want to live in a world without her. And that horrific world is dangling over my head, hovering over every privileged breath I take.
My fingers find the rough, wooden edge of my desk and grip down. After wasting hours trying to triangulate Cassandra and Ivan’s phones, all we’ve done is throw away valuable time.
“Have you been able to reach Lev to let him know about his brother?”
“No, I just gathered you and Ilya. We can’t afford to waste a second of time, not when the location will be dropped in less than four hours.”
“Is he okay? He hasn’t said a word.”
The sounds of various voices, each as recognizable as the individual scars on my right palm, waver around me like ribbons of color, blurred by the devastation spiraling in my head.
“Don’t worry about him. We need to come up with a plan.”
All I see is Cassandra’s gorgeous face, full dark lashes shading pale grey eyes, wild curls hanging down her cheeks. I press harder down on the sharp wooden edge, the mahogany wood cracking under the pressure of my grip. And then I see a very different image. Cassandra, hurt and crying, being tortured by my enemies in a dark, small space.
“Mikhail, snap out of it. We have to work on a plan.”
She hates small spaces. She panics.
“There’s not much time, who knows what he’ll do to them if we miss the?—”
A deep guttural sound rips from the base of my throat as I heave my old, inherited mahogany desk onto its side, the papers and lamp once resting on the surface crashing down to the floor.
