“You say you’re innocent, but your family ledger tells another story. Blood doesn't care about choice,” he counters, his voice flat and merciless. “It remembers. It connects and creates debts that span generations.”
Anger sparks inside me, sudden and fierce enough to overcome my fear. I stand before I can stop myself, the motion jerking Vega awake at my feet. “You actually think I'm responsible for something that happened years ago? That I somehow owe you for what my father'sallegedbrother did? That's insane. That's completely insane.”
His face remains unreadable, a fortress giving nothing away. “I think coincidence is a lie people tell themselves when they're too afraid to see the truth staring them in the face.”
I know he believes that with absolute conviction. He thinks I'm here for a reason that has nothing to do with random chance. That fate, blood, or whatever twisted logic rules his violent world tied me to him for some purpose neither of us understands yet. And maybe there's a small, terrified part of me that wonders if he's right.
“You're wrong about me,” I insist, my voice trembling, caught between fury and fear. “I don't belong in your world. I don't know anything about your betrayals or whatever name you think connects us. I'm nobody. Just a woman who pours coffee, worries about medical bills, and tries to keep her sister alive. That's all I am.”
He doesn’t move toward me, but the distance between us feels meaningless. His energy fills the room until I’m drowning in it, suffocating under the gravity of his certainty. “Then convince me,” he replies quietly, and the restraint in his voice is somehow more threatening than any shout could be. “Prove you’re not part of this web.”
“How?” I ask, my voice low, betraying a plea I can’t swallow back.
“Speak when I ask, and don’t withhold anything.”
The answer chills me more than any direct threat could. Because beneath the calm delivery, I hear the promise of what will happen if the truth doesn’t clear my name, and the investigation he’s clearly conducting leads back to me in ways I can’t predict or defend against.
Luka steps closer, stopping only a few feet away from where I stand frozen. The firelight gilds his skin in gold, tracing the sharp angles of his face and making him look both beautiful and terrifying. His voice drops to a murmur that feels almost intimate despite the danger crackling between us.
“You think I’m the enemy,printsessa. You think I’m the worst thing that could happen to you in this situation. But there are men out there who’d gut me just to find out why aBellamyis standing in my house. They’ll come looking for you soon enough. When they do, you’ll understand why I keep you where I can see you.”
The silence that follows is unbearable, wrapping around my chest until I struggle to draw breath. Vega pads to Luka's side, torn between us in his simple animal way. Luka's hand drops to the dog's head, his touch gentle, a stark divide from the tension radiating through every line of his body. He looks at me one last time with a shadow lingering in his eyes that could be regret, a warning, or whatever lives between mercy and menace.
“Albert will escort you downstairs. You'll stay where I can find you when I need you.”
He turns away, dismissing me as easily as he summoned me to this room. But before he reaches the door and disappears back into whatever darkness he emerged from, I find my voice again. The question escapes before I can bury it behind wisdom and self-preservation.
“Why tell me about your mother? About your father and what they made you? Why any of it if all I am to you is another name to interrogate?”
He pauses with his hand on the doorframe. “Because I wanted to remember what it felt like to be human for a moment,” he admits quietly, without turning to face me. “Don't mistake that for mercy.”
Then he's gone. The door closes behind him and Vega with a soft click. His footsteps fade down the hall, leaving me alone with the echo of his voice reverberating in my skull.
My thoughts spin in circles I can't escape. He told me about his mother. About the pain he hides behind that iron control he wields. He let me see the cracks in his armor, the places where grief and duty collide and create something almost human beneath the monster everyone fears. And I felt something dangerously close to compassion for a man who holds my life in his hands.
I should hate him for what he's done to me. For every threat delivered in that quiet voice. For every lie he might be telling. For every lock that's kept me trapped in this beautiful prison, while my sister sits at home wondering where I am.
But I don't hate him. Not completely or the way I should. And that realization terrifies me. Because empathy is a thread, thin and fragile, and once you start to follow it and let it wind around your heart, it can lead you straight into the center of the enemy's den. It can make you forget that the man who shows you his scars is still the same man who could decide to end your life if the evidence turns against you.
I press my palms to my face, trying to block out the heat of the fire and the echo of his voice, admitting he wanted to feel human. But it's useless. Luka Barinov is under my skin now, woven into my thoughts in ways I can't untangle. And as much as I want to deny it, I know the truth as surely as I know my ownname. The real danger isn't being his prisoner. It's wanting to understand the man who holds the key.
10
LUKA
The emissary drinks my vodka like it belongs to him. He sits in the upstairs lounge, acting as if distance makes him safe, an easy smile curving a mouth made for lies. The air around him carries the dry bite of Las Vegas, desert dust, and hotel AC mixed with cigarette smoke, cheap cologne, and a trace of jet fuel from the airport.
Misha is on my right, his forearms braced on his knees, and his attention fixed with the patience of a sniper. His stillness is the dangerous kind, the barely restrained violence of a man who knows when to strike and how to make it permanent. Our men stand behind the emissary and his enforcer, a silent formation of suits and weapons. Vega sits at my feet, upright and alert, ears pricked, eyes steady on the stranger. He does not blink or move. The message is simple.
“I represent old acquaintances,” the emissary begins, his voice warm enough to soften granite. “From the west. People who extended hospitality to a man named Ray Bellamy some years back.”
Misha's jaw works once. “Hospitality,” he repeats flatly.
The emissary continues as if he heard nothing. “Ray accepted generous protection and a large sum of cash. Then he departed in a hurry with property that did not belong to him. He left questions behind and a hole in the books.”
“That's your problem,” I tell him. The words come out low, tempered by the fury I have been nursing since the moment this man walked through my door. “Your people are the same ones that harbored him after he betrayed my family.”
“Our problem becomes everyone's problem when he sends his troubles into your mountains.” The emissary folds his hands. His cufflinks wink under the chandelier light, tasteful and smug, the showy accessories of a man who thinks gold buys respect. “We hear there is a woman here. Sage Bellamy. We wonder how she fits.”
