The rope was loosening, the knot giving way.
And that’s when the sound of heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor, shattering the intimate silence between us.
Dmitri froze, his head snapping up, his body tensing. His expression went from raw desire to cold, lethal focus in the span of a single heartbeat. Quickly, he pulled my swimsuit top and bottoms back into place, covering me from whomever was about to come through that door.
The door to the room swung open with a deafening crash.
Several men stood in the doorway, their silhouettes framed against the stark light of the corridor.
“Well, well,” one of the men said. “Looks like we’re interrupting something.”
Dmitri rose slowly to his feet, moving with a deceptive calm. He was still hard, a fact that was impossible to miss, a thick, demanding ridge straining against the fabric of his trousers. Hedidn’t try to hide it. He just stood there looking like a predator facing down his prey.
“Grigor,” Dmitri said, his voice a quiet acknowledgment, but I heard respect, maybe, or recognition in his tone.
“Dmitri,” the man replied, his accent thick.
Behind him, two other men followed, both armed, silent, their expressions unreadable. One lingered near the door, the other at Grigor’s shoulder, close enough to move if he gave the order.
Grigor stepped further inside, his gaze sliding over me before settling back on Dmitri. “You can finish untying her,” he said. His tone wasn’t a suggestion.
Dmitri didn’t move. “Why?”
“Because,” Grigor said evenly, “I asked you to. Don’t make me ask again.”
The air in the room changed. Thickened.
Dmitri’s jaw flexed once—barely a tell, but I saw it. He was calculating, deciding whether obedience was strategy or defeat. Then, apparently finding his answer as his jaw flexed again, he knelt back down in front of me. His fingers worked quickly, efficiently, the ropes loosening beneath his fingers. His touch was impersonal, but it steadied me anyway. Our eyes met and I felt warmth through his gaze.
He didn’t need to say it out loud.
He would protect me from whatever came next.
The ropes around my ankles fell away first, then he moved behind me to deal with the ones at my wrists. The blood rushedback to my hands in sharp pins and needles. I stood slowly, rubbing at my skin.
Grigor nodded toward the open door. “After you.”
His voice was polite, but there was no warmth in it, just that same calm command, like every word had already been planned ten moves ahead.
I followed him out of the room, conscious of the solid, reassuring presence of Dmitri at my back. We were led down a long, dark corridor, the only sound the echo of our footsteps on the concrete floor. The air was thick with the smell of damp and rust.
We went through a door, and the corridor opened into a vast outdoor space. There were stacks of shipping containers, their rusted surfaces gleaming dully in the harsh glare of floodlights. The air was cool here, the sound of our footsteps swallowed by the oppressive silence.
Then my heart stopped.
In the middle of it all stood Roman, waiting for us.
For the first time since we had been captured, I started to feel a sense of hope.
CHAPTER 20
Dmitri
It was strange to see my brother standing there, framed in the light of a warehouse that reeked of iron, oil, and criminal intent. He had his hair slicked back, jaw set, and a gun at his hip he hadn’t bothered to draw. Every inch of him looked carved from the kind of confidenceIusually wore.
“Well,” he said, spreading his hands slightly, that damn half-smile ghosting across his face. “There you are.”
I said nothing. There were a dozen men around us—Viktor Dragunov, his right-hand man Grigor, their tech guy Demyan, their soldiers, ours—each one a heartbeat away from turning this standoff into a massacre. I’d been in worse stalemates than this, but not by much.
