“Not yet,” he said, his eyes cold. “We still need to ensure your… cooperation.”
I saw the faintest twitch of his hand.
Before I could react, a sharp and pointy something pressed against my neck. There was a quick prick and a subsequent rush of heat that seemed to shoot straight into my brain.
My knees buckled. The room blurred.
Lev’s and Roman’s voices broke through the noise, a combined roar of fury that made the air itself shake. “Kara!”
Hands grabbed me, dragging me backward. I tried to fight, but my body wasn’t listening anymore. The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me was Lev lunging forward, Roman holding him back, and then nothing.
Just darkness.
CHAPTER 25
Lev
The elevator doors shut behind us with a hiss, sealing off the sterile glass world of ARCHEON’s tower. Two agents walked Roman and me through the marble lobby like we were important foreign diplomats instead of prisoners of circumstance.
They didn’t bind us, but they didn’t need to. Guns followed our every movement, and Roman’s hand had hovered near his jacket pocket ever since we’d left the vice president’s office.
I was fucking livid.
I hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to stop them from taking her away from me. I hadn’t even realized I’d shouted her name and rushed toward her until Roman grabbed my arm.
And right now, I was burning inside.
I needed to get her out.
Right. Fucking. Now.
There was a car waiting for us at the curb. It was one of ours—I recognized it—but that wasn’t important right now. The agents gestured us toward it, but my brother ignored them.
“You tell your boss,” Roman said pointedly, “that the deal isn’t over until I say it is.”
The agent didn’t respond. He simply opened the car door.
Roman got in first. I followed, every muscle tight.
The second the doors closed, the soundproofing swallowed the world whole. The driver didn’t speak. Neither did we.
Roman’s reflection in the tinted glass was a study in calculation. “Dmitri will have the others in position. Everything is going according to plan, brother,” he said finally.
I nodded, although my mind wasn’t on Dmitri.
It was on Kara.
The look on her face when they took her.
She’d known what was happening. It was almost like she’d known the whole time that would happen, but that didn’t change the way a part of my heart had cracked open when she was taken.
Because the truth had been waiting in me for years; I just hadn’t realized it until that moment.
I loved her.
It all started in Geneva that winter. She’d been wearing that ribbon in her hair, the one she always used to tie too tight. We’d been teenagers back then, fighting over words that didn’t matter, each daring the other to flinch first.
And then she’d kissed me. Just once. Just to prove that she could.
