The way his hand had trembled—just slightly—the first time he’d touched my face. The way his voice had broken when he’d said my name after years of silence. The way he’d fought to keep his fury in check when I was taken. I’d seen the fracture then, the man beneath the control, and I’d wanted to hold him together.
He’d always said I didn’t know who I was playing with. Maybe he was right. Maybe neither of us did.
But I cared about him. Did I love him?
God help me, I did. I suspect he’d been hiding in my heart since boarding school.
And Dmitri…
Dmitri was the one I hadn’t seen coming. The quiet center of the storm. The man who didn’t need to raise his voice to make the world obey, to makemeobey.
He’d terrified me at first. He’d been too calm, too calculating, too utterly sure of himself. He could read a room or a person in seconds, and I’d hated how easily he’d read me. Beneath that control, though, was something even more rare.
Dmitri didn’t care for me in the ways men like Roman or Lev did. His was silent. Subtle. Inescapable. The kind of gravitational force that pulled you in without permission and didn’t let go.
He saw me—the parts I hid from everyone, even myself—and instead of using them against me, he’d understood them. He’d made me feel like I wasn’t a tool, or an assignment, or a lie in a pretty dress. He’d made me feel real.
Three men.
Three storms.
And me, caught in the eye among them.
It should have felt impossible, falling for them all. But it wasn’t. Each of them had claimed a piece of me.
And now I was trapped in a crate, listening to men debate whether I would live or die.
No.
I wouldn’t die like this.
I shifted my hips again, curling one foot under me. I tested the seams of the crate, feeling for give. I didn’t have any tools. I didn’t have a weapon, but I had time and fury. And I had trained for worse situations than this.
My fingers pressed against the floor of the crate, sweeping across the metal beneath the thin padding. Every inch was cold and gritty. I was expecting rivets. Seams. Just a way to gauge the structure.
Then, there!
A shallow divot.
And in it, something that was about two inches long. Sharp-edged. Metal.
My breath caught.
I slid my hand over it again, slower and more carefully this time. Whatever it was, it was wedged between the floor plates.
I gripped it carefully, pulling back. It shifted under my fingers with a soft, scraping sound. It didn’t come loose easily, but the angle was bad. My arms were cramped. I had to twist my wrist, jam my shoulder against the crate wall, andpull.
With a short, metallic pop, it came free.
I turned it in my hand.
It was a bolt. Rusted on one end, sheared off on the other. Maybe it had snapped loose during transport, or maybe it had been caught between the slats when someone rushed to secure the crate. Either way, it was jagged, and just long enough to fit in my palm.
The universe hadn’t given me a weapon.
It had given me a chance.
I used my other hand to brace my body as I reached up to the crate’s top panel, feeling along the seam where the ceiling met the side wall. The crate had been sealed from the outside, that much was obvious, but if I could jam the bolt into the seam at the right point and torque the edge…
