"You should eat," I said.
"I'm not hungry."
"You haven't had anything since before I took you. Your body needs fuel."
"My body needs to be back in New York." She still didn't look at me. "But we don't always get what we need, do we?"
I moved further into the room, my shoes silent on the carpet. She tensed as I approached but didn't flee—there was nowhere to go, and we both knew it.
"Gabrielle—"
"Don't." The word cracked like a whip. "Don't say my name like you know me. Like we're friends. Like you didn't drug me and kidnap me and fly me to some island I couldn't find on a map."
"I did what was necessary to keep you alive."
She finally looked up at me then, and the fury in her dark eyes made something tighten in my chest. She was beautiful in her rage—flushed and fierce and nothing like the meek, anxious woman I'd been watching for weeks.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "Really. Not your name—I know your name. I want to know what you are. What kind ofperson stalks a woman for weeks and then steals her from her home in the middle of the night."
I considered lying, considered softening the truth. But she deserved honesty, even if it horrified her.
"I run an organization," I said. "A family business, you might call it. We have interests in various industries—nightclubs, restaurants, import-export. Some of those interests are legal. Many are not."
"You're a criminal."
"I'm Bratva. Russian organized crime. My father built this empire, and I inherited it when he retired five years ago."
Her face went pale in the moonlight. "Mafia. You're telling me I was kidnapped by the Russian mafia."
"I'm telling you that you were saved by the Russian mafia. Specifically, by me." I crouched down to bring myself to her level, and she pressed back against the glass doors. "There's another organization—Armenian—that's been pushing into our territory. Their leader is a man named Pankratov. Brutal, ambitious, and completely without mercy. He's been looking for ways to hurt me, and somehow, he found out about you."
"About me?" She shook her head. "I don't have anything to do with your business. I didn't even know you existed until you showed up in that coffee shop."
"It doesn't matter. Pankratov's men were watching you. They were building a file—photographs, addresses, daily routines. If I hadn't taken you when I did, they would have taken you instead. And I promise you, Gabrielle, their hospitality would have been far less comfortable than mine."
"Hospitality." She laughed bitterly. "Is that what you call this? A gilded cage is still a cage, Mr. Chernov."
"Vasily." I reached out before I could stop myself, my fingers brushing against her jaw. She flinched but didn't pull away—frozen, perhaps, or too tired to fight. Her skin was softer than I'd imagined, warm beneath my touch. "My name is Vasily. And I know this feels like a cage. But I need you to understand—everything I've done, everything I'm doing, is to keep you safe."
"Safe from your enemies."
"Yes."
"Enemies I wouldn't have if you hadn't decided to stalk me." Her voice trembled, but her gaze held steady. "This is your fault. All of it. You watched me, and they watched you, and now I'm paying the price for your obsession."
The word landed like a blow. Obsession. She wasn't wrong—that's exactly what this was. An obsession I couldn't explain or control, that had driven me to do things I'd never contemplated before.
"Yes," I said again. "You're right. This is my fault. And I'm going to spend however long it takes making sure you don't suffer for my mistakes."
"How long?" She grabbed my wrist, her fingers digging in with surprising strength. "How long are you planning to keep me here?"
"As long as necessary."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have." I covered her hand with mine, feeling the rapid flutter of her pulse against my palm. "I can't let you go, Gabrielle. Not until the threat is neutralized. Maybe not even then."
Her eyes widened at the implication. "You can't keep me forever."
