I look down at my hands, at the smear of blood from my throbbing lobes, but he doesn’t seem sorry in the slightest, just swallows again for good measure.
He ate my comms!
“You’re coming with me,” he grinds out. “And you’re going to tell me everything. Every lie. Every report. Every single thing you know about me and Global Dynamix and what the hell they have to do with a Russian trafficker.”
“And if I refuse?” I say, because refusing to answer questions is what I was born to do.
He smiles but it’s not his smile, not the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes, that makes me feel seen and desired. No, this smile makes me feel fear in the marrow of my bones.
“Then I guess we find out what happens when you push me past my breaking point.”
I see his hand move toward his watch. I know what’s coming—I’ve read the specs on his tech, I know about the tranquilizer function—but knowing doesn’t help. I’m too slow, too injured, and too fuckingdestroyedby the look in his eyes to move.
The dart catches me in the neck.
The drug works instantly.
The world shifts and shakes. His face blurs. I feel myself falling, and then his arms are around me, catching me, lifting me against his chest like I weigh nothing.
Like I’m something to be treasured.
Like I’m something he wants to keep.
And then darkness swallows me whole.
I wake to unfamiliar sheets and a headache that feels like the world’s worst hangover times a million.
For a moment, I don’t know where I am. I see a white ceiling and grey walls. Floor-to-ceiling windows with smart glass dimmed to near-opacity, the city a smear of light beyond. Everything is expensive, minimalist, and has a familiar masculine smell that I had grown to love.
His penthouse. I must be in his penthouse somewhere.
Memory crashes back—the confrontation, the dart, his arms around me—and I jerk upright, heart pounding, scanning for threats.
The room is empty.
It’s not the bedroom I remember, not his. This is one of the guest rooms. The furniture is sparse but high-end. There are two doors, solid and painted to look like wood.
Locked, of course. One is anyway, the other is a small washroom with a toilet, sink and shower—nothing I can make a weapon with. I mean, I suppose I could try ripping off the metal shower head. If I was captured by anyone else, I could do something with it, or the metal snaking hose. I could definitely choke someone with that, like an extra-large garrote wire. But this is Vanguard, the world’s most powerful man we’re talkingabout, and he would break it all with a clench of his fist. Would break me too while he’s at it.
I move to the windows. Also locked, the smart glass unresponsive to my touch. I search for vents, weak points in the walls, anything that might offer escape. Nothing. The room has been prepared. Professionally, deliberately, like someone thought very carefully about how to contain a person who knows all the ways out of things.
Because he’s not stupid,I think grimly.Just furious.
My tactical blacks are gone. Someone—him—changed me while I was unconscious, so that I’m just in my black tank top, bra and knickers I wore underneath. The thought of his hands on my body while I was helpless leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I check myself for injuries. The wounds from the warehouse have been tended—bruises wrapped, cuts cleaned, my shoulder immobilized in a proper sling. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.
The lock clicks.
I spin, dropping into a defensive stance despite the pain, and watch the door swing open.
Vanguard fills the frame.
He’s changed since last night—showered, dressed in a fresh T-shirt and jeans, looking almost normal if you don’t look too closely. But I do look. I can’t help it.
And what I see makes my blood run cold.
Because it’s him and yet there’s nothing there at all.
