He lowered the gun, releasing Ri’s face. Her head lolled forwards, her neck at a painful angle. I lurched towards her, my phone falling from my grasp, clattering to the floor. Dropping to my knees in front of the chair, I cupped her face in my hands. Her eyelids fluttered, and my heart stopped.
“Ri … Catnip, can you?—”
“Now, this is a bit presumptuous of you, Chewy.”
The barrel of that gun pressed between my eyes, forcing me backonto my heels. My hands slipped from her cheeks. My heart dropped deep into my abdomen as her chin fell back to her chest.
“I promised I’d let her go. I didn’t promise that I’d let her gowith you.” In the dark, I could barely make out his face above me. Panic gripped me. He wouldn’t shoot me. Not when he thought he had exactly what he wanted from me.
“Atlas … let’s just think about this rationally,” River’s voice rang out from behind us, and torchlight spilled into the room. I’d forgotten about him out in the hallway the second I’d clapped eyes on Ri.
“Well, hello River. Of course you’d be here. You’ve hitched your washed-up YouTuber arse to a billionaire in search of your next big thing,” Atlas sneered. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to do away with your meal ticket. Henry will walk out of here unharmed. Everyone will, as long as you’re all compliant.”
Ri wouldn’t. The only thing holding her upright was the ropes snaked around her middle. I choked back a scream.
“Irina’s lovely fiancé will make sure she’s well taken care of.”
“Don’t you mean husband?” River asked, perplexed.
Atlas shook his head. “Seems like Irina’s been playing her own little game of why choose. You see, she was already engaged to someone else when she married Henry. Calin, you can come out now!”
The creak of a door, and I lifted my gaze as a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and a neat beard appeared in the torch glow like a leading man taking the spotlight. He smirked down at me.
“No hard feelings, youngster,” he said in heavily accented English. “But I need Irina to come home with me.”
He clicked his fingers, and another man appeared. My chest constricted when I recognised Cockerels Cap. I gaped as he worked to untie the ropes binding Ri to the chair. So Ri had been right. He hadn’t been working for Rumi when she saw them together. No. He’d been employed by someone far worse.
“Thanks for letting me borrow her, Calin mate,” Atlas said, the gun still grazing my forehead. “I got?—”
“Let’s get one thing straight, you pathetic little man,” Calin growled. “I am not your mate. I will never be your mate. And you remember that you owe me.”
Atlas was silent, but the gun shook against my head. I tried to takea slow, steadying breath, but my trachea felt like it was the diameter of a pin.
Calin turned back to Cockerels Cap, who had extricated Irina from the ropes, holding her dead weight against his chest. “Take her to the helicopter pad; I’ve organised our transport back to the airport.”
A surge of adrenaline pulsed through me.
“Wait!” I grated, voice rough from panic. In unison, Calin and Cockerels Cap turned to me. I was viscerally aware of the gun at my head, but I was not letting them walk out of this room with my wife. “You said you need her to come with you. Why?”
The man cocked a brow at me. “Because I paid for her.”
I swallowed, hating everything about what I was about to say. “I have money … how much would it take for you to lose interest in taking her?”
Calin’s amused laughter pierced holes in me. “Oh, you young people … money isn’t everything. Your money can’t buy me the kind of power I’m after.” He stroked his beard. “I suppose itcouldgo a long way towards bribing certain key players to turn a blind eye … but at the end of the day, Irina is the sole inheritor of the entire Rusnac empire … and whoever controlsheris in charge. So no, your money is not enough to barter for Irina.”
I dug deep into my panicked mind, sorting frantically through all the titbits of information I had about Irina and her family, to puzzle out how to extract Irina from this situation. “What if she was to relinquish her interest in the … the empire?” I asked, eyes darting to where Cockerels Cap now had my wife in a bride carry. I swallowed back bile. “I know she has no desire to be involved in the family business in any way.”
Calin tilted his head in my direction. “Ah, but I would still need to be married to her, would I not? For me to be able to take control. If she takes over from her uncle, and then renounces her position as head of the family, it would go to her husband … or in the absence of one, the next of kin of the Rusnac line.”
“Stefan,” I surmised thoughtfully. I caught Calin nodding. “And Bogdan remains a problem, I’m gathering.”
“You’re a clever one, aren’t you?” Calin remarked, taking a seat on the chair Irina had been tied to, resting his ankle on his knee andpeering down at me. “I find myself interested to see how your brain works through this conundrum. Point that gun elsewhere, Atlas, you imbecile. I’m trying to converse with the intelligent member of the Tickle duo.”
I let out a tiny breath as the pressure of the barrel disappeared from my forehead, thinking fast. “I’m surmising that Irina’s father willed the … the empire to his offspring upon his death. With his brother to caretake in the role should he die before his child was old enough to take over.”
Calin nodded again. “Of course, Bogdan never intended for Irina to take control. Her father’s will states that Bogdan is to oversee things until she is willing and able to take over, but I believe she was never given the details of her father’s will.”
“Willingbeing the key word.”
