Chairs push back. Jackets are adjusted over holsters. Dario is already on his phone, voice clipped. Alessio checks his weapon with the calm efficiency of someone who’s done it ten thousand times. Matteo holds the door open and looks at me with an expression I can’t fully read. Not warm, exactly. But not hostile either.
I walk through the door on legs that barely hold me.
In the elevator, surrounded by men who wanted me dead a month ago, I press my back against the wall and shut my eyes. Just for a second. Just long enough to see my mother’s face in that photograph, to feel the phantom weight of Boris’s body hitting the bottom of the stairs, to hear the crack of his neck echo through a house I will never set foot in again. Just long enough to see Luca’s face. Because that is the one I cannot survive losing.
Then the doors open, and I open my eyes, and I go.
39
LUCA
The ropes bitedeeper every time I pull.
My wrists are already raw, slick with blood and sweat where the rough fibers have sawed through skin, but I brace my feet and wrench again anyway. The chair scrapes an inch across the concrete before a kick slams into one of its legs and knocks it flat again.
“Careful,” Nikolai sneers. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
I lift my head enough to glare at the bastard through the blood dripping into my eye. “That concern sounds real heartfelt.”
Nikolai’s fist cracks against my cheekbone for what has to be the twentieth time, and I’m starting to think the left side of my face owes him money.
Same spot. Every time. The swelling has swelling now, layers of it puffing up until my eye is damn near useless. He follows it with the cane, a sharp crack against my ribs that punches the air straight out of my lungs, and before I can suck in a breath, the cane drops between my legs.
I bite down so hard my molars grind.
“Don’t go getting sleepy on me.” Nikolai fists my hair and yanks my head up.
I spit blood in his face. Mostly becausefuck him, but also because it’s the only weapon I’ve got right now.
“Not sleepy. Just bored.” I force the grin even though my split lip screams. “You’d think with all this free time you’d develop a second move.”
The backhand comes fast. I let it roll through me, let my head snap to the side and wait for the pain to settle in with the rest of it. Face, ribs, dick. That’s Nikolai’s whole playbook. Over and over, the world’s worst DJ playing the same three tracks on repeat.
Anton Kozlov sits fifteen feet away in a metal folding chair like it’s a leather wingback in his study.
Dark suit. Black gloves. Pale eyes, flat and cold in the warehouse light. No tie, but the top button of his shirt is still fastened, like he’s here for a meeting instead of a torture session.
He hasn’t touched me once.
Hasn’t raised his voice.
He just watches his son work with the detached interest of a man observing a dog he’s training.
Nikolai crouches in front of me, bracing his forearms on his thighs. “I have to admit, you lasted longer than I expected. I thought you’d be begging by now.”
I spit blood onto the floor between us. “Sorry to disappoint.”
His smile flattens. “You know what your problem is, Andretti? You still think this ends with you being a hero.”
I say nothing. Mostly because my mouth tastes like metal and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing how wrecked I am. Also because hero was never really on the table for me. Men like me don’t get to play hero. We just pick who we’re willing to become monsters for.
And I already made my choice.
Natalia.
That name moves through me even now, even tied half-broken to a fucking chair in a warehouse that smells like motor oil and gasoline. It lands in my heart and sits there, stubborn and hot and alive. The only good thing in this whole goddamn room.
Nikolai reaches out and catches my chin, forcing my head up. “I’m talking to you.”
