“I don’t know why you didn’t tell me, and I’m sure you’ll explain it when you can.” He nods quickly, his expression turning hopeful. “Just know that it doesn’t change how I feel about you.” I reach up and cup his jaw, and he leans into the touch, his eyes turning warm and grateful. “I love you, Jagger.”
I press up on my toes and brush my lips against his, but before we can take it any further, I’m yanked from his grasp and thrown to the floor a few feet away. Pain radiates from my hip, where I land heavily, and I cry out in pain.
Looking up, I see two guards holding Jagger back, one of them aiming a gun at him.
“Jagger! No, stop fighting!” I yell in alarm as the man aims at him, but only when he twists and aims the gun at me does Jagger freeze.
Ivan glares at Jagger, then at me, and I take a small amount of pride in putting that expression there.
“Pathetic,” he spits at me. “So eager to be loved that you’ll take any scraps you get.”
A smirk pulls at my lips. “What does that say about you since I refused the scraps you were offering?”
He sneers at me, which just makes me smile more. Thatonly seems to anger him, that is, until he glances at Jagger. Then he seems to remember something as his anger fades and his calm, amused expression replaces it.
He turns toward the dining table, straightening his collar as he speaks. “It seems we have gotten off track. I invited you here, son, to have breakfast with me.”
He motions to the table, and the two guards holding him drag him to a chair across from where I had been sitting. His eyes bounce between Ivan and me, clearly worried about what’s going to happen next. That makes two of us.
As Ivan takes a seat, I start to stand, but he yells at me in Russian. “Nyet! Ostavat'sya vnizu!” He tells me to stay down, and I frown, a feeling of dread tightening in my stomach.
He glances at Jagger and the two guards standing directly over each shoulder, before turning back to me and beckoning me forward. “Come here, kukolka.” I start to stand, and he shakes his head, holding out his palm to me. “Nyet. I want you to crawl to me, on all fours.”
My eyes widen, and Jagger tries to leap out of his chair toward him, but the two men hold him down with their hands on his shoulders. Unsure what to do, I look at Jagger. I can see he’s seething, but he manages to raise his hands and sign two words that gut me to the core.
“I’m sorry.”
Unwilling to let this man break us, determination fills me as I glare at Ivan and place my hands on the ground, crawling slowly toward him. It’s absolutely the most humiliating thing I’ve ever done, the chuckles of the guards throughout the room only adding to my embarrassment. But this isn’t something worth fighting Ivan on. I knew he could, nowould, hurt either one of us easily if I didn’t do what he asked, and crawling wasn’t a hill worth dying on. Not for me. Not today.
I grit my teeth as Ivan looks at me with a look of satisfaction and triumph. I move my gaze to Jagger, where he’s still being physically restrained in his chair, his hands clenched tightly into fists where they rest on the table.
I can see the anger boiling below the surface.
Jagger had always been vague about how his parents were killed, and he was injured so badly that it left him unable to speak. Now I understand why. His biological father murdered his mother and adoptive father right in front of him, then tried to kill him, too.
And now he is being forced to sit here and watch him treat me like this.
When his eyes meet mine, I offer him a small smile of reassurance, showing him that this won’t break me, that I’m still here, still fighting on the inside to get back to him.
We never needed words to truly understand each other, and now is no different. I see the moment he realizes what I’m silently trying to tell him, his gaze losing that edge of unrestrained chaotic rage, and turning to a calculating, dangerous smolder instead.
My smile grows bigger, and he lifts his hands to sign at me.“I’m so proud of you, tiny flame. Hang in there. I’ll get us out of here.”
I nod just as I reach Ivan’s side. “Kneel at my side, yes, just like that.” Ivan nods in approval as I take my spot on the ground beside him. Food is dished out to the two of them, but nothing is offered to me. I can see Jagger’s reluctance to eat, but when he looks at me, I give him a nod, silently telling him he needs to keep his energy up and his body and mind strong. So he eats, his eyes bouncing between Ivan and me the whole time.
It’s hard to believe they’re related. Yes, they have thesame shade of blue eyes, but Jagger must take more after his mother because that’s where the similarities end, especially when it comes to their personalities. I’m not sure what Ivan’s childhood was like, but it seems something must have happened to him to make him this way.
I think about everything Jagger went through when he was younger. My other guys didn’t have easy childhoods, either, and yet, their moral compasses all still pointed in the right direction.
Just because they kill people, I didn’t think that made them bad men. They only hurt those who hurt them. They hadn’t hurt any of the FBI agents, well, at least I don’t think they had, anything could have happened after I was taken.
My heart clenches again at the thought of the four of them. Was Elias still alive? Was he fighting for his life in a hospital somewhere? Or was he already… gone? And what of the others? Did they get away and are now trapped with no way to find me? Did they get arrested and are back in prison in Arizona?
There are so many possibilities that my head starts to hurt. Deciding that there is no use thinking about things I can’t change, I decide to use my energy to concentrate on the things I can, like escaping my new prison.
“I suppose congratulations are in order,” Ivan suddenly says, making us both look at him with worried confusion. “On your engagement,” he says as if it’s obvious. As much as the thought of being married to Jagger and my other guys is definitely on my bucket list, I’m not sure what Ivan is talking about.
When he sees our confused faces, he reaches down and grabs my wrist, pulling my hand up and pointing to the ring that Elias had put on me in one of our last momentstogether. I glance at Jagger, since I hadn’t had a chance to explain it yet, and he just frowns at it silently.
