“I won’t take your name from you,” he said.
I should have been relieved by that.
I was too tired.
The window lights stretched into long bright lines. My body dipped sideways before I felt myself falling.
He caught me.
One arm came around my shoulders, solid and warm. My cheek hit his chest, not hard. His coat smelled like cold wool and smoke. Beneath it, his heart beat steady, slow, impossible.
“I’m not going to be sick,” I mumbled, because that seemed important.
“No,” he said. “You’re going to pass out.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
“My brother—”
“I hear you. Breathe now.”
“I have to—”
“You have to stay with me first.”
His voice followed me down, calm enough to hate, strong enough to hold on to when everything else slipped.
His hand closed around mine on the seat. He didn’t force my fingers open. He just held on.
The SUV kept moving.
The city lights smeared across the window.
Then everything went dark.
Chapter Four
Nadia went limp in my arms before the car cleared the second corner.
One second, she was fighting for breath with her fingers caught in my shirt. The next, her eyes rolled back, her lashes lowered, and the last of her weight gave way against me.
I caught her closer before her head could strike the door.
“Turn the heat up,” I said. “Get water from the console and keep the route clean.”
Lev reached from the front passenger seat without looking back. The driver took the next turn hard enough to send city light sliding across the black leather and over Nadia’s bare knees. My overcoat swallowed most of her, but the pale silk still showed where it had twisted against her thighs. Auction fabric. Pretty, thin, useless. Made for men to look at, not for a woman shaking herself apart after they’d tried to sell her.
I pulled the coat tighter around her.
Her skin was too cold.
The car smelled of leather, winter air, and the sharp trace of fear that still clung to her hair under the powder and rose-pink lipstick they’d painted on her. One curl stuck to her cheek. I moved it away with two fingers, slower than I wanted, because if she woke to my hand on her face, I needed her to see restraint first.
Behind us, Gennady Kask was still breathing.
That wasn’t mercy.
