Page 52

The window holds the whole glittering life of the city while I am cuffed to a desk and drained.

My wrists ache.

My jaw aches.

My pride is somewhere on the floor with my jeans.

When the door finally opens I am wrecked enough that relief feels like love.

Dmitri. Master. Daddy…

He looks like a man who went to a meeting. Except for the cuff of his shirt. A telltale splash.

Blood-red.

Not a lot.

But enough.

“My Mylashka,” Dmitri says, his voice with just a hint of a devilish satisfaction in it.

Dmitri crosses the rug and crouches. He kisses my mouth. Slowly, softly. He then unlocks the cuffs. The clamps come off and the blood rushes back in a sting that makes my eyes water.

I gasp as Dmitri eases the plug from me with controlled precision.

“Shower,” he says. “Then we work. Strategy. The Lucci clan will not wait while you sit pretty in my chair.”

“Yes, Daddy,” I answer, relieved to be free, and my eyes lost in Dmitri’s dark gaze.

I stand. My legs are not good and I momentarily have to focus to ensure I don’t fall or show any weakness. I gather my clothes because walking the hall naked twice in two days might finish me.

At the door I look back. He is already at the window. The city in his glass. Blood on his cuff.

Dmitri is no normal man.

But I’m making a choice, to call him Master, to call him Daddy.

And these are choices that will change my life forever…

12

DMITRI

The café used to be a bank.

You can still feel the money in the bones of it. High stone arches. A ceiling that was built to intimidate men who wanted loans. Marble that has been worn pale by a century of shoes.

The old vault door stands at the back like a relic, polished, useless, still heavy enough to remind everyone what this room was for. They have filled it with small tables and good coffee and the kind of quiet that rich people mistake for peace.

Part of me wishes it was still a bank so that I could arrange a crew to rob it.

I love the beauty of the building, but I love money more.

Elias sits across from me with both hands on his cup. Outside, snow has arrived as if it was thrown down from heaven in anger.

No polite drift of light powder.

A storm of thick, heavy snow. White hammering the tall windows. The street disappearing in pieces.