He says nothing. The blue in his eyes swirls like alien oceans.
“Do you know how much I lost?” I ask, feeling emotion clog up the somewhat eloquent speech I’ve been practicing in my head for almost six years. “Do you know how much I had to sacrifice because you decided to interrupt my date that night?”
He blinks. He breathes. He doesn’t answer.
“And even after all that happened, and I had to upend my whole life and start over… even then, you’re still involved. Alex, Maxim, whoever the fuck he is… He decided I was important to you, so he took me. Because of you. Six years!” I cry out. My voice rises an octave. “I lost six years of my life because of you.”
Then, finally, he speaks. “I know.”
I frown.
“I know all of that, Camila. Which is why I stopped the wedding. Which is why I’m here. Which is why you’re here. I wanted to save you from losing the rest of your life to a man who was just using you.”
“By doing what?” I counter. “Replacing him with yourself and doing the exact same thing?”
“I’m not like Maxim.”
“You are exactly like Maxim,” I snap. “At least he had the decency to ask me to marry him.”
A shadow flits across his face. It’s a ripple of anger, mixed in with something else I can’t quite catch in time.
“I was never much good at pretending,” he says.
“Is that your excuse?”
“I don’t give excuses,” he replies. “Just explanations.”
He pushes off the mantle and takes a step towards me.
My immediate instinct is to move back, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
What is it they say about bullies? They’re weak when confronted with strength. I’m not sure that rule holds here, but I stick to it anyway.
“You want to give me explanations?” I ask. “Then tell me why I’m even here.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Have dinner with me and maybe I’ll tell you.”
I cross my arms across my chest. “Ha! Here’s a word you’re not used to hearing: no.”
His eyes go cold so fast that I almost gasp. It’s like jumping into a frozen lake, how the tiniest shift in his expression sucks the air from my lungs.
Then he moves. He’s on me in a heartbeat. Hips flush to mine. His face fills my field of vision. His scent consumes me—the same cool, musky cologne I’ve spent six years trying and failing to forget.
“Don’t mistake this for a partnership, kiska,” he snarls in my face. “This is a give-and-take. Meaning that either you give, or I take. Either way, I get what’s mine. That’s the only well you’ll ever earn back your freedom.”
My breath catches. All I want is to shrink back, to run from his face of fury. But I can’t.
Because I know damn well he means every word he says.
“So if I have dinner with you,” I gulp, “you’ll let me go?”
He relents, leaning back and nodding. “Eventually.”
“When?”
“You’ll be here for as long as it takes to remove the threat that Maxim poses.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t concern you.”
I shake my head. “Typical.”
“What is?”
“You. Men like you,” I snap. “You use and command and drag people around as it suits you. You expect us to be at your beck and call, but me? I’m left out of the decisions, the reasons, the planning.”
“This is the Bratva.”
“Uh-huh, and?”
“And if you want a seat at the table, you have to earn a seat at the table.”
“I don’t want a seat at any table you’re at,” I retort like a brat.
“Then be content to do as you’re told,” he says. “I expect to see you down for dinner at eight. Don’t make me come drag you down myself.”
I’m tempted to tell him to go fuck himself again as he turns to leave, but I suppress the urge. I may talk a big game, but I’m not delusional. I know I have no power here, and no resources. If there’s even a chance that he might let me go, I have to cooperate. But that doesn’t mean I have to lay down flat and thank him for walking all over me.
“Isaak.”
He stops in the threshold and glances back over his shoulder.
My breath catches in my throat again, and for the dozenth time since he turned around in the hall to reveal himself to me, I wish that he wasn’t so sinfully attractive. It would have been so much easier to hate him if he looked like the villain.
“Yes?”
“I can cooperate,” I tell him. “But there’s something I want.”
He waits. Breathes. Leaves me dangling in the silence.
“I want to make a video call every day,” I finish. “And I want privacy when I do.”
He pivots slowly towards me. “And who is it that you’re calling?”
“That’s my business.”
“You’ll find that everything that happens in this house is my business,” he intones.
Taking a deep breath, I let him have this one morsel of truth. Partial truth, at least. “My sister,” I say. “I just want to talk to my sister.”
“The one who convinced you to go on that date with the douchebag?”
My eyebrows lift immediately. “You remember?”
“I remember everything, Camila.”
I shudder. He has a way of saying things that seem to mean so much more than how they affect the here and now. Like there’s weight and importance to each and every word. It keeps me on edge at all times.
“Very well,” he sighs. “You can have your daily phone call.”
“Unsupervised?”
“Until you prove that you don’t deserve that privilege. But you should know that if I find out you’re trying to get in touch with anyone other than your sister, there will be consequences.”
There it is again. Another word that means so much more than it should. Consequences. It makes me thinks of whips and chains.
“I’ll see you at eight.”
Then he storms out and I’m left all alone in this gorgeous, haunted castle. I won a minor victory in this battle, maybe—but I have no doubt that Isaak Vorobev intends to win the war.
11
Isaak
“There must be some trace of him.”
Bogdan looks up from the screen. “I’m afraid not. He went under soon after the dust cleared.”
“How many of his men did we get?”
“Fifteen,” Bogdan replies. “The rest fled with him. And with his resources here, he’s going to be tough to find if he doesn’t want to be found.”
“All those resources didn’t protect him from us,” I snort.
“True. We had the element of surprise and Maxim was cocky. But he knows we’re here now.”
I lean back in my armchair and consider the situation. Something about it is fucking irritating me and I can’t quite figure out what. We’ve been planning this mission for years now. I’ve had time to contemplate every angle, every strategy.
And my plan worked perfectly. Or almost perfectly. I got the girl. Decimated Maxim’s personal forces. Sent him running for the goddamn hills.
The only way it could’ve gone better would be if I had his head on a silver platter right now.