CHAPTER 20
NIKOLAI P.O.V.
The morning light was weak. A grey, sickly wash that barely made it past the smudge of smog hanging over the city.
I stood at the floor-to-ceiling glass, shirtless, staring down at the ants crawling through the streets twenty stories below.
My knuckles ached. A dull, throbbing reminder of the wall I’d put my fist through after the package arrived.
A severed ear.
Aris Vance, that spineless financier fuck, sent a piece of his own guard to my doorstep. A message. I can reach you.
I flexed my hand, watching the tendons shift under the skin.
The bastard wasn’t trying to rescue his daughter.
If he wanted to rescue her, he would have sent a tactical team, not a body part in a jewelry box.
He was trying to prove a point to the syndicate.
To Marco. He wanted to show them that my security was porous, that the "Collateral Debt" wasn’t secure in my hands.
He was trying to get me audited.
I closed my fist tight, feeling the skin stretch over the knuckles.
The air conditioning hummed, smelling like ozone and the expensive, scentless detergent the maids used on the linens.
It was too quiet. I hated the quiet. It gave my brain too much room to do the math, and the math was bad.
Keeping Scarlett was a liability. A fifty-million-dollar liability that was currently breathing in my bed.
I looked down at my shoulder. There was a fading bruise there, shaped like a crescent moon. Scarlett’s teeth marks. She’d bitten me three days ago when I dragged her out of the shower. Violent little thing.
I rubbed the spot with my thumb.
Defiance I could handle. Defiance was predictable.
You break it, or you harness it. But last night...
after she saw the ear? She didn’t fight.
She clung to me. She buried her face in my chest and shook like a leaf in a hurricane, hiding from the monster who sired her by holding onto the monster who owned her.
That was the problem. I liked it.
I liked the weight of her fear. I liked that I was the only solid thing in her world. And that realization pissed me off more than the ear did.
Behind me, the bed shifted.
A soft, sharp whimper cut through the silence. Not a scream—Scarlett didn’t scream in her sleep anymore. Just a high, wounded sound, like a kicked dog.
I turned from the window. The Red Suite was swallowed in shadows, the only color coming from the silk sheets tangled around her legs. She was thrashing, her head tossing against the pillows, sweat slicking her dark hair to her forehead.
I walked over. I didn’t rush. I moved with the heavy, deliberate pace of a man inspecting his inventory. The carpet swallowed the sound of my bare feet. When I sat on the edge of the mattress, the dip in the frame made her roll instantly toward me. Gravity. Or instinct.
Her hand shot out, blind and desperate, grasping at the empty air until her fingers found my chest. She gripped the heavy silver dog tags hanging around my neck, her knuckles white.
"Don't wake up screaming for anyone but me, Scarlett," I muttered, my voice rough with morning grit.
Her eyes were still squeezed shut, trapped in whatever hell her brain was cooking up. Probably her father. Probably the knife.
I reached down and peeled back the duvet. Her silk slip was twisted up to her waist, exposing the bandage on her upper thigh. The glass cut from the gala. I lifted the edge of the medical tape with my thumb, checking the gauze. Clean. No bleed-through.
"Hold still," I commanded, though she was barely conscious. "I own every piece of you, down to the last drop of blood. You don't get to rot."
My thumb brushed the skin just above the tape. Soft. Warm. Alive. I pulled my hand back like I’d touched a live wire.
Scarlett gasped, her eyes snapping open.
Hazel. Bloodshot. Terrified.
She scrambled back, pushing herself up against the headboard, her chest heaving. Her hand flew to her throat, fingers locking around the thick diamond choker I’d welded onto her weeks ago. She tugged at it, checking the lock, checking the weight. Grounding herself in the metal.
"Nikolai," she breathed out. It wasn't a question. It was a location check.
"Who else?" I leaned in, bracing a hand on the mattress by her hip. "You expecting the boogeyman? Or just your daddy?"
She flinched at the reference. She pressed her forehead against my chest, her skin damp and hot against the cool scar tissue on my pec. "I saw him," she whispered. "He was cutting... he was cutting pieces off me."
"He’s not here."
"He sent an ear, Nikolai. A fucking ear."
"He sent a prop." I reached up and grabbed her jaw, my fingers digging into her cheeks, forcing her head back until she had to look at me. "Look at me, cunt. Stop shaking."
The word was harsh, a blunt instrument, but I didn’t say it with heat. I said it to snap the wire in her head. To bring her back to the room where I was the only threat.
Her eyes cleared, the fog of the nightmare burning off under the glare of my irritation. "I don't tremble for corpses, bastard," she spat back, her voice shaking but her chin lifting.
Good. There she was.
"Could have fooled me." I let go of her jaw and sat back, reaching for the pack of cigars on the nightstand. I pulled one out, rolling the dry leaf between my fingers. "Your father is desperate. Men like Aris Vance don’t get their hands dirty unless they’re terrified."
"Why?" She watched my hands. "Why send that? Why not just... pay the debt? Or come for me?"
"Because he’s broke," I said, putting the cigar in my mouth but not lighting it. "And because he knows Marco is watching. He wants the syndicate to think I’m losing my grip. That I’m compromised. If he proves I can’t secure the collateral, Marco orders an audit."
Scarlett went still. "An audit?"
"They take you back," I said flatly. "They liquidate the asset. Or they give you back to Aris for a discount, just to clear the books."
The blood drained from her face. She looked like a ghost in expensive lingerie. "You’d give me back?"
I chewed on the end of the unlit cigar. The taste of tobacco was bitter on my tongue.
The smart play was to hand her over. Wipe the slate clean.
Fifty million was a lot of money, but a war with my own syndicate was more expensive.
If I kept her, I was declaring rogue status.
I was putting a target on my back the size of the city.
I looked at her. Really looked at her. The bruise on her neck. The terror in her eyes that shifted into something darker, hungrier, when she looked at me.
I pulled the cigar from my mouth and threw it across the room. It hit the far wall with a sharp thud.
"No," I said.
Scarlett blinked. "No?"
"I’m not letting them touch what’s mine." The words came out low, a growl vibrating in my chest. "I will burn this syndicate to ash before I let Marco or your father touch a single hair on your head."
The air in the room shifted. It got heavy. Thick.
Scarlett stared at me, her chest rising and falling faster. She shifted on the bed, her knees falling open slightly. It was unconscious. A biological reaction to safety. To power.
"You swore," she whispered. "You said you were the only monster I had to worry about."
"I am." I leaned over her, caging her body with my arms. "You belong to me, Scarlett. Understand that is the only rule left. The debt doesn't matter. The money doesn't matter. You are the interest, and I am collecting."
She reached up. Her fingers, trembling slightly, traced the jagged scar across my throat. A reminder of the life I lived. "Then take it," she hissed. "Take the interest, Smirnov. Now."
I didn’t need to be told twice.
I stood up and shoved my sweatpants down, kicking them off. I was already hard. Painfully hard. The adrenaline from the threat and the rage at her father had nowhere else to go.
"Lie back," I ordered.
She dropped against the pillows, her eyes locked on me.
I climbed over her, my knees sinking into the mattress on either side of her hips.
I didn’t rip her slip off; I just shoved it up, bunching the silk around her waist. I checked her bandaged leg again, positioning it carefully so I wouldn’t tear the stitches.
Tenderness. It felt foreign in my hands. Disgusting. Necessary.
"You look like a queen in this bed," I muttered, grabbing her hips and dragging her down until her ass was on the edge of the mattress. "My queen. In my filth."
"Shut up and fuck me," she groaned, arching her back.
I gripped her waist, my thumbs digging into her hip bones, bruising the skin. "I feel your ache, Scarlett. It matches mine."
I didn’t rush. I wanted to, but I forced myself to slow down. This wasn’t just friction. This was a statement. A branding.
I grabbed the front of the diamond choker and twisted my fist into it, using the leverage to tilt her head back.
She gasped, exposing the long line of her throat.
I leaned down and crushed my mouth to hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a collision. Teeth and tongue and the taste of morning breath and desperation.
"Remember this," I growled against her lips. "This is what safety feels like."
"Nikolai..."
I entered her in one heavy, devastating thrust.
Scarlett cried out, a strangled sound trapped in her throat. She was tight. So fucking tight. My body seized, the pleasure hitting me like a physical blow to the chest. I held myself still, buried to the hilt, letting her stretch around me.
"Look at me," I commanded.
Her eyes fluttered open. Glassy. Wrecked.
"This depth is reserved for me," I said, my voice grating like gravel. "I am inside you. Nothing else exists. Not your father. Not the ear. Not the syndicate."
She wrapped her legs around my waist, her heels digging into my kidneys. "Move," she begged. "Please."
I pulled back slowly, agonizingly, until I was almost out, then drove back in. The friction was incredible. A deep, heavy ache that seemed to settle in the marrow of my bones.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
The sound of our bodies colliding filled the silence of the room. I kept the pace slow, punishing. I wanted her to feel every inch. I wanted to rewire her brain so that every time she closed her eyes, this was what she saw.
"Tell me you feel it," I gritted out, sweat dripping from my brow onto her chest. "The deep one."
"I feel it," she sobbed, her nails scraping down my back, carving red lines into my skin. "I feel you. Everywhere."
I watched her face. I watched the way her expression shattered, the mask of the defiant heiress crumbling into the raw need of the woman underneath. This was the truth. This was the only honest thing in our lives.
"See me, cunt," I snarled, increasing the speed. "See who keeps the shadows away."
"You," she gasped, throwing her head back. "Only you."
"I am not your father. I am your master."
She screamed my name, her hips snapping up to meet mine, demanding more force. "Bastard! Harder!"
I lost it. The control snapped.
I groaned, a guttural sound that tore out of my throat, and hammered into her. I grabbed her by the hips, lifting her, grinding us together with a violence that should have hurt but only felt like relief.
"Mine," I chanted, like a madman. "Mine. Only mine."
Every thrust was a bullet against the world trying to take her. Every time I slammed into her, I was killing Aris Vance a little more.
"Marco will never touch you," I swore, my breath coming in ragged gasps. "Your father is dead to me. Tell me you choose this fire."
"I choose it!" Scarlett wailed, her body bowing off the mattress. "I choose you!"
She broke. I felt the clamp of her muscles, the way she unraveled around me, shaking apart. The sight of her total surrender pushed me over the edge.
I buried my face in her neck, biting down on the sensitive cord of muscle there, and poured myself into her. It was violent and absolute. My vision went white. My heart hammered against my ribs like it was trying to break out.
"Paid," I wheezed, collapsing on top of her. "The debt is paid."
I stayed there, crushing her into the mattress, too exhausted to move. My lungs burned. The room smelled like sex and sweat and copper.
Scarlett’s hand came up, shaky and weak, and touched the back of my head. Her fingers curled into my short hair.
I kissed her shoulder, tasting salt. Then I shifted, rolling off her but keeping her close. I draped my heavy forearm across her throat, right over the diamond collar. It wasn't a threat. It was an anchor.
"Rest," I said, my voice barely a whisper. I stared at the door, my eyes adjusting to the shadows, looking for threats that weren't there yet. "I will watch the door."
Scarlett curled into my side, her breathing evening out.
"You are not collateral, Scarlett," I told the room, though she was already drifting off. "You are my war."