CHAPTER 21
SCARLETT P.O.V.
The metal of the diamond choker was cold, but the skin underneath it was burning.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the phantom weight of Nikolai still pressing me into the mattress.
My body was a roadmap of the last twelve hours—bruises blooming like dark flowers on my hips, the sting of the bite mark on my shoulder, and that deep, hollow ache between my legs that wouldn't go away.
Nikolai was already up. Of course he was. Monsters don't need sleep; they just recharge their malice.
I watched him through half-lidded eyes as he stood by the mirror, fastening his cufflinks. Gold. Heavy. He moved with that clinical, predatory precision that made my stomach turn over. Snap. Snap. He adjusted his collar, hiding the scratch marks I’d left on his neck.
"You are quiet this morning, collateral," he said. He didn't turn around. He was looking at my reflection in the glass, watching me watch him.
I pulled the sheet up higher, covering the evidence. "I almost forgot you were a monster last night."
He turned then, smoothing the lapels of his black suit. The movement was so sharp it cut the air. "I am always exactly what I need to be, Scarlett. Don't confuse biology with mercy."
He walked over to the bed, looming over me like a dark skyscraper. He smelled of gunpowder and expensive cedar—that intoxicating, terrifying scent that was starting to smell like home. And that scared me more than his gun.
"Stay where I put you," he ordered, his voice low, vibrating right through the mattress. "I have business to conduct. The city is still bleeding from your father's little stunt."
He turned and walked out, the heavy door clicking shut with the precision of a bank vault.
I waited ten seconds. Then I scrambled out of bed, my legs shaking.
I limped into the bathroom, hissing as my thigh wound—the one from the perimeter breach—stretched.
I ripped the old bandage off. The skin was angry, red and puckered.
Ugly. I looked at the mirror. The bite mark near my collarbone was turning a deep purple.
He hadn't just claimed me; he’d branded me. Like cattle.
"This isn't love," I whispered to the glass, watching my own eyes widen. "This is degradation and biology. He owns the air I breathe, and I let him."
I was washing the sleep out of my eyes when the door to the suite beeped.
I froze. Nikolai didn't knock, and he didn't use keycards.
Silas walked in. He was young, skinny, with a nervous tic in his left eye that always made him look like he was about to bolt. He was carrying a breakfast tray, the china rattling against the silver.
"Morning, Miss," he mumbled, not looking at me.
He set the tray on the low table in the lounge. His hands were shaking so bad he spilled coffee onto the pristine white napkin. He grabbed a cloth, wiping it frantically.
"Relax, Silas," I said, wrapping my silk robe tighter. "Nikolai isn't here to execute you for a stain."
He looked up then, and the look in his eyes stopped me dead. It wasn't fear. It was pity.
"I know who you are, Miss Vance," he whispered, stepping closer. "I worked for your father’s logistics team before... before the debt. This isn't right. What he's doing to you."
My hackles went up. "Do you often break protocol, guard?"
"He's playing you," Silas said, the words rushing out like vomit. "The ear. The one in the box."
My blood ran cold. "Don't."
"It wasn't your father," Silas said, gripping the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white. "It wasn't Aris. Nikolai's men got it from the morgue. Some unrelated hit. They planted it to make you think your father was torturing you. To make you run to him."
The room tilted.
"You're lying," I breathed, but I was already moving, crossing the space between us. I grabbed his forearm, my grip hard. "Tell me you're lying, you bastard."
"He didn't protect you, Miss. He tricked you into staying," Silas hissed, looking at the door. "If you stay, he wins your mind as well as your body. You know he's capable of it. Look at you. You're wearing his diamonds while he keeps you in a cage."
Rage. Pure, white-hot rage exploded in my chest, incinerating the confusing softness I'd felt the night before. It was a game. All of it. The vulnerability, the sex, the protection. He had manipulated my trauma to make me his pet.
"Get me out," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. It sounded like a weapon.
Silas nodded, sweat beading on his upper lip. He pulled a crumpled, laminated map fragment from his pocket. "West Gate. Guard rotation is in twenty minutes. There's a gap in the sensors. I can get us through the laundry chute to the sub-basement."
"Who is waiting?" I demanded. "Give me a name."
"A friend of your mother's. An old associate. It doesn't matter," Silas urged, shoving the map back into his pocket. "It's not him. That is all that matters. You have to leave now, or you're his forever."
I didn't hesitate. I ran back to the bedroom. I looked at my closet—cocktail dresses and ruined silk. Useless. I grabbed Nikolai's black wool coat from the chair, throwing it over my thin slip. It swallowed me whole, smelling of him. The irony tasted like ash in my mouth.
I saw the heavy glass paperweight on his desk. I grabbed it, shoving it into the coat pocket. It was heavy, stupid, and practically useless, but I needed to feel something solid in my hand.
"I will burn this entire place down if I have to," I thought, shoving my feet into my heels because I didn't have sneakers. "You won't have me, Nikolai. Not like this."
I met Silas at the door. "Lead the way."
We moved fast. Too fast. We slipped into the service corridors, a maze of concrete and exposed pipes that smelled of bleach and old grease.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming every time my heel hit the concrete.
My thigh was throbbing, a hot pulse of pain that synced with my heartbeat.
"Keep up!" Silas hissed, looking over his shoulder. "We're losing time!"
"I can't... slow down," I gasped, using the wall for support. My fingers came away grey with dust.
We burst into the kitchens. It was chaos. Chefs were screaming, pots were clanging. The smell of roasting meat and industrial cleaner hit me like a physical blow. I shrank into Nikolai’s coat, pulling the collar up. I felt like a ghost haunting my own prison.
"Watch the heat, Silas! Get that trash out of my sight!" a chef yelled, slamming a pan down.
I ducked behind a massive steel trolley loaded with dirty plates, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Don't look up. Don't breathe.
We made it to the sub-basement door. Silas fumbled with his keycard, his hands vibrating.
Beep. Red light.
"Damn it!" he swore, swiping again. "The system is slow! Nikolai's men are due for rotation now!"
"Hurry up! Or I swear to God—" I gripped the paperweight in my pocket, my nails digging into my palm until I could smell the faint copper tang of blood.
Beep. Green light.
The heavy steel door groaned open.
We spilled out into the morning air. It was brutal. The cold bit instantly through my thin slip, shocking my skin. My breath puffed out in violent clouds of white smoke.
We were behind the dumpsters at the West Gate. The smell of rotting trash and wet cardboard was overwhelming, but beyond it, I could see the road. The real world.
"How much time?" I whispered, my teeth chattering.
"Seconds," Silas said. He pulled out a cheap burner phone, tapping out a message with frantic thumbs. "Just hold tight. The car is coming."
He stepped away from me, moving toward the edge of the concrete pillar. "I need to signal the driver."
"Silas, wait—"
He disappeared around the corner.
Silence.
I stood there, alone behind a dumpster, shivering in my captor's coat. A cold, awful certainty settled in my gut. Why did he leave me here? Nikolai is never this careless. Even his guards aren't this careless.
I scraped a layer of frost off the hood of a dead service truck, looking at my reflection in the dark glass. I looked wild. Desperate.
Then I heard it. The low, purring rumble of an engine.
A car glided to a stop at the gate. It wasn't a taxi. It wasn't a getaway van.
It was a pristine, black sedan. Highly polished. The exact model Nikolai used.
My brain screamed Run, but my body was frozen. Maybe Silas stole it? Maybe it was the only car available? I took a step forward, hope overriding the blaring siren in my head. It’s a different car. It’s still freedom.
The rear door opened.
And Nikolai Smirnov stepped out.
He didn't have a gun. He didn't have guards flanking him. He just stood there, his black suit absorbing the morning light, his hands tucked casually into his pockets. He looked... disappointed.
The air left my lungs.
"Nikolai!" I tried to scream, but it came out as a voiceless choke.
He didn't yell. He didn't run at me. He just looked at me across the twenty yards of gravel like I was a math problem he had already solved.
I knew you would break. I could hear his voice in my head, clear as a bell.
Behind me, the door to the guard shack flew open. Two of Nikolai's massive security enforcers dragged Silas out. He was crying, blood already streaming from his nose.
"The bait worked, Smirnov," one of the guards called out, throwing Silas to the ground like a sack of trash.
Silas looked up at me, shaking his head. "I'm sorry," he mouthed. "I had to."
The double-cross. Silas wasn't a conspirator. He was a pawn. Nikolai had used him to test me. To see if the night we shared meant anything.
And I had failed.
"You bastard..." I whispered, the fight draining out of me.
Nikolai began to walk toward me. Slow. Deliberate. He flicked a speck of imaginary dust off his sleeve.
"My bed wasn't warm enough, Scarlett?" His voice was low, carried by the wind. "Or did you just prefer the promise of a lie?"
I stepped back, my heels crunching on the gravel. "You planted the ear. You sick fuck."
He stopped ten feet away. The sun caught the jagged scar on his throat. "I tested your loyalty. And you threw away honesty for the hope of a stranger. Watch your feet. You are walking on my property."
"I am not your property!"
I turned and ran. It was a stupid, animal reaction. I pivoted on my good leg and sprinted for the perimeter wall.
My injured thigh gave out immediately. I stumbled, crying out.
Nikolai didn't even have to run. He caught me in three long strides. His arm clamped around my waist, lifting me off my feet like I weighed nothing. The world spun—sky, gravel, Nikolai's face.
"Stupid girl," he growled against my ear. "You are weak, but you are mine."
"Let me go!" I thrashed, kicking out. My heel connected with his shin, but he didn't even flinch.
He didn't put me down. He shifted his grip, his large hand wrapping around the diamond choker at my throat. He pulled, forcing my head back, forcing me to look at him.
"You owe me payment for this foolishness," he said, his eyes black pits of cold rage. "Interest will be paid in skin."
"I hate you," I gasped, clawing at his hand.
"Good," he said. "Hate keeps you warm."
He dragged me—literally dragged me, my feet barely touching the ground—across the main courtyard. Hassan was standing by the entrance, smoking a cigarette. He looked at me, then at Nikolai, and shook his head. Disappointed.
"Clean up the mess at the gate," Nikolai barked at him, not breaking stride.
"Understood," Hassan said. He didn't look at me again.
Humiliation burned hotter than my leg. They all saw it. The captured princess. The failed escape.
We hit the grand staircase. I dug my heels into the plush runner, trying to stop him. "I can't... my leg..."
"If you fall, I won't stop," Nikolai said, tightening his grip on the choker until I gagged. "You will drag yourself up, or be dragged by the throat. Your choice."
I scrambled, breathless, stumbling up the marble steps, my hair falling in my face. I would not beg. I would rather die than beg.
He threw me into the Red Suite. I stumbled, tripping over the thick carpet and falling to my knees.
The door slammed. The deadbolt slid home with a sound like a gunshot.
Nikolai stood by the door. He took a breath, then slowly shrugged off his suit jacket. He let it drop to the floor. A pool of expensive darkness.
"We were done with games," he said, undoing his cufflinks and dropping them on the side table. Clink. Clink. "I suppose I was wrong."
I scrambled backward until my back hit the wall. "He told me about the ear. Was it true?"
Nikolai loosened his tie, his eyes never leaving mine. "Does it matter? You ran."
He walked toward me. He felt huge. The room felt tiny.
"We start over, Scarlett. Right back to the beginning. You are collateral. Nothing more." He reached out, not to hit me, but to undo the top button of the coat I had stolen. "I will use every single tool I taught you to destroy the part of you that thought it could breathe without my permission."
"Nikolai, please—"
"I will make you beg for the chains you tried to run from."
He stepped back and reached for his belt buckle. The sound of the leather pulling through the loops was a soft, hideous rasp.
I squeezed my eyes shut, tears finally leaking out—not from sadness, but from pure, unadulterated terror. I had chosen the fire. And now I was going to burn.
"Kneel," he said.
And God help me, I did.