Chapter 2
EVELINA
It’s like watching a house of cards months in the making come crashing down at the first leisurely lick of a breeze. Like nailing all thirty-two fouettés in the Black Swan pas de deux only to lose your balance on the final relevé into fifth and break your ankle.
Every cell in my body screams in panic. Every nerve ending blares like sirens in my ears. Every inch of my skin quivers. But there’s no escape.
He’s not outright choking me, but the malicious intent is clear in the quiet, humming power under his fingertips as they leisurely stroke the pulse points on either side of my trachea.
Icy, arctic blue eyes pin me to the spot, his head tilted slightly to one side as he looms over me, studying me out of bored curiosity like I'm a bug, or a briar he’s just plucked off the hem of his slacks.
Sweat sheens the small of my back beneath the shimmery gold dress. My pulse skips, heart tripping over itself as I stare horrified up at his masked face.
“I—no, my name is Viv—”
The whimper gurgles and dies in my throat as he applies just a hint more pressure with his fingers.
“Why don’t we try this again,” Vaughn murmurs quietly. “This time, let’s make a conscious choice to tell the truth.”
I shiver at the way his words ooze so sensually and effortlessly from his lips, while also carrying so much weight and power. At the way his eyes seem to be slowly peeling back first my clothing and then my skin to peer right inside me.
There’s an unsettling calmness to him that sinks into my very bones and turns my insides to jelly. I swallow uncomfortably against the hand at my throat, my head slightly tipped back to look up at him as he towers over me.
He’s so freaking tall.
I mean, I’m on the short side at five foot three. But Vaughn is easily a foot taller, possibly more. All it does is add to the throbbing, pulsing power that emanates from him.
His body is lean and yet clearly muscular, with broad shoulders straining at his black dress shirt and the obvious biceps bulging beneath it. Inky black tattoos snake and coil around his strong, veined forearms and up from the opening of his shirt from his muscular chest to his jawline.
This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
“I’m only going ask you once more, Evelina,” he murmurs with a quiet intensity, his smooth, smoky voice wrapping around me like tentacles.
My larynx jumps against his hand as I dart my eyes to the side, trying to see how far we are from the door.
“No. That's a terrible idea.”
My nerve endings spasm as his thumb presses against the throbbing pulse in my jugular. But that even, deep tone of his yanks my attention right back to him.
Up into those piercing, ice-blue eyes.
I don't say anything. I can’t. All I can do is stare, transfixed by that cool, arresting look in his eyes.
He stays silent too, like he’s waiting for me to make the next move. So we just stand there, him looking down into my face with ice in his eyes and the animalistic, moaned sounds of screwing wrapping around us and turning my stomach into knots.
A slight glint sparks in his eyes, and the faintest shadow of amusement twists the corners of his lips.
“Are you uncomfortable, Evelina?”
The small of my back grows damper. My palms become clammier as I rub my thumb anxiously against my index and middle fingers.
“I…” I try to force a calm and ease I don’t feel at all into my posture and tone. But it’s a laughably useless show of bravado, especially when my voice cracks and a violent tremble ripples through my shoulders.
“The activities in this room. Do they bother you?”
I shake my head side to side. “N-no,” I croak.
His lips curl a bit more.
“Really? You’re totally comfortable with everything you see right now?”
I don’t even trust myself to open my mouth at this point. I just nod my head as his smirk spreads a little further.
“And here I thought we had agreed to tell the truth.”
His hand around my throat suddenly slides up to grab my jaw, twisting my head to the side and forcing me to stare at the scene barely five feet away.
My eyes go wide and I stare in shock at the girl on her knees in front of a man sitting in a leather armchair, her lips wrapped around his dick, her mouth slurping up and down.
Holy crap.
Wet, slobbering sounds fill my ears, making me cringe. Tension twists and claws at my chest and arms, my very toes curling in my high heels at the wave of anxiety that washes over me.
I try to look away, but Vaughn’s grip is unyielding. I strain harder, trying to twist my face away from the sight of the girl’s mouth swallowing the thick, rigidly hard penis, slick and glistening with her spit. But that’s not happening, not with his hand holding my jaw so firmly.
So I close my eyes.
I have to.
It’s…too much, right in front of my face like that.
Again, it’s not that I don’t like the idea of sex.
It’s just…right freaking there, and it’s so shockingly on display that it’s like the anxiety inside of me is turning to napalm through my veins.
My eyes are still squeezed shut when I hear a soft, deep chuckle coming from Vaughn’s throat.
He pulls my face back around, and I feel deeply, profoundly pathetic as I slowly open my eyes.
“I believe the expression is don’t jump into the deep end when you can’t swim.” His voice rumbles through my body as his hand slides sensually down again, wrapping around my throat in that same firm, controlled, non-violent way.
“I…”
Come on. Why the heck can’t I make words right now?
Do you really need to ask that?
“This is the very last time I’m going to ask you this, Evelina,” Vaughn murmurs in his low baritone.
“What the fuck are you doing here? And do not insult me by trying to sell me some bullshit about you just happening to be at this club and chancing to wander into this room using a password you have no reason to know. Because I promise you…”
I whimper—legit whimper—when his hand squeezes my windpipe.
“I’m not in the market for bullshit tonight. So…” His eyes narrow, causing my pulse to spike. “Tell me why—”
“I need a favor!”
The sentence explodes like one long uninterrupted word from my shaking lips. Bored amusement glides over his features.
“A favor.”
I nod. “Y-yeah.”
“I’m all ears.”
I swallow heavily, his powerful hand still around my throat. My legs shake.
“My father—”
“No.”
There’s not a shred of humor in his tone when that single word stabs into me. His mouth thins, and he slowly shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”
An icy chill rakes through my body.
He doesn’t even know what I was going to say.
“Please, if I could just—”
“No, you could not,” he murmurs coldly. “I’m categorically not interested.”
My lips purse. “Please! You don’t even know what I’m going to ask!”
“I can guess,” he growls, his hand tightening a little more around my throat. “Your father, having been banished to Russia by your brother Roman, is having a bad time of it without power, money, or allies. Is that more or less it?”
My heart sinks.
I knew this was going to be a tough sell. Especially since—
“The same father, I might add, who got himself banished by said brother after he tried to murder Roman. Oh, yes…” His eyes narrow. “And murder my brother, too.”
Yeah.
That.
I’m not blind, or an idiot. I know Pavel Nikitin is a cold, often cruel, violent and bad-tempered man. I also know he was always hard on Roman—much harder than he was on me.
And I know—I know—that whatever goodwill anyone in their right mind might still have for a parent like that should go up in smoke when that parent ties your brother and your brother's boyfriend up in a basement and tries to kill them.
But the thing is, whatever I have left inside my heart when it comes to my father isn’t goodwill. It’s definitely not charity. I’m not even sure it’s love. It’s just…something. And for the life of me, I can’t seem to get it out of my system. I can’t cut that last cord.
So that’s why I’m here. Because six months ago, when Roman took my father down and replaced him as the head of the Nikitin Bratva, he only agreed not to kill our dad if he could banish him to Russia and leave him with nothing.
No access to the Nikitin bank accounts. No power. No allies to speak of back here in New York.
And now the wolves in Russia are circling.
Older enemies. Newer enemies. Neutral parties that see the opportunity for some street cred if they rip apart the deposed former king of the Nikitin empire.
And as horrible a person as he is, Pavel is still my dad. Roman’s made it crystal clear that he has zero intentions of doing anything but applaud when someone inevitably kills our father, and the other mafia families in New York feel the same.
The Italians. The Irish. The Greeks.
I’ve checked.
Which is why I’m down to this last-ditch effort. Why I’m here, so far outside my element that I can’t even feel the sun anymore, pleading with this man as my only hope.
Unfortunately, it’s now hitting me just how ridiculously naive that hope was.
The Obsidian Syndicate is powerful in a way other mafia families can only dream of, my own included. They have allies and spies everywhere. Resources I can’t even imagine. They influence world politics, banking systems, the very direction of history.
And the man whose hand is around my throat with a cruel smirk on his lips is the man who leads that organization.
“Am I getting warmer?” Vaughn says with dry sarcasm.
“Please—”
“No.”
His arctic gaze narrows on me, sending my pulse racing.
“Don’t worry, Evelina,” he adds. “There is one favor I’m going to grant you tonight, because the pure balls it took for you to walk in here, even if it’s quite clear you had no fucking idea what you were walking into, amuses me.”
He leans down closer, his masked face filling my field of vision and his clean, spicy and masculine scent enveloping me like smoke.
I shiver as I force myself to speak. “W-wh-what’s the fav—”
“I’m going to let you walk out of here…”
He leans all the way down, his lips barely millimeters from my ear. Then he steps right into me, his firm, muscled chest practically pressed against my body as his big fingers splay across my neck.
“Alive.”
My heart lurches into my throat.
“You not only knew about the party tonight, but you also knew the password that would get you through the door. Which means you were spying on my organization and stole information from one of its members.”
“I…I didn’t mean to—”
“I’ve killed for less than that, Evelina,” he murmurs against my ear, his breath teasing over my skin. My eyes flutter shut. My breath becomes labored. My head swims. The sounds of raw sex and wet thrusting fill my ears as my stomach knots.
“So, you’re welcome. Favor granted. And now, if I were you, and had any common sense in that pretty little princess head,” he growls, “I would run, not walk, away from this place, never talk about tonight, never even think about it, and never once look back. Furthermore, I would do all of that exceptionally quickly, before I change my mind.”
That’s when I bolt from the room, the sound of wet thrusting and choked moans still echoing in my ears.