Chapter 4
Cecilia
Down in the basement, the air is humid and salty, dripping with rust and old water.
With every step, my lungs ache for fresh air, my mind clinging to the same image that drags me deeper into the unknown—the eyes, the hand that silenced me in a room full of people.
It’s madness, wanting to be anywhere near the man who tormented me, but I can’t stop.
Who are you?
The lower I descend, the more pressing the silence becomes, and the more attuned I am to every small sound. To the dripping water. To the wind and the slight rattling of chains.
Does he hear me coming? Does he know it’s me from the way I walk?
I halt midway, pressing my hand to my chest, trying to calm myself. Behind me, Enzo’s silhouette is out of sight. He even closed the door at the top of the staircase like I asked. For a second, I wish he hadn’t listened.
The shaky light from my phone illuminates the path. I try to keep it angled so I can see where to place my foot, but it’s an effort not to wave it around. The darkness is suffocating. I can’t imagine anyone being caged down here and not losing their mind.
Ahead, the stairs end. The path splinters into a winding track disappearing into shadow and a cobbled tunnel bathed in a faint, unsettling glow. One side is used as an escape route, stretching a few kilometers away from the palazzo, while the other has cages built into the walls.
For prisoners.
I’ve never been down here by myself, but I’ve been told the escape route exists. It’s easy to get lost; only my father and Cesare know their way through, leaving me to depend on them for survival. More than one part of me rages at the thought.
Ceciiii-liuhhh.
My head whips all the way to the left, the sound of my name traveling on the wind like faraway thunder. It shouldn’t sound like that—charged with electricity that sears my nerve endings. The way it’s enunciated makes it feel like the name is no longer just mine.
The phone slips past my fingers and falls to my feet with an echoing thud. The light flickers before going out, surrounding me with darkness.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, cursing under my breath. I crouch to pick it up, feeling cracks on the screen with my fingertips.
That’s when the whistle comes back—the same one I’ve been hearing for weeks.
Sick. Amused. Familiar.
A challenge to come closer.
Terror and recognition tangle into one, hitting me the same way it did the night of the recital. I swallow hard, hugging the phone to my chest as I urge my feet to move toward the sound.
Rationally, I know this person is locked up and chained. Enzo would’ve never let me come down by myself if he wasn’t absolutely sure, no matter what I’d offered in exchange.
It took half an hour to convince him, but in the end, he caved. There’s nothing this prisoner can do to me as long as I stay far enough away from his cell.
Even so, I’m terrified. My survival instincts kick in, telling me to abandon this whole thing, but I can’t. I won’t. I need answers, or I’m going to go mad.
I’ve thought about this moment a lot, exhausting all the different ways my stalker and I would meet for the first time. Most scenarios involved terrible things, like him cornering me in dark alleys and taking my life.
But there were others, too—shameful thoughts that lulled me to sleep sometimes, making the slick heat between my legs impossible to ignore.
I’d hate myself for it, knowing it was wrong.
My morbid fascination made no sense, yet my body didn’t seem to care.
Thank God my curiosity will die in this basement when I meet him once and for all.
“You weren’t as smart as you thought,” I say, my voice strained, aching.
The whistle suddenly stops.
It stops, and so does my heart.
“What, did you think you wouldn’t get caught?” I ask, taking careful steps forward.
Only silence answers back as I stop in front of some prison bars. My eyes still haven’t adjusted to the darkness, so I can barely see what’s beyond. All I know is the energy emanating from this space is just…off. The air is thick, charged, and it makes breathing hard.
“Your silence doesn’t scare me. I find it quite ludicrous.” The lie scrapes my throat raw.
Chains groan, a low, metallic whine that slithers behind the iron bars before they drag across the floor toward me. Inside the cell, the darkness stirs, breathes, as a shape stretches up the wall—tall and alive, as if the prisoner were sitting on the floor, and now he’s getting up.
Then, something pale flashes through the bars. A somewhat familiar hand, inked to the knuckles, slides out inch by inch, like a demon crawling out of its lair.
“Come to me then,” he murmurs, his voice deep and lush, like poisoned smoke. “If you’re not afraid.”
My heartbeat picks up, my body taut, paralyzed. I force myself to speak, even though I didn’t expect him to sound like that. “W-What’s there to be afraid of? A rabid dog barking from a cage? I’m perfectly fine where I am.”
A hum of amusement. “Lie.”
I squint my eyes, noticing the protruding veins and muscular forearms wrapped in ink—roots and symbols I’ve never seen in my life.
It’s him. The man I saw at the recital.
“Y-You’ve been following me. I’m here now, so talk.”
“Talk?” he muses. “There are many things I want to do with you, Cecilia. Talking isn’t one.”
His mocking tone hits me like a slap. “You’re chained to a filthy wall. If sex is what you wanted, you’re about to die a virgin at my father’s hand.” Something tells me he’s not a virgin, though. His confidence seems to know no bounds.
A sense of dread envelops me. I might’ve gotten him angry. Then, he laughs.
“Unfortunately for you, Lastochka, sex wasn’t what I had in mind.”
My cheeks flame. “What, then? What the hell do you want from me?”
I blink, urging my useless eyes to fully adjust. There’s a small hole in the wall to his left, looking out into the night. Not much light is coming through, but when he tilts his head in that direction, his eyes become visible—green and watchful like I remember them from the gallery.
I suck in a breath. Danger is imminent, but, despite the fear, I force myself to hold that gaze, to show him he doesn’t scare me. My face begins to heat, and for the first time since coming down here, I wish I were wearing more than a flimsy sundress.
“How does it feel?” he purrs.
“How does what feel?”
“Freedom. Following a monster into the dark because you wanted to, not because someone asked.”
I pause, the question taking me aback. No one has asked me that before, let alone someone whose own freedom is, well, gone. But something else makes his question invasive—he knows things about me. He has to, given the amount of time he’s been on my track. But how much…and what…I’m not sure.
He must see the conflict written all over my face, because he adds, “Something to tell your therapist about. Or, you know, shove it under the rug like you do with everything you don’t want to think about.”
“H-How do you—”
“Odious woman,” he sighs, as if he knows my shrink personally.
Not an answer, though. He’s giving me nothing. Nothing.
He steps closer to the bars, the sound skittering down my spine, and I hate myself for taking the smallest step back. His hand pokes through, and he props himself on a horizontal bar, leaning in.
Finally, I see him—all of him—my eyes adjusted enough.
I see the lips that called my name, lush and broad.
I see the sculpted nose and the sharp angles of his masculinity—his jaw, his cheekbones, and the shape of his busted lips.
Handsome. Toxic. Brutal in ways I’ve never come across, not even in my own house.
The scars and ink that mar his visible skin, the sheer strength of his body and the primal dominance in his stance all attest to that.
How? How did someone like him get caught?
“Maybe I wanted to meet you,” he says with a cruel smile, as if he’s seeing the questions on my face. “Maybe I picked this exact spot to lure you in and eat. You. Up.”
I shiver, his words crawling up my arms, ticklish and dangerous. “You had your chance to kill me. Out on the street, it would’ve been easy. In here, you’re done.” He is done. Only a proud and arrogant man would deny it.
“And what would’ve been the fun in that?” Again, that contemplative tilt of his head.
I look away, feigning incredulity but really taking a short break from the intensity of his gaze. “So, that’s it? You stalked me so we can have this conversation, and you’ll die a prisoner?”
He rolls his eyes. “So many questions… Perhaps we should be playing a game, you and me.”
“Not interested.”
Lie. I’m surprised he isn’t calling it out. Though it’s not his games I’m interested in. Instead, it’s digging more into this thread. It’s a long shot, but maybe if I find out what he wants before the guards do…
No. My father wouldn’t cancel my marriage plans just because I helped question some prisoner. And yet, I still find myself wanting to try to be useful in some other way than being a bride. It’s all I’ve got left.
The man’s lips twitch with a smile that promises nothing good. “You lie beautifully. I don’t mind it, especially when you do it because I ask.”
I catch the knowing look in his eyes, understanding exactly what he’s talking about. The recital—when he commanded silence from my lips with a simple gesture, and I obliged.
“You had nothing to do with my decision to keep quiet. If I’d screamed, it would’ve ruined my event. That’s all.”
I can almost feel the tickle of his breath on my skin. Does he even realize how close we are? He has to. And yet…he has given no sign of wanting to harm me. Yet, I remind myself.
What would his skin feel like? Would he grab me roughly, or would he be tender? There’s nothing soft about him, but the way he’s toying with me leads me to believe he’d want to take his sweet time. My curiosity disgusts me, but I can’t stop it from asking questions.
Reckless, reckless, reckless.
My father would lose his mind if he knew where I was.
A drip of water echoes somewhere in the distance, and, like the ticking of an invisible clock, it reminds me my time here is limited. Enzo could be coming for me any moment now.
“Look,” I say, taking a deep, shaky breath. “I don’t know who you are. Not your name, nor any other basic information about you. Tell me something, and I might reconsider coming back, if that’s what you want.”
A dark chuckle echoes—conjuring starry nights, and whiskey, and sheets that smell of lust. “Let’s not pretend you’re interested in my height, eye color, or girth, Cecilia. Though for your peace of mind, I’ll tell you—6 '5, green, and, if you’re good, we’ll leave it up for demonstration one night.”
My pulse quickens, cheeks flaming hot. I hate how easily he can fluster me with just words. It’s not even the words, actually. It’s the way he says them, like he knows exactly the right ways to coax that dark curiosity growing inside me.
“Y-Your name. You didn’t mention that.
A small pause, and then—
“Mikhail Rykov.”
Rykov.
A cold dread washes over me, the name a heavy stone in the pit of my stomach.
I’ve heard it before. Yuri Rykov is my father’s biggest enemy, the Pakhan of the Russian Bratva out on the East Coast. And this man, this Mikhail…
he looks young enough to be, perhaps, Yuri’s son. He can’t be more than thirty-something.
For my father to have captured such an important figure and to have so much leverage against the Bratva…
“Tell me something more then,” I rush to say. “Because you’re right. I don’t really care about any of that. If you want to see me again—”
“Ah, but you don’t make the rules here, Lastochka,” he drawls. “I do. And right now, I want you to be good and go to bed before anyone else realizes you’re gone.”
Anyone else? How could he…? There is no way he knows who helped me come down here.
“I don’t…understand,” I nearly whisper.
“You don’t need to. Do what I asked, and I promise to take good care of you over the next few nights.”
My mind is empty, so empty, and I’m at a loss for words. He’s sending me away? Even if I told him I’m never coming back? He stalked me, made it clear he wanted things from me. And yet…
“I repeat, even though you seem to refuse to hear me—this is your last chance. Why don’t you say what you want to say now?”
“Because, Cecilia,” he says with lethal quiet, “we both know you’ll be back.”