Chapter 7
Zoya
Apromise. A vow. I vow to escape him the second he stops this car.
“I didn’t agree to this,” I say quietly. “You are abducting me.”
“What do you plan to do about it, Zoya? Go to the police?”
“You are an arsehole,” I grit out.
“You don’t know the half of it. You probably don’t want to know. Daddy’s little girl with her millionaire lifestyle, quite happy to ignore the dirt and blood that comes along with the money.”
“I never asked for any of this,” I snap, the heat rising in my cheeks. “And I certainly didn’t ask for a psychopath in a Tom Ford suit to hijack my car.”
He chuckles, a dark, rumbling sound that vibrates through the small cabin. “Tom Ford. You noticed.”
“Hard to miss. Millionaire lifestyle, remember?” I turn away, staring out at the blurred streetlights smearing across the wet glass. My fingers find the bag at my feet and dig into the strap. If he knew I was sitting on a fortune, his ‘protection’ might turn into something far more transactional.
“Spoken like a true Bratva brat,” he replies, checking the side mirror with casual ease. “You judge because you’re scared. It’s a natural reaction, Zoya. Prey always fears the predator, even when he’s keeping the other beasts at bay.”
Brat? I’ll give him brat. “You’re not keeping anything at bay. You’re just the beast that got to me first.”
He doesn’t deny it. He just accelerates, weaving through the congestion of South West London with terrifying precision.
The central locking light glows red on the door, a tiny LED mocking my freedom.
I could try to grab the wheel, force a crash, but he’s twice my size and clearly enjoys violence.
It would probably turn him on. My only play right now is to wait. To survive.
Nik wouldn’t take my call, which just proves he did this. I haven’t even checked my bank accounts, and part of me doesn’t want to. I’ve still got my phone gripped in my hand, and I move it into position, unlocking it and pressing the banking app.
“Who are you calling?” Roman asks, his voice bored.
“No one,” I snap. “I need to see if Nik…” I bite my lip. Why am I telling him anything?
“Nik, what? Froze your accounts?”
I don’t answer. I don’t give him the satisfaction. I open the app and watch numbers I’ve known my whole life replaced by a sterile message: account suspended. Another. Suspended. The American one? Frozen. My breath catches low in my chest, shallow and ugly.
“Thought so,” he says mildly.
I lock the screen and slide the phone down beside my thigh, trapping it with my palm.
My other hand tightens around the straps of the gym bag until my knuckles ache.
This is it, then. Whatever I was this morning—pampered, insulated, smug—has been erased with a few keystrokes and a new lock on my own front door.
What’s left of me is stuffed into this bag.
I have nothing. No clothes. Not my collection of crystal ducks. No photos. Nothing.
“I need to get back inside my house.”
“You want to break in?” he asks, not incredulous, not at all. Curious.
“Will you help me?”
“And then what if I did? You intend to stay there and change the locks again until Nik changes them a third time and you play this game forever?”
Tears prick my eyes. “All my stuff is there!”
“I will buy you new stuff.”
“I am not your responsibility! I want to go home. I have things there that are precious.”
He stares at me for a long moment. Probably too long, considering he should be watching the road. “Zoya,” he says, almost kindly, as he averts his gaze back to looking out of the windscreen.
“I can’t replace what’s in that house,” I say, my voice rough. “Not everything is a receipt and a courier. My mum’s things. Photos. A letter. You don’t get to decide what’s precious.”
“I know what’s precious,” he replies, maddeningly calm. “And I know what gets people killed while they go back for it.”
A cold thread works down my spine. I undo the seatbelt, just to see him react. The car gives a warning beep. He doesn’t look at me, but I feel his attention sharpen.
“Put it back on.”
“Make me.”
He turns the steering wheel, and we bounce up the grass verge, nearly causing an accident. He brakes, not hard, but enough to jolt me forward. He doesn’t smile. The lesson lands anyway.
“Put it back on.”
“No.” But even as I say it, I click it back into place.
I stare out at the rain-blurred lights, swallowing the burn in my throat as he sets off again, gliding into traffic as if everyone should move out of the way for him.
I focus on the rain instead of him. It sluices across the windscreen in frantic sheets, a smeared watercolour of red brake lights and sodium lamps. “How do I know I’m safe with you?”
The horrible feeling that he could overpower me at any moment claws at me. He could take whatever he wanted, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him.
Streetlights give way to darker stretches, London thinning into slick black roads and service stations glowing like cheap promises.
He drives as if the roads belong to him.
I watch the mirror, half expecting the black sedan to reappear, Nik’s men to box us in.
Nothing. Just rain, wind, and the hum of tyres.
“For what it’s worth, you are,” he finally answers, the low timbre of his voice vibrating through the small space. “Unlike Nik, I don’t benefit from your death. I benefit from your presence.”
Presence. It sounds possessive. Heavy.
“What does that mean?” I whisper, watching his hand flex on the steering wheel. His knuckles are inked, brutal looking against the luxury leather.
“It means you breathe because I allow it, and right now, I’m feeling generous.”
We turn off the road, the headlights sweeping across massive iron gates that look more like the entrance to a prison than a home.
They swing open silently, swallowing us into a driveway flanked by trees so dense they blot out the moon.
The house at the end is a monolith of stone and shadow, imposing and terrifyingly isolated.
“Welcome home,” he murmurs, killing the engine. The silence that follows is deafening.
I look at the dark manor, then at the man who claims to be my saviour. “Home. Where I don’t have anything except the clothes on my back,” I say bitterly.
He opens his door and steps out into the deluge. By the time he rounds the bonnet and wrenches my door open, I’ve shoved the gym bag securely under my arm. It’s heavy, a physical reminder of the secrets I’m smuggling into his fortress.
“Come,” he commands, offering a hand.
I glare at it, but he doesn’t give me time to take it. He grabs my fingers, squeezing tightly. “Don’t bite the hand that now feeds you, Zoya,” he murmurs, pulling me closer.
I stiffen as he walks me towards the front door that opens seconds before we reach it. “Am I a prisoner here now?”
“A prisoner?” He urges me over the threshold, the sudden warmth of the hallway hitting my damp skin. “That implies punishment. This is preservation.”
The heavy door clicks shut behind us, sealing out the storm and the world I knew this morning. The sound echoes against black and white marble floors that gleam under a sharp, modern chandelier. This place is cold perfection. Just like him.
I try to yank my hand from his, but his grip is iron. He pulls me further in, his blue eyes scanning me with a terrifying proprietary air.
“Andrei,” Roman barks without looking away from me.
A man appears like a ghost.
“Show Miss Antonova to her room,” Roman murmurs, his eyes on my lips, making me gulp. “And make sure she is fed.” To my surprise, he steps back and turns on his heel to walk away from me.
I glance at his retreating back and then at the door. I take one step, but Andrei moves in closer. I mutter as he glares menacingly at me. “Don’t try it,” he says quietly. “You won’t make it ten feet.”
“You’re going to stop me?”
“He will.”
Those two words send a chill down my spine.
I grimace, but he moves behind me and practically herds me along without touching me. He leads me towards a sweeping staircase that looks like it belongs in a museum rather than a home.
My gym bag bumps against my hip, heavy with the weight of my father’s secret legacy. I clutch the strap tighter like a lifeline.
We ascend in silence. The house is vast, decorated in shades of grey and charcoal. It’s a reflection of the man who owns it—beautiful, expensive, and utterly soulless.
Andrei marches me down a long corridor lined with closed doors before stopping at the very end. He throws a door open and practically shoves me inside with his mere presence.
“Dinner will be brought up,” he says, his hand lingering on the brass handle.
The door clicks shut, followed by the distinct, heavy thud of a deadbolt sliding home.
I am alone. I rush to the door, testing the handle, but the door refuses to budge.
Turning around, I take in my prison. It’s a guest suite, larger than my entire ground floor back in Kensington, with an en-suite bathroom visible through a frosted glass door.
I don’t care about the thread count or the view of the rain-lashed garden.
I rush to the wardrobe and shove my bag onto the top shelf, behind a stack of spare pillows.
It’s a terrible hiding spot, but it’s the only one I have.
My heart nearly leaps out of my throat when I see the wardrobe is filled with expensive women’s clothes.
The princess inside me runs my hand over the beautiful fabrics and designs, noting they are in my size.
“What is this?” I mutter, panic hitting my chest for the first real moment now that the shock and adrenaline have worn off, as I spin around and know that I am truly caged.