Chapter 7
Alexei
I scrub a hand over my face as I ponder my options.
The underground parking area is cavernous, well lit, and empty save for my other vehicles: the Audi, the motorcycle, and the nondescript van I use when I need to remain invisible.
This place—ten stories of reinforced concrete and steel that houses everything I need—belongs to me alone.
First floor is the shell company I use for legitimacy.
The second floor remains bare, and the third houses my personal armory.
Then there’s my gym and a few more vacant floors.
Living quarters and command center are on the top level.
A fortress within the city where I can be myself. Uncensored.
Whatever that means these days.
Movement in my peripheral vision draws my attention. I shift, and the sight knocks the air from my lungs.
My prisoner’s managed to roll onto her side, her body contorted in a way that pushes her ridiculous maid uniform up around her hips, exposing the delectable curves of her ass and the tantalizing stretch of her thighs. Her skin is pale and smooth.
My blood rushes south.
For a moment or two, I forget she’s a problematic witness. Instead, I see the only woman to intrigue me in a long time.
Those sparks that flew when we kissed blaze back to life. I try to distract myself with anything other than the heat building in my dick.
Chyort vozmi.
Focus. I need to focus. She’s not here for that. Time to find out what she knows and get rid of her.
Forcing my thoughts away from her exposed skin, I open the rear door.
Even through the blindfold, I can feel the intensity of her glare. Her light brown hair is wild around her face, strands sticking to her tear-stained cheeks. Angry marks from the gag redden the corners of her mouth. A noise slips free. Not a whimper or a scream, but an outraged protest.
She thrashes again and bucks to leverage herself up, but the zip ties keep her arms pinned behind her back. She mumbles against the gag.
“Neken. Whokahun.”
I cock my head. That’s not Russian. But it’s not English either. Is she…mocking me? After everything she’s been through—witnessing a murder, being kidnapped, getting tied up and thrown in the back of a car, threatened—she’s still full of enough fire to curse me?
I position her upright and tear the blindfold off, ripping loose a few strands that were stuck in the knot. I hold up a single finger in warning. A silent promise that if she screams, the gag goes back in. Once she nods, I pull the cloth from her mouth.
“You were saying?”
She swallows and wets her lips. “Second location.” Her hoarse voice is surprisingly steady.
“I let you take me to a second location. Now I’m dead.
Or worse. I should have convinced you to kill me back in that alley.
At least there, it would have been quick.
Then maybe someone would have found me. No one will ever find my body here. ”
Her body sags against the seat, some of that fire dimming. As if naming her fate has solidified her reality.
An unfamiliar sensation lightens my chest. Amusement. For the first time in a while, I want to smile a real smile.
The little waitress is citing kidnapping statistics.
Her eyes dart past me to the concrete structure surrounding us. The empty parking spaces. The distant elevator. Fresh panic washes away the dawning realization on her face.
“A warehouse?” Hysteria tinges her voice. “You’ve brought me to a ware—” She cuts herself off, pleading with her eyes. “Please don’t. I don’t like warehouses.”
The comment is so absurd, so incongruous with the situation, that the pressure in my chest builds.
I swallow down the laugh trying to take over, struggling to maintain my impassive expression.
This woman cost me the only lead I had on my brother, but she must have information. She’s an asset. A means to an end.
“It’s my home.”
She blinks, confusion overriding her fear. “You live in a warehouse?”
“Converted.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to pass on entering your home.
My grandma didn’t raise me to be that kind of girl.
” The words spill from her in a nervous rush.
“I’m sure you’re a very nice person. You probably even have plants and stuff.
I like plants, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure our relationship has really developed enough for this, and, well, it’s just too soon for me to feel comfortable. ”
I study this strange, rambling woman who speaks about our “relationship” as if we met on a dating app instead of through murder and abduction.
Her hair falls in her face. Unable to use her hands, she tries and fails to blow the strands away.
I reach out and roll the silky locks between my finger and thumb. “We don’t have a relationship. As of right now, I own you.” She blanches. “I have questions. You have answers. If you talk, you eat. If you don’t, you starve. It’s that simple.”
Her wary but attentive gaze finds mine.
For a long moment, she merely stares. Probably weighing her options, though we both know she has none. Finally, she nods in a single sharp movement that communicates both agreement and defiance.
Time to find out what she knows.