Chapter 39
LUKE
I drive straight to my apartment, instead of hers.
I carry Zin into my apartment building, ignoring her protests entirely.
Picking her up is a mistake.
The silk robe is rich with her heady scent, and it barely covers the naked paradise I can picture all too clearly.
It was bad enough when I hauled her out of the theater.
After watching her seduce an entire crowd, the line between wanting to kill her and fucking lose myself in her is so blurred it’s nonexistent.
Carrying her into my apartment doesn’t help.
The heat of her body burns through my suit.
I don’t dare look directly at her. She’s tense and still in my arms, but at least she doesn’t fight me.
I kick the door open and deposit her on a stool by the kitchen table.
I turn away to make drinks, but mainly to get my shit together.
When I turn back, she’s staring at me. I put the table between us for safety and push a glass of Disaronno across to her.
“You and I are having this out,” I say curtly. “Even if it takes all night to do it.”
Her eyes, lined in kohl and silver, dart away from mine. They’re huge and luminous in the low light, paste diamantés glittering on her cheeks. Her hair is an ornate construction high on her head, threaded with feathers and sparkling, shiny things.
I want to scrub her face clean. I want to pull out her hair and watch it tumble down her naked back.
She turns the glass slowly on the table, the undersea storm of her eyes like a visual aphrodisiac. It’s an exercise in personal restraint to not stare at the tempting swell of her breasts, the sharp points of her nipples beneath the silk.
I can imagine them all too clearly, just like I know exactly how her swollen pussy would look if I ripped that robe off her.
Fucking stop it, Luke.
I take my cuff links out and roll up my sleeves, focusing on each movement to still my breathing, keeping one eye on her.
“You want to have it out,” she says flatly.
I swallow a mouthful of whiskey. Beer was never going to cut it tonight. “I want you to trust me.”
Oh, because you’re a trustworthy kind of guy, Luke, right?
I swallow a little more of the good stuff. It’s going to take an entire fucking bottle to get myself anywhere near under control.
“Trust doesn’t come into this.” Zin pulls her robe tightly closed, her arms wrapped around herself as if she’s bracing for an attack of some sort. “This was always a professional contract for you. A job with an end date, nothing more.”
I want to cross the table and show her exactly how unprofessional I’m feeling right now.
And if you try it, she’ll likely kill you, idiot.
I drink my whiskey and wait.
“This world isn’t a job to me.” Her voice is low, her eyes staring past me to places and times where I can’t follow.
“It’s my life. It isn’t something that ends with finding out who it is that’s betraying me this time or trying to kill me this week.
My entire life is people betraying me and trying to kill me. ”
The flat, unemotional way she says it breaks my fucking heart. Her eyes swing slowly back to rest on mine, smoky with old emotion. “It is what it is, Luke. What it always has been.”
She lifts one shoulder, lets it drop.
“And it’s not going to change. You want to have it out? Fine.” She tosses off half her glass, her body wrapped tightly into itself, her eyes brilliant and hard. “Here it is: no matter how good you might be at your job, you don’t belong in my world, Luke. And I don’t want you in it anymore.”
I fold my arms, staring her down, but she returns my stare.
“Let me get this straight.” It takes everything I’ve got to keep my voice low and controlled. “You hired me to do a job, then when I do it, you want me out of here?”
She makes an impatient sound. “I’m trying to fucking save you, don’t you get that?
” There’s an oddly choked quality to her voice, a rasp that has me clenching my glass to stop myself from reaching for her.
“You’ve got Macarthur Securities now. A whole future.
It’s time for you to get out of here, Luke. While you still can.”
“We both know we’re way past that, Zin.” I take a hard breath, fighting for control. “You haven’t asked about what happened tonight,” I say tightly, more to gain myself some space than because I want to fucking talk about work.
“It doesn’t matter what happened.” She downs the rest of her drink and shakes her head, slipping off the stool.
“We got the bad guys, right?” She tightens her robe, her eyes avoiding mine.
“Manipulated politicians,” she says in a dull effort at irony, “and intimidated criminals. I imagine I have a basement full of men waiting for the touch of my knife as we speak.”
“Not your knife,” I say quietly.
Zin rolls her eyes. “So now you’re going to take on the role of psychopath?” She makes a choked sound that should have been laughter. “I don’t want that for you, Luke. I’ve never wanted any of that for you.”
“Torture has never really been my thing.”
Her eyes slide back to mine.
“I mean, I can do it.” I sip my whiskey, holding her eyes.
“And I won’t lie—when it comes to a piece of shit like Lowbridge, I was almost looking forward to it.
But I wouldn’t call it my favorite hobby.
” I let my eyes linger on the belt of her robe long enough to make it clear what my favorite hobby is—and to see a flush steal up between her breasts.
God, I want her.
“As it turns out, though,” I say, pushing a tablet across the table, “someone had a better idea.”
Frowning, Zin looks down. The tablet screen is open to a view of one of the punishment cells in the basement.
On one wall, Simon Lowbridge hangs by his wrists. On the other, Bogdan Kozlov is strung up the same way. Both have clearly taken a few punches and are sagging at the knees, their feet trailing on the floor.
The door opens, and Paddy and Bryan walk in. “It’s up to you,” Bryan is saying, addressing someone out of shot. It sounds as if he’s reiterating an earlier conversation.
Sophie’s slender figure steps into the room. “And as I already told Luke,” she says clearly, “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
Zin stiffens. “Sophie’s not ready for this,” she mutters, staring at the screen. “You need to get her out of there.”
“Were you ready?” I say quietly. “The night you murdered your father and punished every one of the men who had hurt you?”
She raises her eyes to mine, wide pools of old pain that touch me somewhere deep inside. “That was different.” Her voice is small and quiet. “I was different. I still am.”
“Are you sure about that?” I hold her eyes steadily.
“Years of abuse make us all a little crazy, Zin. It doesn’t mean you are crazy.
Or that you have to stay that way forever.
” I nod at the screen. “Sophie asked me for this. Insisted, actually. She wanted the chance to take her revenge, just as you did. Just like any victim would, given the chance.”
Onscreen, Sophie steps forward and places a small white jewelry box on the concrete floor in front of Bogdan Kozlov. She opens it, and tinny strains fill the room, the tiny ballerina rotating mechanically inside. Kozlov stares at it like he’s hypnotized, his eyes wide with fear.
“Remember this, Bogdan?” Sophie’s singsong cadence would be playful if it wasn’t laced with chilling mockery.
“Remember how you dressed me up and told me to dance? You told me that if I practiced hard enough, maybe I’d be good enough to join Zinaida in her cage.
” She steps back. “So dance, Bogdan,” she says, kicking his feet. “Dance for me.”
Bogdan’s feet begin to move pathetically.
Sophie slaps him, hard enough to echo around the cell.
“I said dance, Bogdan. You want to seduce me, remember? How will you ever get any better if you don’t practice?
” Her jeering tone and heavy accent make it clear she’s imitating Bogdan’s own words to her.
I lean close to Zin. “Kozlov will die tonight,” I say quietly. “Slowly.”
Zin nods, an abrupt jerk of her head that is agreement and confirmation. Her eyes don’t leave the screen as Kozlov begins to contort feebly, like a marionette on strings.
Sophie turns to Simon.
“And you.” Her mouth curls. “You liked my dancing so much that you dressed me up like a toy ballerina and made me your first webcam star in Romania.” She nods at someone behind her, and one of the dancers comes in, holding a ballerina’s costume.
“So I brought this specially for you, Simon,” she says softly, staring directly into his eyes.
“I’m not allowed to kill you, unfortunately.
But I can dress you up and make you dance for our audience.
” She indicates the cameras behind her. “Right now, Simon, this is being live streamed to a select group of our guests, including several government ministers. We’re also recording it for posterity.
” She stands back as the men strip Simon and dress him in the costume, beneath which he is visibly, and very pathetically, naked.
“You won’t ever be taken seriously in this town again. Not by anyone who matters.
“Now. Dance, Simon.” She says it mockingly. “Dance like your life fucking depends on it.”
Lowbridge looks around the room sullenly. Seeing only Paddy’s and Bryan’s grim faces, the muzzles of their rifles pointed right at his balls, he starts shuffling his feet.
I bite down on a sudden burst of shocked giggles.
It’s torture, alright.
In some ways, it’s far worse torture than anything even I could have dreamed up.
Bogdan’s legs have stopped moving. Sophie whips around to face him, her eyes flaring with a look I know all too well, the calculated, savage stare that truly terrifies people. A glimpse of the pain and madness caused by years of abuse.