Chapter Four
JOVI MOVED QUICKLY and quietly, as always. The weight on his shoulder should have been unremarkable to him, and he told himself that was exactly what it was, because that was what it should have been.
But so far it appeared that nothing about this interaction with the disconcerting Rux Ardelean was unremarkable.
It took him the whole way down the isolated hallway of her father’s little fortress, where her bedchamber sat apart from the rest of the house—a lot like her role in her family was similar to his role in his, an observation that he could not understand why he was making, as if he wished for some kind of connection—to realize why the sensations in him were so unusual.
It was a distraction. She was a distraction.
When Jovi had never been distracted, by anything, ever.
He was not certain he knew what to do in such extraordinary circumstances, so he concentrated on the usual things.
The simple necessities that got him through a job, which in this case involved carrying his wholly routine cargo to the door at the end of the hall.
There he cast an assessing eye over the guards he’d carefully incapacitated on his way in.
Because he never killed unnecessarily. Quality over quantity, he had once told his uncle in his cousin’s hearing. He lived by this.
The men were both still out and would come to, eventually, to find that they had terrible headaches. And likely far bigger problems than that when they had to explain their inability to do their jobs to a man like Boris Ardelean, who did not play by Jovi’s rules.
But then, everyone had problems.
Jovi’s included this appalling awareness he had of the woman over his shoulder.
The way he could feel her body in a variety of concerning ways, when he shouldn’t have given her a second thought.
Yet he was entirely too clear on exactly where her breasts brushed against his back.
And he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the fact that his hand was on the sweet curve of her ass as he held her in place.
These were details that should not have affected him one way or another.
Worse than that, he kept getting the scent of her in his nose, soaps and lotions and whatever else she used that made her smell the way sunshine felt. The taste of her blood in his mouth, a shimmery copper that made him wonder if vampires were onto something.
As if he was fanciful enough to believe in mythical creatures in the first place.
And beyond all that—all horrifying enough—there was the curious predicament of his heart.
Jovi could not recall ever thinking about his heart before. It was an organ. It beat. The end.
But tonight it seemed to have taken on a life of its own. It was as if when he’d put her fingers in his mouth, her blood had made his thicken. As if she’d infected him. Now his heart seemed swollen, tender.
And it beat far harder than it should.
So hard and so loud that he was surprised all the rest of the arms dealer’s largely useless guards weren’t summoned by the noise.
But they weren’t.
Somehow, only he seemed to hear it, hammering away like it wanted out.
Once out of Rux’s hallway and back in the main part of the house, he looked around. And stood still a moment, listening. Making sure that everything was as quiet as it had been when he’d slipped inside.
Only when he was certain it was did he methodically make his way through the house, down into the servants’ quarters and out the side door that he paused to rearm from his mobile, because anything electronic could be hacked.
When the door was armed, he waited another moment and then moved quickly through the shadows of what was meant to be some kind of courtyard, timing it perfectly.
Ardelean, convinced of his own importance, had a whole show of spotlights and barbed wire to announce his great significance to all of Czechia, yet had failed entirely to account for human error.
In Jovi’s experience, this was often the case with men who paid others to do what they would not do themselves.
Bought loyalty was merely betrayal in waiting.
In this case, Jovi walked out the way he’d walked in, through the unarmed door the servants used to sneak a smoke on duty.
He closed it tight behind him and walked quickly but without any urgency down the hillside until he reached the armed Range Rover he’d parked in the drive of a quiet house whose owners were abroad.
Having backed in, he paused at the boot of the vehicle and listened once again.
For footsteps. For dogs. For any hint that he’d tripped a security measure somewhere.
But the little neighborhood of wannabe oligarchs on a Czech hill was sleepy in these predawn hours, and still.
He opened the hatch of the Range Rover and loaded Rux inside, waiting for her reaction—but once again, all she did was gaze at him with those sober gray eyes. And nod, as if she was extending him her permission.
That, too, made his heart catapult about in a way Jovi did not like.
Profoundly.
He secured her, but he also covered her with a blanket in a manner that he could only call considerate—careful, he corrected himself, he was only being careful, as befit the situation—and was perhaps a little too relieved to drive away.
He needed to remember himself. He needed to regain his bearings.
That he had never once forgotten himself or lost his bearings before was something he could interrogate and explore once this was finished.
Tonight was a show for an audience of one, who would react predictably to this demonstration that his power was a joke, and Jovi thought he’d set the scene beautifully.
The first act of the play that was about to unfold required specific extra inducements. Just to make certain things clear to a man like Ardelean who had dared reach so far above himself.
A man who truly believed he alone could stand against Il Serpente.
Nowhere was safe. Nothing was off-limits. There were no guards and no security measures that could keep him safe. His own home had been invaded while he slept nearby. The state of Rux’s bedroom would indicate that Ardelean had no idea what happened under his roof, or for how long, or to what end.
For a man who considered himself an unassailable king, this would be unsupportable.
It would drive him mad.
And Jovi knew men like this all too well. Ardelean didn’t have to give one shit about his daughter to lose it over what something like this represented.
Jovi drove through the early morning streets of Prague efficiently. He did not speed or crawl. There was absolutely nothing worth noticing about the vehicle he drove or the way he drove it, aside from the fact that it was bulletproof, suggesting that he was expecting to be fired upon.
He fully expected Ardelean to access Prague’s CCTV.
And when the cameras were played back to find the registration number of the Range Rover, it would, of course be false.
And he had a particular blurry tint on the windows of this vehicle that would keep the Policie ?eské Republiky from making his life difficult, but he’d made certain to let Boris Ardelean’s personal cameras catch his face.
The real pictures of him would be there for Boris Ardelean to see once he understood his daughter had been taken.
Antonio wanted the man to know exactly who had come for him. Who could have walked directly into Boris’s room, if he’d wished, but had not. Who had instead wandered about Boris’s house as if he owned it and helped himself to a little treat on the way out.
What Antonio really wanted was respect, but fear would do.
Jovi wound his way through the ancient city and then on into one of its less tourist-friendly neighborhoods. He found the house in question, opened its gates with the remote app on his mobile, and backed into its garage.
Only when the garage door was closed did he turn the engine off, then exit the vehicle so he could attend to his passenger.
When he opened the hatch, Rux was curled up right where he’d left her beneath her blanket.
And her eyes were open, so there was no escaping the immediate blast of her curiously direct slate gray eyes.
Jovi could not comprehend why everything about handling this woman was different. He had spent his whole life adhering to certain protocols, the number one of which was to never, ever personalize these experiences. He never had.
If asked—and Carlo had certainly asked him—he said he had never seen the need to personalize anything.
One more thing his cousin hated about him. If Jovi had cared that his cousin thought he was a freak, that would be the kind of personalization he didn’t do. He didn’t. He’d only shrugged.
This was why he was so good at what he did. This was why his uncle kept him alive.
And yet Rux defied every last protocol.
Or maybe he was the one who was defying them, because he was the one who reached out and untied her ankles first, rubbing them briskly with his hands, in case she’d gone numb.
Her skin was cooler than it had been in her bedroom, even with the blanket, and he didn’t like that. It made his treacherous heart…react.
He reached behind her to untie her hands, too, rubbing them in the same matter-of-fact manner.
And then, even as she made a noise in the back of her throat, he took his time pulling her forward until she was sitting on the lip of the bumper.
He checked her hands, making sure that the tiny pinpricks he’d put in her fingers were no longer bleeding and that her skin was not turning blue.
When he was satisfied, he released her so he could take the gag out of her mouth, too.
And it was only when he cupped her chin and rubbed his thumb over her lips—an urge he did not understand—and then pressed it between them so she almost had no choice but to suck on it—he understood this even less—did it truly dawn on Jovi what he was doing.
Not that it stopped him.