Chapter 9 Beautiful Prisoner
BEAUTIFUL PRISONER
DANI
Iwoke up to empty sheets and a silence that sat heavier than Konstantin’s body ever had.
Thin winter light poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the bedroom into a glass box. It should’ve been beautiful—the city dusted in snow, Christmas lights blinking weakly in the pale morning—but all I saw was a spotlight on my captivity.
First things first: phone.
If I could call anyone, if I could text anyone, if I could prove I still existed outside this penthouse, maybe this would stop feeling like a really long, really vivid hallucination.
Nightstand. Drawer—locked.
Other side. Nothing.
Dresser. Nothing.
Under the bed, because why not completely degrade myself before breakfast. Dust and a single, mocking sock.
By the time I spotted my phone plugged discreetly into an outlet by the wall, my heart was already climbing my throat.
I snatched it up. Screen lit. Blank home screen.
My stomach dropped.
Factory reset.
No contacts. No photos. No apps. Location services off. It looked like a brand-new device fresh from the box, except the case was mine and the sticker on the back still said “Property of Dani’s Anxiety.”
“Bastard,” I muttered.
The word tasted like betrayal and stale peppermint.
I remembered the 911 call. The operator’s voice. His hand on my throat. His calm “wrong number” as he ended my last good idea with one tap.
And then this. Not enough to just block the exit. He had to rip up the map, too.
Fury hit me harder than fear this time.
Good. Fury I could work with.
I stalked out of the bedroom, bare feet slapping against cold marble, the too-fancy pajama pants Natasha had left me whispering around my ankles. The Christmas tree in the living room blinked its precise rhythm—on, off, on, off—like it was laughing.
Front door.
I grabbed the handle and yanked.
Locked.
Of course.
Balcony.
Locked. Tiny red light on the alarm panel glowing smugly.
Every window, every door, every possible exit: sealed. The service entrance I’d glimpsed on my tour was barred with what looked like it belonged on a panic room, not a home.
I wasn’t a guest here.
I was a possession in climate-controlled storage.
Panic started as a cold trickle at the base of my spine and crept up vertebra by vertebra. My breaths went shallow. Walls seemed to tilt in, this beautiful glass box shrinking one inch at a time.
This wasn’t just being trapped.
This was being erased, piece by piece, repackaged as whatever Konstantin Zverev needed.
Think, Dani.
There’s always a way.
If I couldn’t go through the door, I’d make my own.
His office door stood slightly ajar. Inside, a sleek desk, absurdly large screens, more leather and wood than any one man needed. On the corner of the desk: a crystal paperweight the size of a fist, refracting the weak winter light into a dozen sharp little rainbows.
I picked it up.
Heavy. Solid.
The window looked like any other pane of glass from this side. A thin, invisible barrier between me and the snow-glazed city.
Glass was glass, right?
I took aim and swung.
The impact rattled all the way up my arm, jarring bone. The paperweight bounced off the window like it had hit a steel plate, not glass. It ricocheted back and clipped my hand, sending a hot sting across my knuckles.
“Shit.”
Blood welled up instantly. Bright red beads against my pale skin, stark and obscene on the white marble when they started to drip.
The window?
Not a scratch.
Of course they were bulletproof. One more layer in his little snow-globe hell.
I stood there panting, hand throbbing, shards of pain and humiliation mixing in my chest.
I wasn’t getting out.
Not through windows. Not through doors. Not with 911 and my contacts erased and his reach inside the police station.
I was well and truly caged.
You’re a bird in a penthouse, Dani. And the man who clipped your wings owns the sky.
The front door opened behind me with a soft, decisive hiss.
I spun around, clutching my bleeding hand to my chest.
Konstantin stepped inside like he’d just returned from a quick coffee run instead of whatever Bratva-king errands he actually did.
Snow dusted the shoulders of his dark coat, melting as the warmth of the apartment wrapped around him.
He shrugged the coat off, handed it to no one, and his eyes landed on me.
On the blood dotting the marble. On the paperweight by my feet.
His expression shifted from bland indifference to something razor-sharp.
“What did you do?” he asked.
His voice was quiet. Too quiet. Steel underneath.
What did I do?
“I tried to escape your five-star prison, you psychopath,” I snapped, holding up my bloody knuckles like exhibit A. “Turns out your windows are harder to break than my spirit. Who would’ve thought?”
He moved toward me.
That same lethal grace. No wasted motion. Just decision made, executed.
“Let me see,” he said.
“Don’t.” I backed up until glass kissed my spine again. “Don’t touch me. Don’t play medic. Don’t pretend you give a shit about anything other than your precious leverage.”
Stay away.
I couldn’t think when he was close. Couldn’t remember who I’d been before his world rewired my circuits.
He kept coming anyway. Of course he did. The man probably didn’t understand the word no unless it came with artillery.
When he reached for my hand again, rage eclipsed my better judgment.
I grabbed the nearest object—an art-deco lamp that had probably never done anything to anyone—and hurled it at his head.
He ducked like he’d expected it, the lamp sailing over his shoulder. It shattered against the wall in an explosion of crystal and lightbulb, shards skittering across the marble in a cascade of tiny, glittering knives.
It was beautiful. Violent. Satisfying.
For one stupid second I felt better.
At least something in this place could break.
When he straightened, he was smiling.
Not the cold, carved thing I was used to. Something almost amused. Almost human.
“Did you miss me?” he asked, as if I hadn’t just tried to decorate his skull.
“Not even close to as much as I miss having my freedom, my phone, and my basic human rights,” I shot back. “I didn’t miss you. I was too busy plotting your murder.”
His smile deepened.
Wrong reaction, Zverev.
He stepped closer, shoes crunching over crystal. I realized too late I’d backed myself into another corner, wall behind me, shards in front of me, six-plus feet of Russian problem in front of that.
This was it. This was where he finally snapped and showed me exactly what happened to prisoners.
Instead, he caught my wrist.
His fingers wrapped around me with surprising care, turning my hand palm-up. Blood had smeared over my knuckles, streaked down the heel of my hand onto the marble.
“This needs cleaning,” he said simply.
Don’t be gentle. Don’t be careful. I can’t handle gentle from you.
“I can take care of myself.” I tried to yank back. His grip didn’t tighten, but it didn’t give either. “I’ve been doing it for years without anyone’s help.”
“Not anymore,” he said.
Two words. They landed harder than any blow.
Not anymore.
Independence revoked by decree.
He led me toward the kitchen, and I let him, because my options were limited and my hand throbbed in time with my pulse.
He turned on the tap, warm water streaming into the sink. Held my hand under it, his thumb bracing just below the cut. The heat stung at first, then eased, pink swirling down the drain.
The cut wasn’t deep. It would heal.
The metaphor for my life right now, less so.
His hands were steady. Warm. Too careful.
Like he was handling something fragile, not the girl who’d tried to turn his decor into shrapnel.
“You need to stop fighting this,” he said, reaching into a drawer and pulling out a first-aid kit that would make an ER nurse nod in appreciation. Of course he kept battlefield triage supplies next to his top-of-the-line espresso machine.
“The engagement has to look real,” he went on as he patted my hand dry and swabbed around the cut. “My enemies need to believe you’d bleed for me.”
I snorted. “Well, congratulations. I’ve officially bled in your penthouse. Does that make me believable enough for your psychotic fan club?”
His hands stilled for a moment on the gauze.
When he lifted his gaze to mine, his eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them. Less storm cloud, more midnight over black ice.
“You want to know what would make it real?” he asked, voice dropping to that low register that did terrible, traitorous things to the space between my thighs.
“No,” I lied.
“If you stopped acting like touching me would kill you.”
It might. Not physically. In every other way that mattered.
“Maybe,” I said, the words coming out before my filter woke up, “because touching you feels like the first step toward losing myself completely.”
Something shifted in his expression.
Amusement evaporated. Hunger took its place. Something hungrier than sex. Something that smelled like obsession.
“And what would be so wrong with that?” he asked softly.
Everything. Nothing. I didn’t know anymore.
He finished wrapping my hand and stepped back.
The absence of his touch hit harder than it should have. Which only pissed me off more.
“I wouldn’t even call 911 if you were bleeding out,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest like armor.
We both knew that was bullshit. 911 was his line, not mine.
The words weren’t about ambulances. They were about reminding us both of the battlefield we were on.
His jaw tightened. In the space of a heartbeat, he went from amused medic to something harder.
Before I could decide whether I’d finally gone too far, he caged me against the kitchen island.
One hand planted on either side of my hips. His body a solid wall of heat in front of me, marble cool at my back. He leaned down just enough to put his face level with mine.
“Then fake it,” he said, voice rough. “Smile. Hold my hand. Look at me like you’d walk into fire if I asked you to.”
“I already have,” I snapped, thinking of that first night, that 911, that fuck against cold wall.
His eyes glittered. “And you survived.”
Too close. Too warm. Too much.
I should have ducked under his arm. Run back to the bathroom. Put eight doors between us and lock them all.
My feet stayed planted.
He slid one hand off the counter and onto my hip. Fingers splayed over the thin fabric of my pajama pants. Firm. Possessive.
“I get leverage,” he said. “And I get you.”
There it was. The honesty I’d been waiting for.
Not “I get a partner.” Not “I get a wife.”
Leverage.
You.
A thing and a person in the same breath.
The words should have lit me up with fresh rage. Should’ve triggered another round of broken lamps and creative swearing.
Instead, heat roared to life in my gut because of the way he said you. Like I was something worth having. Worth keeping. Worth bleeding over if it came to that.
“What makes you think I want that?” I asked, proud my voice stayed almost steady.
His thumb traced the sharp curve of my hip bone through cotton. My breath hitched; I prayed he didn’t notice. Of course he did.
“Because you’re still here,” he said.
The simple truth of it slammed into me.
Somewhere between the murder, the kidnapping, and the fight. I hadn’t looked for exits. Not really. I’d tested walls, but I hadn’t torn this place apart for weak points the way I knew how.
I hadn’t spent the entire night plotting how to get back to my studio and my sad ramen traditions. I’d spent it mapping him instead.
I wasn’t just here because of locks and bulletproof glass and a wiped phone.
I was here because I wanted to be. On some sick, twisted, dark-romance-worthy level, I wanted to be.
“You’re scared,” he said.
“I’m not scared of you,” I lied automatically.
“No.” His hand pressed a fraction more firmly into my hip. “You’re scared of this.”
“This what?” I asked, even though I already knew.
“What you’re becoming.” He held my gaze. “What you’re willing to become.”
His.
Completely and utterly his.
I opened my mouth to deny it. To tell him he was wrong, that I wasn’t changing, that I could walk out of here the same girl who’d shown up in candy-cane tights and thought the worst thing about Christmas was Mariah Carey.
Nothing came out.
Because he wasn’t wrong.
I was terrified. Not of bullets or bodies or the way he could snap my neck with one hand.
I was terrified of how much I wanted him. How much I’d already given away without signing anything. How easy it would be to let the rest go.
He was my jailer. Yes.
He was also the only shield between me and a table full of men who saw me as a problem to be solved.
And probably, eventually, he’d be my ruin.
The thought threaded through my mind like a prayer and a curse.
This was the real trap. Not the locks. Not the alarms. Not the bulletproof glass.
This.
The way he made me want to stay.
He stepped back finally, like he’d recognized the exact moment I’d gotten to the edge and looked down.
Turned his back on me and walked toward the bedroom, casual, like he hadn’t just dismantled another layer of my defenses with gauze and a few well-placed words.
Don’t follow him.
Don’t prove his point.
My traitorous feet carried me anyway.
I found him at his nightstand, unlocking the drawer I’d rattled earlier. Inside, nestled among watches and documents, was a gun.
Black metal. Sleek. Efficient. Meant to make problems disappear.
Of course he kept one within arm’s reach when he slept. Probably had one in every room. This was who he was. Dangerous, deadly, and without remorse when it came to protecting what he considered his.
Our eyes met over the weapon.
He saw me see it.
Didn’t flinch. Didn’t move to hide it. Just let me look.
See? his eyes seemed to say. No illusions. No lies.
This is me. This is the world you chose instead of running.
And somehow, impossibly, I’d become one of the things worth protecting with it.
“Still planning my murder?” he asked, that infuriating almost-smirk tugging at his mouth.
Every damn day. Right after I figured out why I didn’t actually want him dead.
“Give me time,” I said lightly. “I’m still working out the details.”
The murder wasn’t his anymore.
It was mine.
The girl I’d been before the tree lot, before the gunshots, before the man in the black coat decided I was more interesting alive than dead—she was already bleeding out on some metaphorical marble floor.
Standing there in his bedroom, surrounded by luxury that felt like a cage and a man who felt like a loaded gun pointed at my heart, it hit me.
I didn’t want to bring her back.
And that was the scariest thing of all.