CHAPTER 9
The Price of Being Kept
The five million dollar bounty changes everything and nothing.
I spend the morning in Ilya's study, surrounded by files on Kozlov's operations while he coordinates security upgrades with his lieutenants.
Every few minutes, another call comes in—reports of movement at the borders, whispers of mercenaries being recruited, the slow tightening of a noose I can feel around my throat even from thirty floors above the city.
"I need to know the timeline." I don't look up from the surveillance photos spread across the desk. "How long do you plan to keep me alive versus use me as bait?"
Ilya pauses mid-sentence, dismissing whoever's on the other end of his call with a curt command. The silence that follows is heavy, loaded with implications neither of us has addressed since last night.
"The bounty doesn't change your status."
"That's not what I asked."
He crosses to the desk, and I feel the weight of his gaze on the back of my neck. "What do you want me to say, Nadia? That I have a detailed spreadsheet tracking your life expectancy? That I've calculated the exact moment when your tactical value drops below the cost of protecting you?"
"Yes." I turn to face him. "That's exactly what I want you to say. Because I know you've done the math. You do the math on everything."
His jaw tightens. "You're more valuable alive than dead."
"For now."
"For the foreseeable future."
"Which extends how far, exactly?" I push back from the desk and stand, closing the distance between us until I can see the flecks of silver in his pale eyes. "A week? A month? Until Kozlov is eliminated and I become a liability instead of an asset?"
His phone buzzes again. He glances at the screen, and I watch his expression flicker—just for a moment—before the mask slides back into place.
"I need to take this."
He steps away, moving toward the window, and I hear Dmitri's voice on the other end. Low. Urgent. The kind of tone that carries bad news.
I should give him privacy. Should return to the files and the tactical analysis and the careful construction of my own usefulness.
Instead, I stay perfectly still and listen.
"The timeline hasn't changed." Ilya's voice is flat, controlled. "The execution proceeds as scheduled."
My blood goes cold.
"Three weeks gives us enough time to coordinate with the Armenians and the Georgians. They want confirmation that the Petrova line ends with her."
The words hit me like bullets, each one tearing through the careful architecture of self-deception I've built over the past weeks. Tactical value. Proving my worth. Making myself indispensable.
None of it mattered.
"Viktor approved the acceleration." Dmitri's voice is tinny through the phone, but I catch every word. "The bounty makes her a target we can't afford to protect indefinitely. Better to use her death to eliminate three factions than let some mercenary collect five million and leave us with nothing."
"I understand."
"Do you?" A pause. "Because your behavior lately suggests otherwise. Viktor noticed the way you looked at her during the interrogation. The way you touched her afterward."
"My personal interests don't interfere with family operations."
"They'd better not. Because if they do, Viktor will handle the situation himself. And you know what that means."
The call ends. Ilya stands motionless by the window, his reflection ghostly against the glass, and I watch him process the conversation he doesn't know I heard.
Three weeks.
I have three weeks before the man I've been sleeping with hands me over to be executed.
The betrayal should surprise me. Should devastate me. Instead, it settles into my chest with the familiar weight of confirmation—the universe reminding me that trust is a luxury I've never been able to afford.
I could run. The thought crystallizes with cold clarity.
Ilya's security has gaps. I've been cataloging them for weeks, the way I catalog everything, because survival means always knowing where the exits are.
I could disappear again, become another ghost in another city, spend another seven years looking over my shoulder.
Or I could stay.
I could confront the man who's been lying to me since the moment he dragged me out of Club Velvet, force him to admit what he's been planning, and make him choose between his empire and whatever this thing between us has become.
The decision takes less than a heartbeat.
"Three weeks." My voice cuts through the silence like a blade. "That's how long I have before you hand me over to be slaughtered."
Ilya turns. The mask is perfect—controlled, calculating, revealing nothing—but I've learned to read the micro-expressions beneath. The slight widening of his pupils. The tension in his shoulders. The way his hands curl into fists at his sides.
"You were listening."
"I'm always listening. It's how I've survived this long." I cross my arms, refusing to show the tremor in my hands. "Were you ever going to tell me? Or were you just going to keep fucking me until the execution date and then pretend it was nothing personal?"
"Nadia—"
"Don't." The word comes out sharp, serrated. "Don't tell me it's complicated. Don't tell me you're protecting me by lying to me. Don't insult my intelligence by pretending this is anything other than what it is."
He moves toward me, and I hold my ground even though every instinct screams to retreat. "What do you think this is?"
"A transaction. I'm leverage. Bait. A means to an end." I force myself to meet his eyes. "I knew that from the beginning. What I didn't know was that you'd make me believe I could be more."
"You are more."
"Then why am I scheduled to die in three weeks?"
The question hangs between us, and I watch him struggle—actually struggle—with how to answer. Ilya Morozov, who calculates every move six steps ahead, who never shows weakness, who built his reputation on cold precision and colder execution.
He looks like a man being torn apart from the inside.
"Because I can't stop it." His voice is raw, stripped of the careful control that defines him.
"Viktor approved the timeline before I brought you to the estate.
The execution was always the plan—use your death to draw out the factions that want revenge for your father, eliminate them in one coordinated strike, end the blood feud permanently. "
"And you went along with it."
"I went along with it because it was the right strategic decision.
" He runs a hand through his hair, and the gesture is so human, so unlike him, that it makes my chest ache.
"Your father killed thirty-seven Morozov soldiers.
Thirty-seven families who lost fathers, brothers, sons.
Ending the Petrova line was supposed to be justice. "
"Supposed to be?"
"That was before." He closes the distance between us, and his hands grip my shoulders with a force that borders on desperation.
"Before I watched you survive three days of silence without breaking.
Before you threw a plate at my head and called me a coward.
Before you pulled the trigger on that Chechen soldier and looked at me like you understood exactly what it cost."
"Ilya—"
"I've been stalling the execution for two months.
" The confession comes out rough, broken.
"Finding reasons to delay. Convincing Viktor you're more valuable as an intelligence asset.
Buying time I don't know how to use because every day I spend with you makes it harder to imagine a world where you're not in it. "
I stare at him, trying to reconcile the man in front of me with the cold strategist who kidnapped me from a strip club and told me my death was inevitable.
"Why?"
"Because I love you." The words fall between us like bombs.
"Because watching you fight captivity, watching you refuse to break, watching you become exactly what I needed instead of what I expected—it made me question whether ending the blood feud is worth becoming the kind of man who kills women to prove points. "
My throat tightens. "You were always that man."
"I know." His grip on my shoulders gentles, and his thumbs trace circles against my collarbone. "But you made me want to be something else."
I should pull away. Should remind him that love born in captivity isn't real, that whatever I feel for him is just survival instinct dressed up in desire. The same words I've been telling myself for weeks, the same lies I've been using to justify why I keep choosing him over escape.
"I could get you out." His voice drops to a whisper. "Tonight. Before Viktor realizes what I'm doing. I have contacts in Prague, Berlin, places where the Morozov name doesn't reach. You could disappear again. Become another ghost."
"And you?"
"I'd stay. Face the consequences. Tell Viktor you escaped while I was coordinating the security upgrades."
"He'd kill you."
"Probably." His smile is bitter, resigned. "But at least you'd be alive."
I reach up and grip his wrists, holding him in place. "I spent seven years running, Ilya. Seven years being a ghost. Hiding. Surviving. Never living."
"Nadia—"
"I'm not running anymore." I pull his hands from my shoulders and press them against my chest, over my racing heart. "I'd rather die as myself than live as another ghost. And if that means facing your father, facing the execution, facing whatever comes next—I choose that. I choose you."
His expression cracks, and for the first time since I met him, I see the man beneath the mask. Vulnerable. Terrified. Desperately in love with a woman he was supposed to kill.
"You're insane."
"Probably." I echo his earlier words. "But at least I'll be alive while I'm dying."
He kisses me then—fierce and desperate, all teeth and tongue and the taste of impossible choices. I fist my fingers in his shirt and hold on like he's the only solid thing in a world that's spinning toward destruction.
His phone buzzes again. And again. And again.
He breaks the kiss, breathing hard, and checks the screen. I watch his expression shift from desperate to deadly in the space of a heartbeat.
"What?"
"Kozlov." His voice has gone flat, the way it does when he's processing information he doesn't want to believe. "He's moving on the safe houses. All of them. Simultaneously."
"That's not possible. He doesn't have the manpower—"
"He does now. Someone leaked our defensive positions." Ilya's jaw tightens. "Viktor's calling an emergency meeting. He wants me at the estate in two hours."
"And me?"
"You're coming with me." He grips my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes. "Because in twelve hours, I'm going to have to choose between you and everything I was raised to become. And I need you there when I make that choice."
I search his face for doubt, for calculation, for any sign that he's weighing my value against the cost of defying his father.
I find nothing but certainty.
"Then let's go make your father regret ever thinking I was disposable."
Ilya's smile is sharp, dangerous, and full of promise.
"That's my girl."