Chapter 12
Lidiya
This is a mistake. But what he offered spoke to a part of me that just wants to eat, sleep and not have to worry about freezing to death in my bedsit. Is that so bad?
I mean, yes, it could be if he ignores the rule and the lock and barges in to get his hundred million’s worth. But something… something stupid, something not quite sane in my head is telling me he won’t.
“Time’s up,” I mutter.
And as if it had been rehearsed, the buzzer sounds for the doorbell. Or gate bell. Whatever he has on this, probably upwards of ten million pounds’ home, in the swankiest part of London.
He freezes, and his face goes dark. Whoever it is, he isn’t expecting them. “Stay here,” he says, and the command in his voice is absolute. Not a request. Not a suggestion. The kind of order that expects compliance, the way gravity expects things to fall.
He moves towards the hallway with a fluidity that contradicts his size.
One moment he’s standing in the living room with me, the next he’s at the console table, pulling open the drawer.
I catch the glint of metal—a gun, black and compact—before it disappears behind his back, tucked into his waistband with the ease of someone who does this often enough that it’s muscle memory.
My pulse spikes. The warmth from the food and the water and the brief, fragile illusion of safety evaporates like steam off wet pavement.
He’s at the CCTV panel, and I can see the glow of multiple screens reflected in his eyes as he scans them. His jaw tightens. Not fear—I don’t think this man is capable of fear in any way I’d recognise—but something colder. Calculation.
“Who is it?” I ask, and I hate the tremor in my voice.
He doesn’t answer immediately. His fingers move across the panel, cycling through camera angles. Whatever he sees makes his posture shift—subtle, almost imperceptible, but I notice the way his weight redistributes onto the balls of his feet. A fighter’s stance. Ready.
“No one friendly.”
“So why ring the bell?” I ask, moving closer.
“Lidiya. Go upstairs, third room on the left. Close the door, lock it and hide in the bathtub in the en-suite.”
“What?” I stammer, my blood turning to ice at his words.
“Go. Now.” His voice is calm, but the undercurrent of violence is unmistakable.
It makes me move.
What if it’s the other bidder? What if he has come to collect me by any means necessary? I retrieve my shoes, clutching them in my hand as I scamper up the fancy staircase. My heart is pounding as I hit the hallway, and then I panic. Did he say left or right? Was it third or second?
Fuck. I wasn’t really listening. I make a decision and launch myself into the second room on the right and close the door. I click the lock into place and glance around.
It’s a very masculine room, lived in, and I realise my mistake instantly.
I’m in Damien’s room.
“Shit,” I mutter and turn around to leave to find a different room when a sound from downstairs stops me cold.
Not a knock. Not a voice. A crack—sharp, percussive, the unmistakable report of something heavy hitting something solid. Wood splintering, maybe. Or a body. The sound reverberates through the floor and into the soles of my bare feet, and every nerve in my body fires at once.
I back away from the door. My hands are shaking so badly that my shoes slip from my grip and hit the carpet with a muffled thud. I leave them and scan the room for the en-suite. Spotting an open doorway to the right with darkness beyond, I move towards it, my feet silent on the thick carpet.
The en-suite is enormous. Even in the dark, I can make out the shape of a freestanding bath, a walk-in shower with glass panels, double sinks.
I climb into the black jacuzzi bath, banging my head on one of the jets, and lower myself onto my side, pressing my back against the cold porcelain.
It bites through the thin fabric of my dress and the cardigan, and I curl my knees to my chest, making myself as small as possible.
My breathing is too loud. I clamp a hand over my mouth and force myself to inhale through my nose in slow, measured pulls.
I jump when the sounds of a fight break out downstairs. Muffled pings, breaking furniture, the crash of glass. A thud that sounds like something hitting a wall. Then silence—brief, terrible—before it erupts again, louder, closer.
Tears streak down my face, hot and involuntary.
I press my hand harder against my mouth and squeeze my eyes shut, as if hiding from the world will somehow mean it can’t hear me.
I’m shivering with violent tremors that have nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the primal terror of being trapped in a stranger’s bathtub while violence tears through the floors below.
Another crash. Something heavy is thrown into something else heavy. Another muffled pop.
I bite down on my own fingers to stop the scream.
Silence follows. The kind that presses in from all sides, suffocating and absolute. No voices. No movement. Nothing except the frantic percussion of my own heartbeat filling my skull.
Seconds pass. I count them because counting is all I have. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven—
My entire body locks. I stop breathing. The hand over my mouth turns into a vice, pressing so hard I can feel my teeth through my cheek.
The tears tickle my nose, and I resist the urge to sneeze, clamping my thumb and forefinger over it so I don’t.
I can’t breathe, and I let out a wheeze as I release the hold on my mouth enough to suck in a breath.
I reach for my phone to call the police, but what do I say?
I was bought in an auction by a man who is part of one of London’s most powerful Bratva families, and now I’m currently terrified in his bathtub because of noises from downstairs. They would hang up on me.
Everything goes silent, and I choke back the sob, my eyes now wide as I wait for the axe to fall.