Chapter 7 - Nadya #2
“Advil,” he offers, seemingly responding to whatever the look on my face is. “I’ve already got you, Nadya. Wouldn’t drugging you be rather fucking redundant?”
Viciously, I swat the tablets off the table, not bothering to respond. The vindication is fleeting, though. I do grab the glass and slurp its contents down like a bitch in heat. I have it drained in seconds. It isn’t enough to quench the thirst that consumes me.
Fortunately, it does soothe my parched throat enough for me to snarl, “Go fuck yourself, you bitch-ass, rat-ass, pussy motherfucker,” before promptly hurling the glass across the room like a goddamn fastball.
It really chaps my ass when he dodges it with a whooping laugh. He actually ducks off his seat and rolls a pace away, doing so with a swiftness I’d commend if I didn’t hate his fucking guts.
“Did that make you feel better, baby?” Zakharov grins like the cat that got the canary, straightening up from his crouch. He brushes off the knees of his jeans, cavalier.
I smile back, with no mirth to it. “Why don’t you come closer and ask that?”
“I may be a fool for you, Nadya Yuri, but I’m no fool.”
I’d say it’s good to know his psychotic break hasn’t made him forget my last name and all its implications.
Yet he has the fucking audacity to shake his head, looking unmistakably fond.
Well, he won’t be looking that way when I scratch his fucking eyes out.
Swallowing down the queasiness, I shove the covers back and force myself upright.
My head protests. But nothing can stop me from looking around, searching this exposed brick and concrete floor cage Zakharov has stuffed me into.
It’s so fucking cold here. And the sparse furnishings do nothing to warm me up, no matter how pretty the thick, soft rug beneath my feet is.
It dulls the otherwise threatening stomp of my gait toward him.
“Nadya,” he says my name, the syllables dripping too much I won’t bother to decipher. What the fuck has he done?
The freckle-faced girl comes back to me, whimpering in pain.
My voice is pure ice. “So, what, you hurt that girl to trap me? Or did you just use her being hurt to finally seize your fucking moment, you sick fuck?”
It’s satisfying to see his eyes narrow in affront. “I would never hurt a woman,” he growls woodenly.
I can’t help but guffaw. Not that I try to help it. “Oh, please. I’m a woman. You’ve hurt me. I’m hurting right fucking now. Let’s not pretend you’ve got limits, Zakharov. Fuck off. Tell me the truth.”
The nausea crests again while he flinches at that.
“Would you have come willingly?” he asks.
It isn’t really a question.
I stare at him again, not deigning to respond to that.
“I hired her. I paid her handsomely. She’s fine. You will be, too. I’ll get you more Advil. Please fucking take it.”
I ignore all of it, especially the way my stomach unclenches at his assuaging. Instead, I counter, “Where the fuck am I?”
“Safe,” he says confidently.
“Since I’m with you, I sincerely fucking doubt that. I asked you where the fuck I am. I am leaving right the fuck now. And when I tell my brothers, and they get you, I hope they shoot you in the fucking face.”
He sighs and steps across the shattered glass glittering on the ground. It crunches defeatedly beneath his regular steel-capped boots. “You’re no fool, either, Nadya.”
“You have no fucking id—”
“No fucking idea who you are?” he intercepts.
“We have yet to lie to one another. Let’s not start now.
I do know who you are. As you know who I am.
I’m the bad guy, Nadya. I have been stalking you for weeks now.
And you have known it. Yet, still, you just said when you tell your brothers.
You haven’t. Why? And don’t lie to me and tell me it’s because you were scared. ”
My stomach is intent on ejecting right out of my mouth. I grind my teeth together, refusing to let it. “And that was a mistake. I should’ve… I should have told them. I made a mistake. You’re a fucking mistake.”
The look on his face is dark.
My skin tingles beneath its intense assault.
He reaches behind himself—and I notice the desk behind the couch for the first time—and produces a bright yellow folder. “Then I shudder to think what you’ll call this,” he says flatly, flinging the folder to the mattress behind me.
“What did you do?” I choke out, unfamiliar dread washing over me in arctic rivulets.
He says nothing.
I pick up the folder with shaking hands.
I don’t know why, except for how I do. I flip it open—and subsequently choke on a barrage of thorny laughter.
Paroxysm after paroxysm wracks through my body, till my face is hot and there’s a stitch in my side.
It takes forever for it to relent, but when it does, it does so abruptly, over the patient, unmoving look on Viktor’s face.
There isn’t an ounce of humor tucked into those features.
This isn’t some prank.
It knocks the fucking air out of my lungs. “A marriage certificate?!” I shriek, flinging the folder at him.
This time, he doesn’t sidestep my projectile. It smacks him in the chest before falling to his feet. He doesn’t so much as look at it when he announces, “Your signature is on it.”
“No,” I say instantly, firmly. So, why is it that I’m at his feet moments later? I am on my knees, flipping that goddamn folder back open, searching the contents frantically until I come across it.
The sight of my own handwriting is unmistakable. I know it’s real the second my eyes land on it. It’s the chicken-scratch ‘N’ the way I write it. The looping, dramatic ‘y’. ‘Yuri’ is on the line above ‘Zakharov’.
I did this?
I couldn’t have.
How?
“When—?” I wheeze, never finishing the question.
Viktor looks down at me, and whatever he must see there is enough to bring him down into a crouch. His massive hands cup my face. I only realize I’m crying when his thumbs swipe across the apples of my cheeks. Somehow, he draws me to my feet.
“While I was unconscious,” I surmise myself. From the depths of my consciousness—or maybe just my imagination—an image conjures itself: his hand dwarfing mine, leading it across the page. “Or is forgery another one of your vile talents?”
His forehead bumps into mine. “Does it change things either way?”
He says it so tenderly, like it’s a foregone conclusion I’m damned to accept. Like this is just the way it is. This is the bed, and I am to lie in it. Maybe that’s what he expects. If so, then I was right. No matter his pretty words, he has no idea who the fuck I am.
I don’t scream. But I can feel it gathering in my chest. Ultimately, my instincts opt for something far, far more gratifying.
My palm collides with his face so heavily that whiplash snaps his head away from mine.
I got him. His surprise is my reward. I’m drunk on the satisfaction when I go for it all over again.
Just for his hand to close around my wrist in a punishing grip.
Thankfully, I have fucking two—
He twists my arm behind my back, then uses my loss of momentum to capture a second wrist. Before I can get my bearings, he has one forearm stacked atop the other behind my back, my joints and muscles screaming heatedly. My lips never get a chance to screech.
His mouth covers mine.