Chapter 11 - Nadya
There is no mistaking the heat in Viktor’s gaze for anything but precisely what it is.
Hunger.
It is a powerful, radiant force that penetrates me, seeping in through my pores and rippling through my system.
It’s no wonder I don’t fight it when he tosses the knife aside.
However, all my fight comes rushing back to me when he hauls me toward him and throws me over his goddamn shoulder like a sack of fucking potatoes.
“Put me down!” I screech, punching his back ferociously. “Put me down right fucking now, before I—”
“What, stab me? Whoops, you already did that,” Viktor mocks wryly, smacking my ass. The shock of it sings through my body. I hate that my pussy clenches over it.
“You stabbed yourself!”
“Details.”
He pauses, but only to grab a damn dishtowel.
It’s all he wraps around his bleeding palm before it’s back at my ass.
I honest to God think about biting a chunk out of him.
I could do it. I’ve always had inordinately sharp teeth.
I eye his jeans and try to discern how much damage I could do through denim.
“You’re just going to tire yourself out needlessly,” he points out casually, as if he can read my mind. He can’t.
“I fucking hate you.”
“For now, sure,” he acquiesces, seemingly unbothered.
As it turns out, that’s just his voice. I can see that the moment he drags me out of the warehouse and deposits me, with insulting ease, despite my flailing limbs, onto the seat of a beautiful beast of a motorcycle.
His expression is just a little closed off, and there’s no humor in his eyes.
I realize this is what Viktor Zakharov looks like when he is wounded.
Whether it’s just physically or also his ego, remains to be seen.
He steps back neatly before I’ve fully registered what just happened.
“Motorcycle” is the most intelligent response I have.
“You like it?”
“Are you giving it to me? I can ride off home?”
His derisive snort may as well have been him spitting right in my face. I go back to glaring at him.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“No?” he challenges. “Well, you can either come with me, or you can stay locked up in here. Those are your options. Stockholm Syndrome captive, or a date you’re not excited about?”
“A d—”
“Yeah. I am taking you on a date.”
I pointedly ignore the helmet he holds out to me. “I’m sorry, aren’t you supposed to ask someone on one of those?”
“You’re not supposed to take a girl’s virginity before you know she’s the youngest daughter of a rival bratva family, you have a fucking blast antagonizing either,” he retorts. “I’m imperfect.”
Not the adjective I’d employ.
I stare at the helmet. Then him. And then the helmet, again. “Nope.”
“Nadya.”
“Zakharov.”
“Put the fucking helmet on.”
“Tell me where we’re going.”
“You wouldn’t know it if I did. I have to show you. You have to just—”
“I swear to God, Zakharov, if the next words out of your mouth are about to be ‘trust me’ I will go lie down on the street and wait for you to just run me the fuck over.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a ridiculously dramatic woman?”
“Said the kidnapper to the victim.”
This time, it’s him who rolls his eyes at me. I honestly can’t decide if he’s mocking my habit or picking it up. “I would’ve thought you would rather swallow your tongue than call yourself that.”
He isn’t wrong.
I really do fucking hate him.
I yank the helmet from him and put it on, sliding closer to the handlebars.
Viktor doesn’t get on right away. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as he inspects and rewraps the wound on his palm.
Seeing how deep the cut is, I have to look away.
I’m not going to entertain the pang of inexplicable guilt that crests inside of me.
I have zero reason to feel guilty. It’s his own fault, and even if it wasn’t, he deserves it.
Staring ahead adamantly, I rely on my irritating awareness to gauge what he’s doing.
It works. Every nerve in my body feels it when he slots in behind me, his massive thighs bracketing mine.
The hard, solid wall of his chest presses up against me.
There’s no way he doesn’t viscerally feel the hitch in my breath when his hands claim my wrists—just to plant them on the handles.
He keys on the bike, and it growls to life between my thighs.
Suddenly, his hands settling atop mine on the handlebars feel necessary.
I’d rather be torn apart by a medieval torture device than admit this.
“Relax, baby,” he exhales in my ear.
Even over the exhaust, I can hear the lush drawl of those words. I go rigid at this honeyed spill. It isn’t the first time he’s pressed those words against the shell of my ear.
We both fucking know it.
He plays dirty.
“I’m perfectly fucking relaxed,” I snarl.
His lips are nearly brushing my cheek; he’s so close. It’s way closer than he needs to be. “You’d better be if I’m letting you steer. I’ll handle the throttle and brakes.”
Despite myself, shock has me turning my head as far as it will go in this goddamn helmet. “Really?” I make no secret of my incredulity.
“You know how, don’t you?”
I’m not imagining that he doesn’t ask a question. He states it. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of being impressed by that. Anyone who meets me can probably deduce I’ve at least tried it. It isn’t like he pointed out the specific fact that I’ve been riding since I was sixteen.
“You’ve seen my Ducati. Which is, by the way, miles more impressive than your Triumph.” Cockily, I can’t help but add, “If you want, I can introduce you to my dealer.”
It doesn’t piss him off, unfortunately. I can feel him grinning against my ear. A part of me hopes his bitch ass falls off when I kick it into gear and take off down the street.
No such luck.
***
It takes navigating out of the industrial jungle that houses Viktor’s warehouse, tucked amidst several other equally unremarkable ones, for recognition to strike. I feel like a fucking fool. All of my preconceived notions and escape plans evaporate as the realization sinks its teeth into my heart.
I’d know this skyline anywhere.
This isn’t Boston. Not only did Viktor Zakharov drug me, but he’s relocated me nearly four hours away from my home—from my family. He’s planted us in New York City.
I didn’t grasp just how much I was counting on my brothers’ resources and genius until just now.
They don’t know.
The thought arrives with the force of a freight train, and I nearly lose control of the bike.
In all the months Iosif has been confiding in me about Zakharov driving him nuts, this city has never come up.
They have no idea that, when he vanishes from Boston, it isn’t just into the shadows. It’s a whole new territory.
Territory is everything in the bratva world.
Even I know that. I’ve grown up watching my brothers fight tooth and nail for every block, port, and legitimate front they’ve planted the Yuri flag in.
Boston isn’t just our home. It’s the power base that’s taken decades and rivers of blood to build.
How long has Viktor been doing the same thing in New York—a city that’s roughly ten times the land area, and even more population—without anyone the wiser?
What is Viktor Zakharov up to? Does anyone really know?
As we whizz down the bridge, a handful of things become abundantly clear.
One, that it’s pretty prevalent in the seamless, confident manner with which he navigates us down roads and alleys, that this territory isn’t new to him.
Whatever nooks and crannies he slips the Triumph through make no sense to me. Meanwhile, he is at ease.
Translation? He’s no fucking tourist.
Two is that I may be steering, but he is the one in unequivocal control. Whatever he’s trying to prove with this wannabe-quest, I’m not buying. I trust him less than ever, and that’s saying something, seeing as I’ve never really trusted him at all.
The third is that, though the sheer shock disorients time for me, it takes us a long time to get to where he’s aiming. By the time we finally come to a halt in front of what looks like a kind of gross noodle place, I am absolutely, undeniably defeated.
Obviously, what I say makes no difference. So I say nothing at all. When he takes my hand, I let him. The sensation of his fingers tangling through mine inspires nothing. I can’t stomach the sight of him and refuse to torment myself with it.
At least he shuts up.
I still loathe the smugness I can feel coming off of him in wretched waves when he walks us past the array of plastic tables.
Soon enough, I have no choice but to clock what’s up.
Viktor walks behind me, but he is steering me toward a door in the back.
A barrage of questions begins to gather in my mouth. I swallow every single one back down.
I’d rather have my fucking dignity.
I have a better chance of keeping it when I don’t react to the stairs we descend, not so much as blinking twice at the moody lighting and saxophone thrum I find myself ensconced by. At least not until I know he can’t see the awe that slowly but surely blankets my face.
This is totally the fastest I’ve ever rebounded from Fuck you to Oh fuck.
No contest.
Even at just twenty-five years old, I’ve had no shortage of adventures in my life. It means something to me when someone can dazzle me with something that’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before. I just can’t stand how that someone is Viktor Zakharov.
What’s worse is that it isn’t the first time.
This location is new—and the deep mahogany, burnished gold, and luscious garnet furnishings are as over-the-top as they are fabulous—but he’s smiled at me like this before, somewhere between elated and haughty.
His pride should repel me, and it does the opposite.
I hate that his palm splays at the base of my spine, and my basest instincts crave him just grabbing a handful of my ass. I’m so painfully aware of it.