Chapter 002 Viktor
Isabella Moretti has not spoken since the museum. Eleven years of planning—every detail, every contingency—and her silence is the one thing I failed to predict.
She walks beside me into the house, cream silk clinging to her like a second skin, untouched by the chaos of her abduction. A late-afternoon gust catches the hem, lifting it just enough to expose a sliver of thigh. Heat flares low in my gut, immediate and unwelcome. I look away. This is vengeance, not desire.
Her composure is a provocation. I need her to break.
“Do you know what I’m going to do to you?” I ask, voice low, leaning in until our shoulders nearly brush.
Her chin lifts a fraction. Those blue eyes meet mine—steady, assessing, as if I am the one under examination. “I imagine you’re going to tell me.”
The defiance ignites something feral in my chest. Good. Let her fight. The fall will taste sweeter.
I step in front of her, forcing her to halt. My hand finds her throat—not crushing, merely claiming. Her pulse flutters beneath my palm, delicate, impossibly fragile. I could end her in a heartbeat.
“There’s a room waiting for you,” I say, thumb pressing the spot where her life beats closest to the surface. “Concrete walls that have swallowed a hundred screams. A drain that’s run red more times than I can count.” My grip tightens until her breath labors. “I had it cleaned especially for you, printsessa.”
Her pulse leaps—finally—but then it steadies, as though she’s located some inner anchor despite my fingers circling her neck. Her knuckles whiten around her clutch, the only betrayal.
“By the time I’m finished,” I continue, leaning close enough for my breath to stir the fine hairs at her temple, “you’ll know every inch of that room. Every surface. Every way a body can bend before it breaks.”
She gasps as I increase the pressure, yet her gaze never wavers. Fear glimmers there, yes—but something else, too. Something that makes me want to ruin her or devour her, and I cannot decide which hunger is stronger.
“The basement has excellent soundproofing,” I murmur against her ear. “You can scream as loud as you like. No one will come.”
“Like no one saved Dimitri?”
The name strikes like ice water. My grip slackens without permission. Color rushes back into her face as she draws a shaky breath. Too late—she knows she’s revealed a card.
“Is that what this is?” she asks, voice not quite steady. “Revenge for your brother?”
I release her throat and study her while my mind recalibrates. This is not the script. She should be pleading. Instead she parries.
“Justice,” I correct softly. I pull the photograph from my jacket and hold it between us. Dimitri—eighteen, beautiful, dead. Blood pooled beneath him, eyes empty.
“Look at him.”
I grip her chin, force her gaze to the image. Her body jerks; she tries to turn away. I don’t let her.
“Killed by your brother because he dared care for the wrong girl.”
A single tear escapes, tracing a path down her cheek before she can stop it. At last—something raw.
“Then we understand each other,” she whispers. “We’ve both lost brothers to this war.”
Rage surges, white-hot. I want to crush the comparison in my fist. “Your brothers breathe.”
“Are they?” Pain flickers across her face, real and sharp. “The boy who could sing lost his voice forever. The one who might have been something else learned to love violence instead.” Her voice drops. “We all died a little that night.”
“Don’t.” The word tears out of me, rough. “Don’t you dare equate your family’s scars to mine. Dimitri is dead. Not changed. Not scarred. Dead.”
“You’re right,” she says quietly. The concession unsettles me more than defiance would have. “It’s not the same.”
I seize her wrist, thumb pressing the delicate bones, seeking the frantic beat I expect from any sane captive. It remains infuriatingly even. She winces but does not pull away.
“Why aren’t you more afraid?”
She looks at my fingers encircling her wrist like a manacle, then back to my face. A tremor runs through her—small, quickly mastered. “What would my fear accomplish?”
“It would satisfy me.”
“Then I’m sorry to disappoint you.” Yet her free hand grips the clutch so tightly the leather creaks.
I release her and stride ahead into the main hall. She follows without prompting. I listen for the hitch of panic, the quickened breath of someone realizing there is no escape.
A faint catch—barely audible. When I glance back, her gaze sweeps the space with cool precision: cameras at every corner, guards positioned like chess pieces, electronic locks gleaming.
“Impressive,” she murmurs.
I cannot tell if it’s mockery or genuine assessment.
I had intended to drag her straight to the basement, begin while terror was fresh. But her composure has altered the rhythm. I want to understand the mechanism before I dismantle it.
We climb stairs. My hand settles at the small of her back to guide her. She stiffens; the tremor travels through silk into my palm. There—another crack.
At the threshold of the third-floor suite she pauses. “Not the basement with the convenient drain?”
The dry tone almost draws a laugh from me. I swallow it, angered by the impulse.
“Would you prefer it?” I press harder against her back, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath the fabric.
“I’m curious about the discrepancy between threat and execution.”
I lean down, lips grazing the shell of her ear. “The night is young, kotyonok. We have time for both.”
She shivers. Satisfaction floods me—there is the frightened girl after all.
The room is spartan: rough cotton sheets, plain furniture, en-suite bath. Bars on the windows. Electronic locks. A cage disguised as a guest suite.
She surveys it with that same analytical gaze, hands trembling before she clasps them.
“And here I thought you might try to seduce me.”
The word seduce lands like a spark on dry tinder. My body reacts before my mind can object.
“Maybe I still will,” I say, voice rougher than intended.
“Then why the sandpaper sheets?” She trails fingers across the bedding. I track the motion, predatory.
“Or is this where the torture begins?”
She notices everything.
“Psychological warfare,” I answer, closing the distance until she must tilt her head back. “A reminder you’re no longer in your pretty castle.”
“Hmm.” She moves to the window, tests the bars with steady fingers. “Kind of defeats the purpose if you explain it. Or perhaps you’re not the monster you pretend to be.”
My control snaps. I spin her, pin her back to the wall. She gasps; the sound punches through my chest.
“I am exactly the monster your family created,” I tell her, caging her with my arms.
Her breathing quickens, chest rising and falling in a rhythm that draws my gaze despite myself. “I know,” she says simply. Then, impossibly, she lifts a hand and touches the scar along my jaw—the one earned the night Dimitri died.
The contact sears. I jerk back as though burned.
She remains against the wall, hand falling, but the air between us has shifted, charged with something neither of us named.
“Get comfortable,” I manage, retreating toward the door. If I stay, I will do something vengeance has no place in. “Tonight we begin properly.”
“Begin what, exactly?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. She already knows the steps to this dance.
The lock engages with a soft, final click.
In my study I pour vodka and let the burn ground me. Isabella Moretti, caged at last. Dimitri would savor the symmetry—the girl responsible for his death now subject to his brother’s judgment.
My phone vibrates. Ekaterina. I silence it.
On the security monitors her image splits across multiple screens. She moves through the room with chilling efficiency: testing bars, locks, running fingertips along walls and floorboards as though memorizing weaknesses. Not the frantic scrabble of a terrified woman, but the calm inventory of someone trained.
She sits at the vanity, removes the pins from her hair. Blonde waves spill over her shoulders. She combs fingers through them, staring into the mirror.
Then she smiles.
Small. Private. Real.
The expression unsettles me more than any scream could have.
I lean forward, glass forgotten. She believes she has already won something I do not yet comprehend.
I watch for another hour, cataloging every gesture, every pause. Let her search. Let her plan.
There is no way out.
Yet the smile lingers behind my eyes long after I look away.