21. ANDIE
The first thing I’m aware of as I slowly lift my head from the pillow is the pain in my head. And that distinct feeling of tight, grasping panic in my chest, even if I don’t know where the hell it might have come from.
I sit bolt upright, trying to piece it all together, feeling around me for the light that will pull me back to reality. I’m in my room, back in the townhouse. Nikolai is along the corridor, and if I call out, he’ll be here in an instant…
But the covers feel wrong beneath my fingertips, and I grope at the darkness uselessly for a few moments, unable to find what I’m looking for.
Fuck. I’m not in that bedroom. I’m somewhere else entirely. Slowly, the pieces of my fragmented memory fall back into place, and I begin to recall just what it was that brought me here.
I snuck out of the house. That was, I suppose, my first mistake.
And then I was walking around the block, breathing in the fresh air, when I heard something that sounded like footsteps behind me. And?—
And then the gloved hand over my mouth, the thick scent filling my nostrils, my vision turning black as all the strength just poured out of me. Oh, fuck. I don’t know where I am right now, but I know it’s nowhere good, not if whoever brought me here had to drug me to make it happen.
It’s pitch-black in the room around me, and my eyes slowly adjust to the light as I grope about in the dark.
I climb out of bed, and almost instantly crash into the wall next to it.
This place is tiny. I slide my hands along the walls, searching for something, anything that will brighten this room so I can figure out where the hell I am, and finally, my fingers graze what feels light a light switch.
I scrabble at it to turn it on, and let out a groan as the searing light burns into my retinas.
Once my gaze has adjusted to the sudden onslaught, I look around, taking in the place around me.
I don’t recognize it. It looks like some run-down old slum, somewhere my parents might have taken my brother or me when they were on the run from our landlords and looking for somewhere that no one would dare set foot into.
The air smells of damp, the thick, heavy scent almost choking, and I draw in a deep, shaky breath. There’s nothing in the room but the bed, and I fall back onto it, still woozy from whatever it was they dosed me with.
How long have I been here? There’s a window high up on the opposite wall, but it’s so grimy I can’t tell if it’s night outside or if that’s just the dirt.
I need to get up on the bed, see if I can wipe it clean enough that I can get a better look at what’s going on outside, and I go to stand up on the bed?—
When I suddenly remember that it’s not just me I have to worry about.
With a grip of panic, it strikes me that I’m carrying a child right now too.
Shit. What if the shit they forced on to me has affected the baby already?
I need to be careful, no risks that I don’t entirely need to take, and that means not scrambling about on tiptoes to try and reach a window that I’ll probably break my neck trying to get to…
I attempt to pull open the door, but it’s either jammed or locked.
It shakes in the frame, a clatter sounding from the other side, like a padlock knocking against the wood.
I know, of course, that there’s no way I wound up here by mistake.
No, whoever has me in this place, they intend to make sure I can’t go anywhere?—
And then, all at once, the door flies open in front of me, and I spring back in a panic.
“Please,” I blurt out, hardly even caring who’s on the other side to hear it. “I just—just let me go…”
But my words fail me when I see who’s standing there, watching me, a cold grin spread over his familiar face.
My eyes widen, sickness stirring in my guts. “Max?”
He takes a step forward, pushing the door shut behind him. I feel like I must be imagining things. How can he be here? We left him back in Russia, he didn’t even come to see us off, there’s no way he could be standing right here in front of me.
“You’re awake, then.”
“Max, let me go,” I tell him swiftly. “I—I don’t know what you want from me, but you’re not going to get it. You just have to let me out of here, I won’t tell anyone what happened, I promise?—”
He lets out a short, sharp bark of laughter, shutting me off before I can go any further. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarls. “You’re not going anywhere. Anywhere that I don’t want you to, at least.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” I exclaim, changing my approach now that I can sense appealing to his sense of decency isn’t going to work. “You know what Nikolai is going to do to you when he finds out that you put me at risk? That you put?—”
“Nikolai doesn’t get a say in this,” he replies, his eyes flashing with fury at the mention of his brother. “He only married you because he thought he could get something out of my father, did he tell you that?”
I falter. I don’t know what to say. If I admit that I’m aware of Nikolai’s motivations, it might spur Max to go further, and if I deny it, I’m going to look hopelessly naive.
“That’s what I thought,” he sneers. “Trust me, pretty little thing—you’re better off with me. Better off with a man who can really take care of you.”
I widen my eyes. “What, and you think that’s you?”
I run through everything I’ve come to know about Max already—the dark cloud that he seems to carry with him just about everywhere, the drinking, the attempts at crass flirtation.
I might have my issues with Nikolai, how much he seems intent on controlling me, but Max is far, far worse in almost every way I can imagine.
“You think you’re too good for me, bitch?” he snaps, pushing his face close to mine. “You’ll learn the difference. Some American whore, ready to sell herself to my brother, and you think you’re too classy to let me have you too.”
“Max, I have no idea what you mean,” I tell him, keeping my voice as steady as I can in the face of everything that’s happening.
My body is tense, shoulders hunched, and he must be able to tell that I’m on the very brink of flipping out right now.
I need to understand what I’m up against here, if I stand a hope in hell of getting out of this mess in one piece.
He reaches up, stroking his hand down the side of my face. “You will.”
“Then tell me,” I force out through gritted teeth, fighting the urge to bat his hand away.
His touch sickens me, the way he lays hands on me like he has some kind of right to me.
How could I have made my disdain for him more clear?
I feel like I’ve done everything in my power to prove that I don’t want a damn thing to do with this man, and yet here he is, having flown halfway across the world just to catch up with me.
“You’re coming back to Russia with me,” he tells me. “My partner. Mine. And that way, my father will finally see that I’m capable of running the business.”
My head spins. No. No. I can’t let this happen. I feel my feet root down to the earth, as though every part of me is resisting the mere suggestion of it.
“Nikolai’s not going to let you get away with that?—”
“He’s not going to have a choice,” he replies.
“Because you’re going to tell my father that I’m the one you really wanted. That you made a mistake marrying Nikolai, and that you’d do anything to put it right. That I’m the husband you should have had from the start, and now you can see it, you’re never going to let me go.”
“Holy shit, Max,” I snap back at him. “You really think he’s going to believe that? After everything I’ve been through with Nikolai? After he saw the two of us together?”
“And everyone saw you talking to me too,” he replies, eyes glinting, as though he has considered every possible approach. “Not hard to spin that into a story of you being in love with me all along and rethinking your choice the moment you set eyes on me.”
It’s so absurd, I almost burst out laughing.
How fucking dare he? How dare he act like we have any kind of connection at all, when he knows damn well it’s bullshit?
He’s talking like this is just a patch job, like he can cover up the truth of everything if he just finds the right way to spin it.
Some sleazy journalist, working overtime to make sure the only story that’s out there is the one that most benefits him.
“I’m not going to lie to your father,” I reply, trying a different approach. “I respect him too much. And besides?—”
“Oh, you’re going to do exactly what you’re told,” he replies, and he reaches down, pushing his jacket aside and letting me see the glint of a gun pressed against his hip.
Cold dread runs through me. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a gun—God knows my parents got us into some shady situations at times—but it’s the first time I have been on the receiving end of a threat, and it feels very, very different.
I need something big. A big swing, to prove to him that this isn’t the right idea.
Even to him, this must sound crazy, and I can’t believe for an instant that he would be willing to go through with this if he knew he was bringing a child into this mess.
If there’s one thing he seems to be committed to, it’s his family, and I have to try and appeal to that in any way I’m able.
“Max, I’m…I’m pregnant.”
There it is. I blurt out the words, staring at him, reading his face for some kind of reaction.
At first, he looks surprised. I wonder if he thought it was just a game to his brother, being married, that he’d make no attempt to build a family of his own.
But then a smile spreads further over his face.
“Perfect,” he murmurs, pushing his face close to mine.
“Then I won’t have to get you pregnant myself.”
Tears spring to my eyes, defeat clutching at me. So he would have done it himself if I wasn’t already with child. The thought sickens me. He would have raped me, given the chance, and God knows I might not be entirely safe from that, even if I am pregnant. If he wants more children, after this…
“But it’s not your child,” I protest desperately. “You can’t keep this child from their father?—”
“They’re not going to know a father other than me,” he spits back. “I’ll raise them. My heir. The next generation will belong to me. If that isn’t enough to seal the deal for Dad, I don’t know what will.”
He reaches out to touch my face, and I twist my head away from his, closing my eyes and swallowing hard. I hate this. I hate the way he touches me, the way he almost feels tender, even though I know there’s not an ounce of that in him.
“You’ll learn to care for me,” he tells me. “Trust me, Andie.”
“I’ll never care for you,” I spit back at him, before I can stop myself.
But he just smiles, amusement flicking in his eyes. “You’ll find a way,” he replies, and he glances down to my belly—a threat, though he doesn’t speak it out loud. And with that, he turns on his heel and steps out the door, pulling it shut behind him with a loud crack.
I run over to it, trying to wrestle it back open, but the heavy padlock thuds against the wood before I can. Tears brim in my eyes, then go racing down my cheeks as I sink to my knees, wrapping my arms around myself.
I don’t know what he’s going to do to me now that he has me here. But I know the only thing I care about right now is ensuring that my little one is safe.
And keeping my child from the clutches of that monstrous creature who thinks he has some kind of claim to me.