36. Sloane #4
I look at Vadim again. Whatever tiny part of me had been trying to excuse him dies right there. “You used me as bait.”
Vadim’s eyes remain on Viktor for another second before they come back to me. There’s something in them now that looks almost like pain.
The baby shifts inside me, a slow pressure beneath my ribs, and I press my hand to my stomach before I can stop myself. For one strange, terrible second, all three of us are connected by the same silent understanding.
Then Anton speaks. “Vadim.”
It’s not a warning exactly. More a reminder.
Vadim’s gaze doesn’t leave mine. “I told you to stay upstairs.”
Around us, the circle tightens another inch, but all I can feel is the distance between Vadim and me, smaller than it should be and impossibly wide at the same time.
Viktor moves before anyone else does. One second, he’s standing behind me, still and almost elegant in the center of Vadim’s trap, and the next his arm locks around me from behind, dragging me back against his chest so suddenly that the sound I make is more shock than fear.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
My hand flies to his forearm. “Viktor.”
“Quiet.” The word is low, almost gentle, which somehow makes it worse.
Vadim goes completely still.
“What are you doing to me?” I repeat.
Viktor still doesn’t answer me.
The realization comes slowly. Then all at once.
“Viktor.”
“Stay calm,” he murmurs near my ear.
“Let go of me.”
“Not yet.”
My stomach turns cold.
Across from us, Vadim goes absolutely still. It’s not the stillness of a man who is calm. I know him too well for that now. This is worse. This is the terrifying control that comes over him when every violent instinct in his body has been forced into one narrow, deadly point.
Anton’s hand is already inside his jacket.
Vadim doesn’t look at him. “Don’t,” he says.
“Unlike you,” Viktor murmurs. “I’m not easily weakened.”
Anton freezes.
Viktor’s grip tightens. I try to pull away, but he drags me back another step, and the pressure of his arm across my body makes panic flare bright and immediate.
“Stop,” I say, my voice breaking despite my best attempt to keep it steady. “Viktor, stop. You’re hurting me.”
His hold loosens by a fraction. Only a fraction.
“I’m getting you out of here,” he says.
“No, you’re using me.”
Something in his face changes, but I can’t see enough of him to read it properly.
“Right now, those are not different things.”
My eyes lock on Vadim. He’s looking at Viktor’s arm around me. Not at his face. Not at the men. At the place where another man is holding me.
The expression on him is terrible.
“Let her go,” he says.
Viktor laughs softly, though there’s no humor in it. “So you can take me?”
“So she can walk away.”
“You had your chance to let her walk away.”
Vadim’s gaze flicks to mine. For half a second, the whole garage seems to narrow to that look. I want him to do something. I want him not to. I want to hate him enough that this is simple.
Viktor begins backing toward the car waiting near the garage slope, dragging me with him while keeping my body between himself and Vadim’s men. Every step feels wrong, clumsy, humiliating, my hand pressed protectively to my stomach while his arm stays locked around me.
“Vadim,” Anton says quietly.
Vadim lifts one hand without looking away from me.
Nobody moves. No one raises a gun. No one comes closer.
The circle opens.
My chest tightens with something that feels almost like betrayal, even though I know exactly why he’s doing it.
Because of the baby. Because of me.
Because Viktor knows it too.
“You’re letting him take me?” I ask. The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
Vadim’s jaw clenches. His eyes burn into mine. “For now.”
Viktor pulls me another step back. I almost stumble, and his hand shifts quickly to steady me, too careful now, as if he remembers too late that I’m pregnant and not merely convenient.
That small care makes the betrayal worse.
I turn my head as much as his hold allows. “You told me he was the monster.”
Viktor’s mouth is close to my ear when he answers. “He is.”
“Then what are you?”
He doesn’t answer.
The car door opens behind us. A driver waits at the wheel, face forward, engine already running. Viktor moves me toward the back seat.
I look at Vadim again, searching his face for something I can understand, but he only stands there with his men held back by the force of one raised hand, looking like every second he lets this happen is carving something out of him.
“Don’t follow,” Viktor calls.
Vadim’s mouth twists faintly. “You know I will.”
“Yes,” Viktor says, forcing me down into the car ahead of him. “But not fast enough.”
I catch one last glimpse of Vadim before Viktor climbs in beside me. His face is white with rage. His eyes are on me.
Only me.
Then the door slams shut, the locks click, and the car shoots forward toward the garage exit while I twist in the seat and look back through the rear window.
Vadim just stands there in the harsh white light, utterly motionless, watching Viktor take me away.