Chapter 4
Alina
The blue room turns out not to be a torture chamber but a very pleasant guest room in white and cornflower blue, with a king-sized bed, an en-suite, and a gorgeous view of the gardens below. It’s like its own little green space in the middle of the city.
But still a fucking prison.
I bang on the door, but all I do is hurt my fist, so I stop.
He isn’t letting me go. I’ve seen too much, heard too much.
I press my forehead to the wooden door and try to breathe.
Pakhan Saranov’s dead body swims before my eyes, and I shudder.
That neat little hole. The stillness of his face.
Eyes open like he wanted to see who did it. Like he wanted to remember.
I’ve grown up around violence. You don’t survive as Valery Belov’s daughter without understanding what men like him do.
But understanding it and seeing it are two very different beasts, and right now, the beast is winning because whoever did this does what my dad does for a living. I can’t run from it now.
My legs give out, and I slide down the door until my arse hits the carpet. I’ve been dragged into this by a man who thinks he can just claim people like parking spaces.
Except he’s right about one thing. I can’t leave.
Not because of the lock. Not because of Dima’s brick-wall shoulders. Because whoever killed Nikolai Saranov did it with carefulness, and carefulness means planning, and planning means there’s a list. And if my name isn’t on it yet, being seen with Arkady just put it there.
“Fuck,” I whisper to the empty room.
I pull myself up and move to the window. The garden is immaculate—trimmed hedges, a stone path, roses that look like they’ve been bullied into perfection. High walls on every side, ivy-covered brick that screams old money. No easy way out unless I fancy a broken ankle and a bullet in the back.
My dad doesn’t know where I am. Mina got a text from a number she won’t recognise.
She’ll be confused. She’ll call Dad, and he will know who Kade is even without research.
He’ll track my last known location to Gilded, pull CCTV, and see me being flung over the shoulder of a man twice my size, who punched some random Good Samaritan in the face without breaking his stride.
Except now there’s a dead pakhan in Belgravia, and the timeline of my disappearance runs parallel to the timeline of a murder. My dad will work that out in about three seconds. He’s a lot of things—brutal, overprotective, emotionally constipated—but he isn’t stupid.
I turn from the window and sit on the edge of the bed. I pull off the heels and throw them to the other side of the room. I never want to see them again. I will walk around barefoot if Dima doesn’t kit me out with actual shoes.
Dima. There is no getting around him. Even if I did, what next? I’d come up against Arkady, and he would probably chain me up.
And spank me.
Spank me hard like a bad girl.
My mind grabs for heat because the cold is worse.
It’s been too long since I got laid. I bet Arkady would fuck me good and proper.
Maybe that’s my way out of here. Seduce him into being less of a brute.
But then what? If whoever took out Nikolai was watching the house, I will be dead within two seconds of leaving here. I know it. Arkady knows it. That’s why he put me in a room with a view and no escape. Not cruelty. Strategy. The bastard is keeping me alive, and I hate that I’m grateful for it.
I flop back on the bed and stare at the ceiling.
My mind cycles through the same thoughts on a loop: Dad. Mina. The body. The hole. Arkady’s face when he saw it—three seconds of something raw before the shutters came down and the monster took over.
Three seconds. That’s all he gave himself. I don’t know if that’s terrifying or the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
A knock on the door makes me sit up. It’s polite, which means Dima.
Arkady wouldn’t knock. I don’t bother giving permission to enter.
It’s not like I can open the door myself anyway.
The lock clicks, and the door swings inward.
Dima fills the frame, holding a tray like it’s a grenade he’s been asked to deliver gently.
Tea, a sandwich, a banana. The banana almost makes me laugh.
“Potassium,” he says, as if reading my thoughts. “For the hangover.”
“Thanks, Dr Dima.” I’d almost forgotten about the hangover. It’s a distant memory which has been replaced by more recent horror.
He sets the tray on the bedside table and straightens. His suit strains at the seams. I wonder if he has them custom-made or just buys three sizes up and hopes for the best.
“Pakhan wants to see you in an hour,” he says.
And just like that, House Saranov has a new Pakhan. The man who happens to be keeping me here under lock and key.
“And if I don’t want to see him?”
Dima’s expression doesn’t change. It rarely does. He has the emotional range of a bollard. “Then he comes up here, and I can’t be responsible for his actions.”
I gulp. The meaning behind that is… frightening. “You’re his leash,” I croak.
“I’m his conscience when he forgets he has one.”
“Does he forget often?” I ask, and I don’t know why my voice comes out so small.
Dima considers this. A muscle twitches near his jaw, which for him is practically a soliloquy. “More than he should. Less than you’d think.” He moves to the door. “Eat. You will need your strength.”
The door closes. The lock clicks. I stare at the sandwich like it holds the answers to the universe. It doesn’t. It’s ham. Plain. Universal. I’d have preferred something with a bit more pizzazz, but beggars can’t be choosers.
I eat it anyway because my body is running on fumes and abject terror of being put on some list I’ve thought up in my overactive imagination.
The tea is green, which I appreciate, and I wonder whether Dima made it or whether there’s unseen kitchen staff operating in this mausoleum. I sip it and peel the banana, feeling like a child being managed by adults who’ve decided I’m too fragile for the full picture.
I’m not fragile. I’m trapped. There’s a difference.
The food disappears quickly, and I curl up on the bed, closing my eyes and willing the image of the dead ex-pakhan to go away.
I must fall into a doze at some point because I’m woken up by a knock on the door.
It opens, and Dima is back, just as menacing as before.
“Already?” I ask with a yawn.
“I said an hour,” he says. “He’s waiting.”
An hour. It felt like two minutes. My mouth tastes stale, and my hair has escaped the bun entirely, hanging around my face like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.
I finger-comb it back and twist it up again, aware that I look like absolute shit and somehow caring about that fact, which infuriates me further.
I stand and follow Dima down the corridor. The house is quieter than before, if that’s possible. The kind of quiet that presses against your eardrums and dares you to break it.
He leads me down the staircase and through to a room I haven’t seen before. An office with panelled walls the colour of burnt coffee, bookshelves stuffed with leather spines that look like they’ve actually been read. A fireplace that looks like it could heat a cathedral.
Arkady stands behind a desk that looks big enough to use as a bed. His inked fists are pressed against the wood as he talks in Russian to someone on speaker phone. He looks up as I enter and cuts off the call.
“Alina.”
“Arkady.”
“Sit.”
“No.”
Dima moves further into the room, being Arkady’s conscience as his eyes grow darker at my defiance.
“Sit down, Alina,” Dima says from behind me. Not a request. A suggestion wrapped in a threat.
“I’m good.”
Arkady’s jaw ticks. He looks hotter than before, if that’s possible. The control is still there, but it’s thinner now, a veneer stretched over something volcanic. His knuckles are split like he decided to test out the strength of these walls.
“Fine. Stand,” he says. “I don’t care. But you will listen. If not to me, to your dad.”
He taps the screen of his phone and says, “She’s here.”
I leap into action. “Dad! When are you coming for me? Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. But I need you to come.”
“Alina.” Dad’s voice is gravel wrapped in steel. “Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m fine. I’m—” I glance at Arkady, who stares back at me with zero expression. “I’m being held hostage by a psychopath.”
“You are being kept alive by a man who has more sense than you,” Dad says, and the disappointment in his tone cuts deeper than any blade. “I’ve seen the footage from Gilded.”
My stomach drops. “Dad—”
“Don’t ‘dad’ me. Don’t you dare make excuses.
You were so drunk you couldn’t walk straight.
Your outfit left a lot to be desired and nothing to the imagination.
You were targeted, and now, because of that, you have been dragged into a family business that isn’t yours.
You will do as Saranov says to the letter, with none of that bite you love so much, until such a time as it is safe for you to walk amongst the public again without getting drugged, abducted, or your head shot off. Are we clear?”
I gape at the phone and the betrayal of the man who was supposed to always have my back. Arkady’s smugness is like a heatwave, and I want to do something to wipe it off his face. But I’ve got nothing. Not even the threat of Valery Belov.
Fucking hell. This just came back to bite me on the arse in every way possible.
“Lina,” he snaps, his patience gone.
“We’re clear,” I grit out, the words tasting like battery acid.
“Good. Happy birthday, myshka.”
The line goes dead.
I stand there, mouth open, fists balled, nails biting into my palms hard enough to draw blood. Happy fucking birthday. Twelve years of keeping myself invisible, of using Mum’s name, of staying out of Dad’s world, and it all unravels because of a backless dress and too many shots of Beluga.
Arkady pockets his phone. “Your father is a reasonable man.”
“My father just handed me over to you like a parcel. There is nothing reasonable about that.”
“He handed you over because he trusts me to keep you breathing.”
I scoff. “Get your head out of your arse. He doesn’t trust you. He tolerates you because the alternative is worse.”
Something shifts in his expression. Not anger.
Amusement, the dangerous kind that sits behind his control.
“You think you know better than your father?” He rounds the desk.
Each step is deliberate, measured, the way an apex predator knows it can kill everything in the room.
I feel rather than see Dima shifting his weight forward.
“He would come for you if he didn’t trust me. ”
“This is a betrayal,” I hiss. “I won’t make either of you forget it.” I turn with as much dignity as I’ve got left and march out of the office, with Dima hot on my heels. “Oh, calm down,” I snap. “I’m going back to my room.”
Arkady’s voice follows me into the hall. “That’s not your room anymore.”
I freeze, one hand on the bannister. “What do you mean?”
“You’re moving. Dima will show you.”
I spin around, and he’s standing in the doorway of his office, looking like every dark fantasy I’ve ever tried to push out of my head. “You can’t just—”
“I can do whatever I want. This is my house, my rules. You want to be difficult? Fine. But you’ll be difficult where I can see you.”
Heat floods my cheeks. “You absolute bastard.”
“Among other things, yes.” His mouth curves into something that might be a smile if smiles could cut glass. “My room has a lovely view of the courtyard and bulletproof windows that are sealed shut.”
I want to throw something at his smug face. Preferably something heavy. And sharp. “Your room?” I splutter.
“My room,” he says and turns away, closing the door as Dima moves forward, forcing me up the stairs or risk being steamrolled over.