Chapter Four
Nadia went limp in my arms before the car cleared the second corner.
One second, she was fighting for breath with her fingers caught in my shirt. The next, her eyes rolled back, her lashes lowered, and the last of her weight gave way against me.
I caught her closer before her head could strike the door.
“Turn the heat up,” I said. “Get water from the console and keep the route clean.”
Lev reached from the front passenger seat without looking back.
The driver took the next turn hard enough to send city light sliding across the black leather and over Nadia’s bare knees.
My overcoat swallowed most of her, but the pale silk still showed where it had twisted against her thighs.
Auction fabric. Pretty, thin, useless. Made for men to look at, not for a woman shaking herself apart after they’d tried to sell her.
I pulled the coat tighter around her.
Her skin was too cold.
The car smelled of leather, winter air, and the sharp trace of fear that still clung to her hair under the powder and rose-pink lipstick they’d painted on her.
One curl stuck to her cheek. I moved it away with two fingers, slower than I wanted, because if she woke to my hand on her face, I needed her to see restraint first.
Behind us, Gennady Kask was still breathing.
That wasn’t mercy.
That was timing.
Lev passed back a sealed bottle of water. “She fainted?”
“She hasn’t eaten. She hasn’t slept. Men dressed her for purchase and trapped her in a room with animals.” I kept my thumb at the inside of her wrist and felt the fragile beat there. “She needs heat, water, and quiet.”
Lev’s eyes met mine in the mirror.
I looked down at Nadia.
“No one touches her,” I said. “Not a doctor, not staff, not security, unless I tell her first and she hears why.”
Lev gave one sharp nod and turned back to the windshield.
The SUV slipped between two taxis, then into the shadow of a side street where my second car waited at the curb. No headlights. No door open. My men knew better than to make a display after I had already torn one apart.
Nadia’s fingers twitched against my shirt.
Her lashes lifted halfway.
She stared at me without focus for one breath, then another. The panic came back before her strength did. Her hand pushed weakly at my chest.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
I stilled.
“You’re in my car,” I said. “Gennady is behind us. He isn’t touching you.”
Her lips parted. No sound came out.
I held the water where she could see it. “You fainted. I’m going to help you sit up enough to drink. That is all.”
Her eyes moved from the bottle to my face.
Fear sat in them, dark and furious.
Good.
She was awake enough to fight me.
I shifted her slowly, keeping my hand behind her shoulder rather than on her throat or waist. Nadia’s head lolled once, and she swallowed hard. I opened the water and held it close enough for her to take if she wanted.
She stared at my hand.
Then she took the bottle herself.
Her fingers shook around the plastic. I kept my hand nearby without closing it over hers.
She drank one small mouthful and coughed.
“That’s enough for now,” I said.
“I didn’t ask you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Her eyes sharpened.
Nadia Yelchin was not a prize. Not a frightened body wrapped in my coat. Half-conscious, furious, and still willing to cut me with whatever strength she had left.
My cock had no place in that moment.
My hunger did.
It sat under my ribs with teeth.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“My penthouse.”
Her grip tightened around the water bottle. “So the answer is one cage to another.”
“The answer is Gennady can’t enter mine.”
“That isn’t the same as safe.”
“No,” I said. “It is only the first step toward it.”
She stared at me like she wanted to hate that I’d answered plainly.
The car turned again. Light from a pharmacy sign slid red over her cheek, over the powder someone had brushed there to make her look soft for a room full of bidders.
I wanted every man who had looked at her tonight brought to his knees.
I wanted names, ledgers, locks, camera feeds, the auctioneer’s hands on a table in front of me.
I had Nadia in my arms instead.
She came first.
Lev’s phone buzzed once.
He read the screen. “Two Kask cars left the venue. Neither is on us.”
“Keep one team on Gennady and one on the auctioneer,” I said.
“I already have men moving.”
“Move more.”
Nadia looked toward Lev, then back at me. “Auctioneer?”
I had not wanted this in a car. Not with her half-fainting under my coat and the city jerking past the windows. She deserved a chair, heat, water, and the truth given to her without engine noise under it.
But she’d heard the word.
“Yes,” I said. “The auctioneer.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him.”
“You were there to buy someone.”
“I was there for you.”
Her breath caught. Her eyes moved over my face, trying to place pieces she hadn’t been given. The lounge. Petya. The auction room. My coat. My hands carrying her out while Gennady shouted behind us.
“You don’t know me,” she said.
“I know enough to begin.”
“That sounds like something a man says right before he does whatever he wants.”
I looked at her hand around the bottle. “I have already done that.”
Her mouth closed.
“I took you out of that room,” I said. “You didn’t ask me. You didn’t know my name. You didn’t know where I would bring you. I won’t make that sound cleaner than it was.”
“Then why?”
“Because Gennady Kask had won you.”
Her throat moved.
The SUV turned into the private drive beneath my building. Security gates opened in front of us, black bars sliding away from the headlights.
Nadia looked at the gate, then the concrete walls, then the guard booth with two men in dark coats.
Her face changed.
Not softer. Not calmer.
More awake.
“No,” she said.
The water bottle crinkled under her fingers.
I opened my hand on the seat between us. “Listen to me.”
“I’ve been listening to men all night.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know.” Her voice scraped. “You came in after the bidding like an earthquake in a suit, and everyone moved because they were afraid of you. I don’t know what that makes you, but I know what men do when whole rooms are afraid of them.”
The car stopped beside the private elevator.
The driver killed the engine.
For one second, there was no sound except Nadia’s breathing and the faint rush of fans in the garage.
I could have told her my name then. My father’s name. The shape of the Sorin family around half this city. I could have explained why men moved, why Gennady had not drawn a weapon, why the auctioneer had gone white when I stepped onto the floor.
None of it would have helped her.
“I am Vadim Sorin,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. Recognition hit, not full understanding. A name heard in rooms where waitresses lowered their voices and men paid in cash. A name Petya would know enough to fear.
“Sorin,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No. It is supposed to tell you who has you.”
She flinched at that.
I hated myself for the word and didn’t take it back. She would smell lies faster than comfort.
Lev opened his door and stepped out. The driver stayed still. My men waited beyond the elevator, eyes turned away from the back seat because they valued their lives and because I had trained them well.
“I’m going to carry you inside,” I said. “You can try to walk if you want, but you nearly fainted twice. I would rather have your anger than your skull on the garage floor.”
“I can walk.”
“I believe you.” I pushed the door open and stepped out first. Cold garage air slid under my coat around her. “Then walk beside me.”
She stared at me, suspicious because I had given her what she asked for.
Good.
Suspicion would keep her sharp.
I held out my hand, palm up. She ignored it and swung her legs toward the open door. Her bare feet touched the concrete.
She sucked in one breath.
I took my coat from around her shoulders, crouched, and laid it under her feet before she could step down fully.
Nadia looked at me.
The garage lights put shadows under her cheekbones. The pale silk clung to her from breast to thigh, and every man in that garage kept his face turned away because they knew what would happen if they didn’t.
“You’ll ruin your coat,” she said.
“I have others.”
“That must be nice.”
“It is useful.”
A sound almost escaped her. Not a laugh. Not close. But the first edge of something human that had not been fear.
I lifted her before she could argue again.
She stiffened at once, both hands bracing against my shoulders. “You said I could walk.”
“I said you could try. Your feet are bare on concrete, and I’m done letting tonight take skin from you.”
“You don’t get to be angry about my feet when you just stole the rest of me.”
The words hit exactly where she aimed them.
I carried her toward the elevator. “I didn’t steal the rest of you. I stopped the transfer.”
“Is that the polite Bratva word?”
“No. The polite Bratva word would insult both of us.”
Lev’s mouth twitched once and vanished before Nadia saw it.
The elevator doors opened.
I stepped inside with Nadia in my arms. Lev followed. One guard stayed outside, one came in, and both faced the doors. Nadia felt the shift. Her fingers pressed harder into my shoulder.
“No one in this elevator will touch you,” I said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
She looked at me again.
The doors shut. The elevator rose without a sound.
Nadia’s body trembled once against mine. She turned her face from the mirrored wall as if she couldn’t stand seeing herself held in pale silk under bright light.
I kept my eyes on the doors.
Not on her breasts under the thin chemise.
Not on her thighs.
Not on the mouth that had told Gennady no in a room where men had paid to hear yes.
The elevator opened into my penthouse foyer.