Chapter 47
Aurelia
“No!”
My scream shreds my throat raw as Adrian’s body slumps against the wall, chains rattling with the dead weight of him. Blood—his blood—splashes across the floor, spreading way too fast.
I drop to my knees, crawling toward him, but Nikolai is still there. Towering over us. The gun still smoking in his hand. His eyes are dark, and of course, he has no remorse for wrenching the one bright spot from this inferno away from me.
I shove past his legs and reach Adrian. My hands press against the hole in his stomach, slick and useless, blood seeping through my fingers no matter how hard I push. His eyes flutter, already fading, and I can feel it—his life slipping through my hands.
“Adrian! No, please, stay with me! You can’t—” The words choke out of me as if they’ll keep him tethered here.
“Are you kidding me, Aurelia?” Nikolai’s voice is like nails seeping into my body. I want nothing but to put a bullet through him. “I told you to stop fucking around.”
Adrian’s chin tips, his lips parting like he wants to say something, but nothing comes. Just a wheeze, then silence.
Tears blur everything, but I can still feel Nikolai watching me. That monster. Standing there like he hasn’t just shot a man.
I look up at him, vision red. “I hate you.” Venom drips from every syllable. “You need to get help, call for Ivan, now.”
I realize I’m giving him orders as if he’d actually respond, but I have to try.
“Submit to me.”
I look up at him. “What?”
“Submit to me, do what I ask of you, and I will call for Ivan. If not, I will gladly shoot Adrian in the head.”
“I will never stop hating you. You hear me? You can torture me, chain me, mess with my head all you want—but I will never care about you.”
His jaw ticks, but he doesn’t say a word.
I spit at his shoes. “Call Ivan, I’ll do what you want.”
* * *
My body moves, but it’s not mine.
My hands are still sticky with Adrian’s blood, my nails caked red, and my chest feels split open—something vital has been scooped out of me.
Nikolai drags me through hallways and stairwells until we’re behind another door.
It’s his room—but it’s… different.
Warmer. Cleaner. A pillow sits stacked neatly on the bed, and the blankets are folded in a way that makes it look as if he’s been waiting for me.
I freeze, yanking my arm out of his grip. “You brought me here after—after that?” The words scrape out, raw and broken.
He barely reacts. Just shuts the door and settles against it, the gun still dangling from his hand. “If you had waited, malyshka, you would have wanted to come here by choice.” His tone is matter-of-fact, like he didn’t just take the only thing I had left.
My fight.
“I was always going to take you here. You didn’t need him. You don’t need anyone but me.”
My blood runs cold. “I get it. You like me and that’s cute, but I don’t care.” My hand smacks against the back of his bedroom door, right beside his body. “I want to go home.”
His expression hardens, but his body doesn’t waver.
“Adrian will live because of your decision, but I would have gladly killed him because he touched what’s mine.
” He steps forward now, making me retreat.
“You keep trying to give pieces of yourself away, and I won’t allow it.
Not to him. Not to anyone. You will never leave here, Aurelia.
You will never leave me. I will not give you the choice. ”
I take another shaky step back, clutching the oversized hoodie around me with blood-stained hands. “You’re insane.”
“Maybe.” He shrugs, finally setting his gun on the table. “But I’ve been preparing this room for you. Piece by piece. So when the time came, you’d have a place that’s yours. A place where no one can touch you. Not my father. Not my men. Not even you can fuck it up.”
I stare at the second pillow, the neatly folded blankets, the faint scent of my shampoo from the bathroom. My stomach twists so sharply I think I might vomit again.
Adrian’s body is probably split open and stitched in the cage downstairs, and Nikolai’s up here… planning my fucking sleeping arrangements?
I want to scream. I want to claw his face off. I want to curl into that bed and pretend this isn’t my life.
But all I can do is whisper, broken and bitter, “I will never be yours.”