Chapter Six
Mikhail
T he air in the room is thick, heavy with silence.
The only sound here is the soft, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest as she sleeps.
The faint light spills over her, casting shadows across her pretty features.
They’re soft now in her slumber, so different from the tense, cautious expression she always wears when she’s awake.
At this moment, Chiara looks as though she’s at peace.
But I know better. I know this is only a mask. These moments of deep sleeping allow her to shield away from the reality she’s been forced into. Her small frame curls inward, her arms wrapped around her middle as though she’s trying to escape, even when she’s fast asleep.
When Chiara shifts slightly, I almost think she’ll wake up. But she doesn’t. She must be terrified, but it’s unfortunate that she doesn’t know half of it yet.
She has no idea that her life is no longer hers to control.
I can’t stop watching her.
It’s impossible; every small movement of hers demands my attention.
It’s always been like that. Even when she was just a shadow, just a distant figure in the buzz of the city of London, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
She caught my eye immediately, and I knew from then that I would never be able to let go.
I kneel down beside her.
Taking a slow breath in, I think back to Nikolai.
His absence weighs heavily in this room.
A part of me says that I should be relieved, grateful even now that he’s gone and left me with more control, but something about his sudden absence unsettles me.
I can feel it in my chest, and I don’t know if it’s because of her, or because of what’s to come.
I shake that thought away, deciding to focus on her instead. My eyes are drawn to her. Her dark hair is spread across the pillow, and her lips are curved up into a small smile. Her chest rises and falls with every breath that she takes, and a soft sigh escapes her lips.
I smile to myself, reaching out to trail my fingertips along the side of her face.
Chiara is ours now.
Nikolai and I, we’ve taken her.
And with time, we’ll mark her, and publicly claim her too.
There’s no going back after this.
Even if she wants to escape, it’s never going to happen.
Sitting there in the shadows, I watch her sleep. I’m not sure how long I’m there for, but it feels like hours with her. I memorise every movement, every breath, and every sound she makes. My fingers slip down to her lips, my thumb pressing into her plump bottom one.
My body reacts to the touch.
Shaking my head, I allow my thoughts to drift to my father, the Pakhan.
The thought of what he might do if he finds out about this makes my stomach drop.
My father has always been the one who remains unmoved, unfazed by all the violence that surrounds us, all the blood that has stained our hands over the years.
But this?
This is different.
My brother and I have crossed a line.
We’ve taken her; Chiara.
And if our old man finds out, there will be consequences.
If Chiara is who we suspect she is—an Italian princess—this will open up a whole new world of problems. A world we never intended to deal with.
Though us Russians have remained civil with the Italians for over a decade now, with an alliance holding both sides together by the weight of mutual interests, there’s no telling what this will do. Any breach of trust will shatter everything.
The tension builds inside me, like the slow ticking of a clock, as it counts down the minutes before everything can be destroyed.
If my father ever finds out what we’ve done, it may ignite a war that we’re not prepared for.
The cost of it might even be our lives.
I know my father would see this as a betrayal; a reckless act which could ruin everything he’s spent years building, but the worst part of this—the part which gnaws at me in the quiet hours of the night—is the possibility that he might see Chiara as a pawn.
He might see her as a valuable asset, as a tool to use in negotiations to make things happen in the way he wants them.
He wouldn’t care about her; he would only care of the power she might represent.
And as for my brother and I?
Well, I’m not too sure about how this will affect us.
Looking back at Chiara, I release all the air from my lungs. She breathes softly against my fingers, her body exhausted from the drugs we’ve injected into her system, and her mind restless as she desperately tries to think of ways to escape.
The corners of my lips twitch.
Now that she’s here, there’s no going back.
Even if Chiara is who we think she is, we’re still not letting go.
She’s too important, too valuable, to ever let her go.
If Chiara truly is a princess, the consequences of our actions will be far more worse than anything Nikolai and I have ever dealt with. The Italians will come for her, that much is clear enough. They will send their best men to find her, and to take her back.
And when they find out our role in this…
My mind races with endless scenarios of how that might play out. Their soldiers can try, can come to our territory and fight, can find Chiara safe and sound here. But they won’t be taking her back. That much I’m sure of.
We will never let her go.
We will always keep her safe.
We will always protect her.
And if anything else is to happen, we will deal with the consequences.
We always do.
When her eyelids twitch, the first sign that she’s waking up, I find my lips stretching into a smile across my face. I lean in slightly, watching the subtle shift in her expression, as she stirs. A small gasp escapes her lips as her eyes finally flutter open, meeting mine.
Fear flashes through her eyes a little, softer now that she’s been here for a while, and a little hesitant too. I see the recognition settle in her features when she realises which twin brother I am, and her lips part open.
I lean in closer to her, my breath warm against her skin. She grows tense, but she doesn’t pull away. Not yet. Her chest rises and falls a little quicker than usual, and she blinks up at me a couple of times.
“Morning, beauty.”
I murmur low, my voice a playful taunt.
She flinches slightly, her body trembling under my touch as I brush my thumb across her rosy cheek. Her eyes remain locked on mine as she swallows hard, her fingers twitching as if she wants to push me away, but can’t quite bring herself to do it.
I give her some time to process the confusion. Her mind must be a fuzzy place to be stuck in, and our mind games are only making things worse for her. My smile transforms into a smirk, knowing that Chiara has nowhere else to go from here.
Suddenly, she scrambles backward as she presses herself against the wall, curling into herself as if she’s just realised how close we are beside one another.
Her chest rises and falls with every panicked breath she takes, and I can only watch her, amused at the way she’s reacting, as the dark thrill of control sweeps through me.
A deep chuckle echoes through the quiet room as Chiara tries to make herself even smaller, but there’s no point.
There’s nowhere to hide.
There's nowhere to escape.
Not from me.
Not from Nikolai.
She should know that by now.
“Are you trying to run? Are you trying to leave us, beauty?”
She flinches as she whimpers, her eyes dropping down to the ground.
I stand up before moving towards her slowly. With every step that I take, I watch the way her body desperately tries to shrink into nothing. When I’m in front of her again, I crouch down, reaching out to touch her hair, curling a strand of it around my finger.
“You belong to us now.” I whisper, tugging on her hair so that she’ll meet my eyes. “You can fight us, and you can struggle all you want. But the truth is, Chiara…” I lean in closer, my breath fanning against her lips. “You’ll never be able to leave us. Not now. Not ever.”
She swallows audibly as she looks away from me, tears already rising in her eyes.
“You belong to me. You belong to Nikolai. And now that we have you, we will never let you go.”
The words suffocate her with their truth as they settle over her like a thick fog.
I watch her body tremble in response, her gaze fixed on everywhere else that isn’t me, as she desperately tries to hold herself together. But as the seconds pass, I see it; the crack in her confidence as her walls crumble, piece by piece as one teardrop falls after the other.
I pull my hand away before standing up once more.
We’ve taken her, so now, she’s ours.