Chapter 6
Six
Onyx
I’ve got a big problem.
The SUV rolls to a stop outside of a building that looks like a corpse.
The brick is old and blackened by decades of Chicago soot, crumbling at the edges where the mortar has given up the fight. Every window is dark, not just unlit but aggressively black, like someone painted them over to keep the world from seeing what happens inside.
Some days–no, every day–I wish I were the submissive type. I would have slid under the radar easier in the past and tonight I wouldn't have a fight ahead of me. Because as sure as I am sitting here, if the man beside me drags me into that building, I’m raising hell.
I’m the spitting image of my mother inside and out according to my piece-of-shit uncle and lousy father. I’ve paid handsomely for it and it looks like I am about to pay some more.
“This looks like the kind of place where bodies disappear, not where someone like you calls home-sweet-home.”
A snort from the driver. "She figured that out fast."
Kon's jaw tightens, but there's something like amusement in his voice when he answers. "The bodies are in the basement. The loft is quite comfortable."
Is he joking? He's joking, right? Great job, Onyx. Really stellar survival instincts. Out of the auction and straight into the slaughterhouse.
I stare up at it through the SUV's tinted glass and wonder if I've made a catastrophic miscalculation. Then again, what choice did I have? Stay on that auction block and get sold to some Saudi prince with a taste for virgins? Nah. I'll take my chances with the Russian beast who bought me instead.
Low bar, but here we are.
Kon's tuxedo jacket is still wrapped around my shoulders, the silk lining warm against my bare arms. Without thinking, I pull the lapel closer to my nose and breathe in.
Sandalwood and smoke and a darker undercurrent of something that makes my stomach do a weird flip I'm absolutely not going to examine right now.
Stop sniffing the mobster's jacket, Onyx. Get a grip.
The driver says something to the man beside me and they both exchange a look through the rearview mirror.
“What did he say?”
“My cousin says you have good instinct and that the second we are underground you’re going to try and run.”
“He’s right on both accounts.”
Not really, but that’s only because at the moment I feel I’m better off with the devil I don't know rather than the one who sold me. Once those scales flip, I’m outta here.
Vetrov shifts his weight and pins me to the seat with a daring look, “I don’t recommend running,” he deadpans and fuck. That was creepy.
In the rearview mirror, the driver’s pale gray eyes flick toward me and then he hits a button. Doors swing open and the driver pulls the SUV into an underground garage. Fluorescent lights flicker to life overhead to reveal a large underground parking.
I take in my new surroundings, hitting on all the points that always stand out to me like how many assholes do I have to fight to get out of here and where are the keys kept?
But I spot neither of those things right off the bat. In fact, there’s no added security that I can see as far as hired muscle. My father and his brother have teams of men everywhere.
Apparently that is not true for Kon the Beast.
Hmm. I like that name. I file it away for later use.
Anyway, there are a few red lights in various corners but other than those cameras, there’s nada.
Interesting.
My journalist brain kicks into overdrive.
I catalog positions of cameras, note the makes and models of the other vehicles stashed through the entire underground parking.
He’s not lacking transportation. There’s three black SUVs, two sedans, and one motorcycle that looks like it costs more than all the other vehicles combined.
Information is currency, baby, and right now I'm broke as hell. Time to start building my account.
The SUV rolls to a stop and Kon unfolds himself from the seat beside me. He moves around to my door and opens it before I can reach the handle, extending a hand that could crush my skull without breaking a sweat.
He looms over me and brushes a thumb down the side of my face. He’s taking a risk getting this near to me and he knows it. But he still chances a good punch to the balls to simply reach out and touch me. But why?
I ignore it and climb out on my own.
His lips twitch, not quite a smile but enough to set my teeth on edge. I've spent my entire life around powerful men who mistake basic courtesy for ownership, who think opening a door means you owe them something in return.
"Independent," he observes in that low rumble of his.
"Stubborn," I correct. My mother called it stubborn. My father called it difficult. My uncle called it a problem that needed solving. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
I hold his gaze and don't blink. "Ask my uncle. He'd tell you it's the reason I'm still breathing."
Kon doesn’t say anything. He gestures for me to follow him but I draw up short when I spot the industrial elevator he's leading me toward.
The thing looks like it belongs in a coal mine, all exposed gears and metal grating, and when he presses his thumb to a biometric pad beside the doors, they groan open like a dying animal.
Fantastic. Death trap elevator. This night just keeps getting better.
"After you, огонёк."
I stop and turn to face him. "You keep calling me that. What does it mean?"
The hard line of his jaw relaxes beneath a close-trimmed beard, and warmth bleeds into those dark eyes for half a heartbeat. "Little flame."
I wait for the punchline, the mocking edge, but it doesn't come. He just watches me with those bottomless black eyes like he's waiting to see what I'll do with the information.
I wish I could say I hated it. A nickname I didn't ask for, given by a man who bought me like property should make me mad enough to sink my fist into his face. It should feel condescending. Diminutive. Just another way for a powerful man to make me feel small or powerless.
Instead, warmth flickers in my chest, and that pisses me off more than the nickname itself.
I step into the elevator and immediately regret it. The metal grating bites into the thin soles of my bare feet, cold and unforgiving, and I hiss through my teeth before I can stop myself.
Before I can take another step, hands close around my waist and I'm airborne. Kon lifts me like I weigh nothing, tucking me against his chest with one arm banded beneath my thighs, the other wrapped around my back.
"What the hell do you think you're—"
"Your feet are bleeding."
I glance down. He's right. Small smears of red mark the metal grating where I stood. I didn't even feel it, too numb from the cold and the night and everything else.
"I can walk," I snap, shoving my fist against his chest. The impact does absolutely nothing. I might as well be punching a brick wall.
His strong arms hold me to him. "You can." He doesn't put me down. Doesn't even acknowledge my struggling. Just stands there, solid and immovable, holding me against the furnace of his body while the elevator shrieks its way upward. "But you won't. Not until we reach the top."
I thump my fist against his chest again. "This is ridiculous."
"This is practical." His voice rumbles through me, vibrating against my side where I'm pressed to him. "You've been through enough tonight. Your feet don't need to add to the list."
I want to argue. But the heat of him is seeping into my frozen limbs, and the exhaustion I've been holding at bay is crashing over me in waves, and honestly? My feet really do hurt.
I force myself to hold his powerful gaze. His arms tighten around me, just slightly, and I pretend not to notice.
They took everything from me at that place. My clothes. My dignity. My hope.
No. Not my hope. I'm still here. Still breathing. Still fighting. Still me.
Even if I'm currently being carried like a bride across the threshold by the man who bought me.
The irony is not lost on me.
Stop it. He's still a monster. A different flavor than Uncle Seamus, maybe, but a monster nonetheless.
The elevator groans to a halt at the fourth floor. The doors screech open, and we step out into a space that makes absolutely no damn sense.
I expected a lair or a dungeon. Something dark and cold and fitting for a man they call the Beast.
Instead, warmth wraps around me like a blanket.
We step into his flat and he slowly lowers me to the floor. My feet sink into a thick rug, the fibers warming my frozen soles.
All four walls are made up of exposed brick.
But they’ve been cleaned and sealed, the deep red tones glowing under strategically placed lighting.
Steel beams stretch overhead, industrial bones that should feel oppressive but somehow don't. Massive windows span the far wall, floor to ceiling, showcasing the Chicago skyline in all its glittering nighttime glory.
The floors are polished concrete softened by thick rugs in deep burgundies and charcoal grays.
A kitchen dominates one corner, all professional-grade appliances and butcher block counters worn smooth from actual use. Someone cooks here. Someone who knows what they're doing.
And books. Books are everywhere. They are stuffed into built-in shelves that climb the walls on one side and the other they sit in stacks on side tables.
They are piled on the massive leather sofa that faces the windows.
Russian titles I can't read mixed with English translations, philosophy and military history and what looks like an entire collection of Dostoevsky.
What kind of mafia enforcer reads Dostoevsky?
My gaze snags on a shelf near the windows and my feet stop moving without permission from my brain.
A typewriter sits under a small spotlight, gleaming like a museum piece. Old. Beautiful. An Underwood, maybe 1920s, the keys worn smooth by decades of fingers pressing stories into existence.