by Nicole Fox
But then what? There’s no way she’ll be able to breach the fucking main gates. My men are posted at every entrance. The vehicles are locked. She has no way to get out.
My eyes fall on my pants, which are discarded to the side of the bed about five feet away from me. I stretch my body out in an attempt to reach them, but the cuffs hold me back.
“Fuck,” I hiss again.
If I can only get to my fucking pants, I have a multi-tool knife tucked away in one of the pockets. If I can get my hands on it, then I may be able to cut myself free.
It’s the only plan left at my disposal. I might starve to death by the time someone dares to look for me down here.
After several strained minutes, I manage to catch the cuff of my pants between two toes. Then I haul it forward within reach.
“Fuck yes,” I sigh with relief.
With a flip of my foot, I toss the pants up to where my hands can get to them. My fingers rustle through the fabric and close around the cold metal of the pocket knife. I scramble for the button and flick it. The blade springs free with a shiiiink.
And then I get to work. The leather strap of the cuffs is thick and varnished, but bit by bit, it gives away. My shoulders are screaming at me with the effort. I don’t stop, though. Not even for a second. Not even as sweat slicks my brow and my muscles burn.
At long last, the final strand gives way.
The moment my hands are free, I get to my feet and dress fast. Then I rush upstairs to the upper floor of the house. It’s eerily quiet up here. As if nothing is amiss.
Until I hear the thundering of footsteps. Collin steers around the corner and nearly collides with me.
“Boss!” he says, skidding to a halt when he notices me. “You okay?”
“Long story,” I say evasively. “Renata escaped.”
“Yeah, and she broke her brother out of the cell, too,” he tells me. “Madeline saw her taking off with him.”
I frown. “Where were they headed?”
“The dock,” Collin replies. “I think they were going for the yacht.”
“Come on,” I order, flying through the house towards the beach.
Collin tails me and we burst outside onto the pool deck where a bunch of my men have gathered. I can see the yacht out in the distance. They’ve gotten a pretty good head start and I know that within minutes, they’ll be too far gone to catch up to.
But I’m still determined. She’s not going to get away that easy.
“Boss, we don’t have a boat fast enough to reach them,” Collin points out.
“I know,” I snarl, trying to think fast. And then it comes to me. “The jet ski!”
I sprint down to the water’s edge, keeping my eyes on the receding dot of the yacht on the horizon line the whole time.
And as I’m watching them, I notice something else: another boat, a fast-moving one, zipping over through the darkness.
“What the fuck?”
The second boat’s speed and direction is too purposeful to be anything other than trouble. Which means that Drago or Renata has called for backup.
My money’s on Drago. But recent experience has taught me not to underestimate the dark-haired siren who had lured me into bed only to cuff me to it.
I probably should be angrier than I actually am, but the afterglow of the sex is still circulating through me, making everything seem murky and unclear.
I leap onto the jet ski, bobbing in the water, and crank the key. Nothing. Dead engine.
“Fuck!” I roar. I release the key and try again. Once again, the engine doesn’t respond.
Out in the harbor, I watch the speedboat meet the yacht, leaving a trail of sea foam in its wake. I hear the distinct pop of gunfire.
One more try. “Come on, come on, come on, motherfucker…” I growl to the machine.
It starts to sputter, cough… and then it roars to life.
“Collin!” I bellow. He races down the dock and jumps onto the back. The second he’s on board, I rip back the throttle and we go slicing out through the waves.
Another gunshot. Plumes of fire, too.
“Boss,” Collin says, “the second boat looks like it’s moving.”
Narrowing my eyes, I push the jet ski to full speed. The engine complains loudly, but I don’t fucking care. The second boat is already speeding away. At this rate, we might not catch it.
That’s when I see the gigantic curls of smoke rising into the air from my yacht.
They’ve set the whole thing on fire.
I don’t stop. We bounce along the surface of the water until we reach the burning yacht. The second boat is now a blip in the distance, long past our reach, but I manage to catch the name emblazoned on the side.
The Argo. A Greek name. Which means Drago had called Rokiades.
We’ll never catch them in this contraption. It would be a lost cause to try. But maybe there’s something on the sinking ship that will be of use to me in the future.
“Boss?” Collin asks. “What’s the plan?”
“We get on board,” I tell him. “Check for clues.”
I stop the jet ski a few feet away from the yacht.
“Stay here,” I tell Collin. “I’ll be right back.”
Before he can protest, I dive into the ocean and swim to the yacht. I shimmy aboard, bracing myself against the heat that hits me from all sides.
But I’m more affected by the loss of the bodies in the second room. I’d been hoping to get those bodies back to their families in Ireland so that they could have proper funerals. Instead, these poor souls are about to be incinerated in a pyre at sea when they should be getting laid to rest in the land of their ancestors.
Rokiades is going to fucking pay for that.
I look past the curls of fire and notice the body slumped in the center of the top deck. It doesn’t take me long to figure out who it is.
I walk over to him, ignoring the way the heat licks at my skin like it’s ready to devour me whole. Drago blinks his eyes open and I notice the fear ripples across them as he recognizes me.
“You fucking idiot,” I growl at him. “Where is Renata?”
He shakes his head. I look down and notice he’s been shot in the leg. His pant leg is drenched with so much blood.
“Help…” he stammers. “Help…”
“Help you?”
He nods weakly.
I nod right back with as much fake sympathy as I can muster. Then I promptly stomp down on the injured leg. He howls with pain.
“I asked you a fucking question!” I roar. “Where is she?”
“He took her!” Drago screams back, sweating dripping off his brow and onto his eyes. “He fucking took her. Oh, God, it hurts so fucking bad…”
“Took what mattered and left the trash for dead, eh?”
I turn from him, ready to head back to the jet ski, when Drago chokes out my name.
“O’Sullivan…”
It’s the first time he’s actually used my name and not some insult to address me. I glance at him over my shoulder. The fire is slowly edging closer to him. He’s slinking away from it, his face contorted in pain that he’s trying to keep at bay. But he can’t move fast enough or far enough to escape it.
“Please…”
“Are you actually begging for your life?” I ask incredulously. “From me?”
He pulls himself up halfway, which is all he can really manage.
“I can help you,” he chokes out. “I know their plans. Their safehouses. I can be of use.”
I turn around slowly as the fire inches forward. Drago drags himself away from it again. It’s fucking pitiful to watch.
“I sincerely doubt it,” I drawl.
“Please!” Drago screams. I know that only desperation would make him resort to begging. “Renata would want you to save me.”
I freeze at that. I don’t like that he thinks he can use Renata as emotional leverage. Clearly, he’s discerned that my relationship with his sister is more than what
meets the eye. Which is going to cause problems for me.
But I can’t deny that he might have information that might be useful in getting Renata back.
And if he doesn’t, I can always kill him back on land.
I take two strides forward and haul him up onto his one intact leg. “I’m not fucking carrying you,” I tell him. “Find a way to walk or get dragged off here.”
Collin’s eyes go wide when he realizes who I’ve got with me, but he pilots the jet ski forward, ready to haul the Italian bastard onto the ski.
I glance at Drago. “You better have good intel for me,” I threaten. “Or else, it’s death by fire.”
Then I toss him overboard.
44
Renata
On Board The Argo
I scream as Rokiades’s men bind my hands together behind my back. I try kicking at them, but it doesn’t anything other than stall the process by a minute or two.
The whole time, Rokiades watches me with a steely glint in his eye. A perverted smile plays at the corner of his mouth. It makes him look deranged.
“Calm down, glikia mu,” he tells me.
“You fucking bastard.” I spit at his feet, but he’s standing far enough away that it doesn’t hit him like I intended it to.
Yannis smirks a little, but I can see the humor fading fast from his small, greedy eyes.
This boat is almost as big as Kian’s. But whereas Kian’s is refined and luxurious, this one screams “wealth” like he wants everyone who catches even a passing glimpse to know that it belongs to a rich man. Gold dripping everywhere you look. Diamond-encrusted handrails. That sort of shit.
“Your brother is dead,” Rokiades says. “You do you know what means for you, don’t you?”
I don’t say a word. It’s a rhetorical question. One I’m not going to fall into the trap of answering. I just stare at him, realizing how much I’d missed during our first introduction—if you can even call it that.
He’s so old. The sunken wrinkles and lines that mar his face make him look like an aged turtle who’s crawled out of his shell. His nose is sharp and slightly hooked at the bottom and his thick eyebrows betray more than a few white hairs. He must be at least thirty years older than me.
Kian’s age was something imposing, daunting, but all the more sexy for it. This, on the other hand, feels creepy. Wrong.
“No?” Rokiades asks. “You don’t know what that means for you? Well, I’ll tell you then.”
I tense. He draws out the silence and I resist the urge to roll my eyes. The dramatic tension is less impactful, considering I know exactly what he’s going to say.
“It means you’re a lucky woman,” he says, “because you have my protection now.”
“And who’ll protect me from you?” I retort.
The smile falls off his face instantly. “I did not invite you to speak. I expect my wife to be respectful and obedient.”
“Fuck you,” I breathe. “This isn’t the 1600s. Women are not the property of the men around them.”
“In my world, they are.”
“Which is precisely why I have no intention of marrying you.”
“Fortunately, darling, your opinion doesn’t mean a thing.”
I know he’s probably right. I have zero power here, but I don’t care. I’m willing to risk everything, including my life, if it means getting away from Rokiades and whatever the hell he plans on doing to me.
“I will never be a respectful wife,” I tell him. “I will never be obedient.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Well, then, I’ll just have to break you, won’t I?”
“Other men have tried to break me,” I say with a confidence that I don’t actually feel. “They all failed.”
I remember Kian’s words down in The Room. You’re not broken. You’ve fought me at every turn. Even when the odds were against you. If anything, what happened only made you stronger.
The memory sends fire surging through my bones. The fight in me flares up again.
No matter what happens next, one thing is certain: I won’t go down easy.
“Then they haven’t tried hard enough,” Yannis fires right back. “Either way, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t need your cooperation. All I really need from you is an heir.”
I still. But it’s not dread I feel—it’s relief.
Actually, it’s more than relief. It’s happiness.
Because no matter what he does, I will never get pregnant. Logan made sure of that.
The cruel irony of my life dawns on me suddenly and a burst of laughter escapes my lips. And once I’ve started, I can’t stop. Rokiades stares at me with obvious shock as I laugh and laugh and laugh. His men are looking at me as though I’ve gone mad.
Maybe I have. It’s not like I’d be able to tell the difference.
“Is she deranged?” I hear someone ask in a thick Greek accent.
There’s a beat of silence. Nothing except my uncontrollable laughter going on and on. What a sick joke. Damned by my savior and saved by my damnation.
“Enough!” Rokiades yells so loudly that my laughter cuts off abruptly. He glares at me with new worry. But after a moment, it clears. “It doesn’t matter what she is. As I said, all I need from her is an heir. After that, if she proves to be troublesome, I can dispose of her.”
I’m dying to tell him the flaw in his grand plan, but I keep that information to myself. Even if he discovers it eventually, at least this knowledge will buy me some time. Rokiades needs me alive.
Still, the prospect of being under his control, in his house… It makes me sick to my stomach. As does another realization stabbing me between the eyes: he’s going to try to get me pregnant.
And despite what I’ve been saying, I don’t think I’m strong enough to withstand another bout of constant rapes at the hand of another husband who’s been chosen for me without my consent.
I turn my face to the ocean. A moment ago, I was glad to still be among the living. Now, suddenly, death seems like the better alternative. Weeks or months of nightly torture at the hands of a violent, wrinkled don who wants only to hurt me, use me. No chance of a savior. No sliver of hope.
Fuck that. I’d rather be dead. At least that would be my own choice, for once in my life.
Time to take matters into my own hands.
My hands are tied behind my back, but I’m not trying to swim anyway, so I don’t really care. I dart out from between the two men flanking me and run straight for the boat’s railing. Summoning all my strength, I bend, prep, and then hurl myself over the edge.
I’m in freefall for maybe a second, though it feels much longer than that. Long enough to look back over my shoulder and see the stunned faces of the Greek soldiers looking down at me as I fall, fall, fall…
And then I hit the water with a smash like shattering glass.
It’s painful. More painful than I could have ever imagined. But not as painful as the feeling of sinking as saltwater fills my lungs at an alarming rate.
I should’ve known that dying wouldn’t be easy. My body doesn’t want to let it happen, either. Survival instincts kick in, pure panic floods my system, and I start kicking up towards the surface automatically.
I fight the urge as hard as I can. Let it happen, I’m coaxing myself. Let the water swallow you up.
Every cell in my body is arguing back. No! No! No!
It turns into a war inside myself.
Accept the pain.
No! Hunt for air.
Die.
No! Persevere.
And then it becomes a moot point. Not enough oxygen left in me to keep waging this internal struggle. Darkness swallows me up…
Nothing matters anymore.
I’m not sure how long the darkness lasts. Seconds, maybe minutes. Or hell, maybe it’s been years. I don’t know. All I know is that, when I open my eyes, I see dark sky above me. It’s so beautiful. Clear and indigo, studded with stars.
Is this heaven?
I ha
ve about three seconds of bliss before the crushing weight of pain blooms up throughout every inch of me. I want to scream, but I can’t, because there’s pressure against my lips.
Who is that? His face takes shape before me. The strong jaw, the sharp nose, the beautiful, deadly, intoxicating eyes.
I know it. I’d know that face anywhere.
I’ve seen that face in my dreams for as long as I can remember.
“Kian,” I gasp, reaching out for the man pressing his lips to mine. “Kian…”
I’m about to say his name again when strong palms smash down on my ribcage. Briny water gushes out of me and I start to cough hard. I’m forced upright by unseen hands as more water erupts from my mouth.
Everything is murky and shaky, but as the seconds pass by, the world starts to resolve itself into place. My vision comes into focus. Kian’s face dissolves.
It’s not him after all. It was never him.
Rokiades’s hawkish features come into view.
“No…”
This isn’t heaven. I didn’t die. They dragged me back out from the water and made sure this nightmare lasts at least a little longer.
My head hangs limp on my chest as I’m hauled onto my feet and taken below deck. “Watch her!” I hear Rokiades command. “Make sure she’s properly restrained and someone is with her at all times. We can’t afford to lose the asset.”
The asset. I suppose that’s what I’ve been all along. My safety is only relevant so long as I’m useful. Once that use has been served, I will only be a liability. A nuisance.
My eyelids are heavy. I don’t fight them this time. I welcome the darkness, the bliss of unconsciousness. I feel so damn tired that I long for numbness.
And I get exactly that.
But even when the darkness eats me up again, I have dreams. Because of course I do. Even in sleep, I can’t fully escape the nightmare my life is. It’s a constant horror show whether I’m asleep or awake.
In one dream, I can see Kian far off in the distance, but he can’t reach me. I’m screaming for him, but no matter how fast he runs, he never seems to get any closer. When I turn, my brother is standing next to me. It’s only when I look down at myself that I realize he’s stabbed me in the stomach and I’m bleeding out. Rokiades is on his knees in front of me, and he’s drinking the blood pouring out of my slashed abdomen.