by Vivian Wood
“Ljubim te, Ciara,” I say softly into her hair. I look down at her, sleeping in my arms, as peaceful and beautiful as an enchanted princess. I’ve never said those words, in English or Slovenian, but they feel so right, whispered in the darkness as we speed through the night.
I love her, and she loves me.
I didn’t want to drug her. The pills are for my insomnia and I gave her a double dose so I’d be sure to knock her out. This kind is almost impossible to overdose on but she’ll feel groggy when she wakes up. It’s going to be frightening for her but every second matters if we’re to live through the night. I don’t have time to explain so it’s better she’s asleep for this.
“Take us to the airport,” I tell the driver quietly, and then drag my eyes away from Ciara’s peaceful face to message the pilot and tell him to get the plane ready.
No flight attendant, I text. Just a co-pilot. Someone lean and not too tall.
The pilot doesn’t question my strange request. Yes, Mr. Ravnikar. On our way.
Then I call Bethany, because she’ll be in danger from Damir, too. Once he knows Ciara and I have disappeared he’ll go straight to her to find out if she knows anything, and if he gets hold of her it won’t be pretty.
Bethany’s phone goes straight to voicemail. For fuck’s sake. I spend half my time prizing her off her phone and now she won’t answer? It’s eleven-fifteen at night but that’s not particularly late for her, and I’ve never known her to have her phone switched off. I try twice more and then send her a text message and an email, impressing on her how urgent it is that she gets to the airport, now.
Then I sit back and wait. There’s no one else to call. Ciara has no siblings. No parents. No one to come after her and try and take her from me. This is about protecting her from Damir but I can’t help the possessive impulse that goes through me when I look down at her sleeping face. All mine, on my terms.
When we get to the airport I carry Ciara aboard the jet, the night air stirring her long hair. The engines are whining but her eyelids barely flicker as I settle her into the leather seat and buckle her in. Because there’s no flight attendant I locate the first-aid kit myself and find an instant ice pack for her wrist and antiseptic and bandages for her scrapes. She murmurs a little as I clean her wounds, the sharpness of the antiseptic penetrating her barbiturate fog.
When she’s bandaged up I cover her with a blanket and settle her wrist on the ice pack in her lap. I try not to imagine her at Damir’s mercy, but terrible, blood-soaked images invade my head.
Angrily, I check my phone. Still nothing from Bethany. I’ve called her on many occasions in the middle of the night if I’m flying in and need something urgently for the morning. She grumbles about it and tells me I’m an asshole, but she always picks up and does what I ask. Of all the days for her to decide to turn her phone off. Unless…
Unless Damir has got to her already. In which case there’s nothing I can do for her. I stare bleakly out of the cabin window, watching the plane refuel.
The night he killed our father I discovered what Damir was capable of. All he asked in return for saving my life was unswerving loyalty, and I’ve given it to him all these years. Now I’ve taken away his toy, but worse, I’ve gone behind his back and worked against him. He’ll never forgive my betrayal.
I look down at Ciara, remembering how close he came to hurting her. I’ll never forgive him, either.
The pilot appears in the cockpit doorway, glancing over Ciara’s sleeping form and then at me. “We’ll be ready to take off in ten minutes, Mr. Ravnikar.”
It’s so tempting to leave as soon as possible, but Bethany is just as defenseless as Ciara. I need to give her every chance possible to see my messages and get herself here.
“Not yet,” I tell him, and he nods.
I sit down next to Ciara and watch her as she sleeps. There’s so much for me to do and so much I’ll have to explain to her, but I want this small moment of peace. Gently, I push a strand of her hair back from her face. Would she have been better off if I’d never contacted her? In trying to protect her from Damir, have I only put her in more danger? Ten years in a strip club would have been grueling but at least she would have been free in the end. Tonight, I may have just handed us both a death sentence. Damir’s men will tell him I was with Ciara and he will connect the dots with lightning speed. Why I’ve been looking at him like I hate him. Why she’s had all this money to give him apparently out of nowhere. I can imagine his angry raving. My own fucking brother and that whore of a girl, conspiring against me. Humiliating me!
I glance at my watch. Half-past midnight, and still no reply from Bethany. The sleeping pills I gave Ciara will start to wear off in an hour or two and I need her to remain unconscious until we’re airborne. We have to leave. I send a final email and voicemail to Bethany, telling her to leave the country as soon as she gets my message. Then I go to my laptop and transfer her five hundred thousand pounds from various accounts. That should be enough to keep her afloat until she finds that rich husband she’s told me she wants. I imagine her in St. Tropez or a Swiss ski resort, allowing a wealthy old man to buy her a glass of champagne while she surreptitiously checks whether his watch is inlaid with diamonds.
She’ll be fine, I tell myself. But as I nod to the pilot and he secures the door, guilt needles my flesh. If it was just me in danger I’d go and get her myself, but I’ve sacrificed her for Ciara’s sake. Bethany’s a good person. She deserved better.
We taxi down the runway and then the engines roar. Ciara stirs for a moment and I think she’s going to wake, but as London drops away beneath us her eyes remain closed. I take one long, last look at the city that’s been my home for the last thirty years. The place where Damir and I carved out our empire. The city in which we tried to leave our pasts behind.
Once we’ve levelled off, I connect to the satellite internet on my laptop and get to work. There’s a lot to do if I’m going to ruin my brother, utterly and completely. This is not revenge, this is to safeguard him from coming after us, but as I work I find I take vicious pleasure in my actions. For the terror he’s caused Ciara. For the pain she suffered tonight. I see again his men looming over her as she toppled to the ground. The gaping car door they intended to shove her through. I was seconds away from losing her, and I don’t feel a shred of remorse as I take everything that makes Damir powerful apart, piece by fucking piece.
I bet you thought I didn’t have this in me, brata, I think as I download, transfer and erase. I wish I could see your face when you find out what I’ve done.
An hour later I hear Ciara take a sharp breath and I turn to see her eyelashes flutter open. Her face is pale and confused as she tries to focus her eyes.
“Don’t try to move,” I tell her. “You’re safe. Everything’s fine.”
“Where are we?” she croaks, sitting up with effort and pushing the blanket off her legs. Then she notices the safety belt around her hips. She frowns and peers around the cabin. “Is this your jet? Were we going on a trip? I can’t remember…”
I’ve been dreading this moment. No matter how I explain this to her she’s going to go through confusion, shock, and then finally, betrayal. I hesitate, wondering how to proceed. I hope I don’t have to outright tell her that I’m not letting her go back to her own life, but I will if she pushes me. I would rather that she sees this as the only course of action I could have taken, and she comes willingly.
Ciara’s eyes are large and worried. “Misha? I don’t remember anything after getting into your car. What’s going on?”
I keep my voice low and soothing. “We’re taking a trip because you were in danger, but everything’s all right now.” It’s best to keep things simple while she’s still groggy.
I reach for her hand but she unbuckles her safety belt and peers out the window next to her. Then she gets up to look out the window on the opposite side of the plane. It’s pitch black out there. With her hand cradled against her chest and the bandages on he
r knees she looks so vulnerable, and I want to grab her and push her back into her seat so she doesn’t hurt herself, but I make myself sit still.
This time when she speaks I can hear the first shades of alarm in her voice. “Misha? What’s going on?”
Keeping my face and voice neutral I say, “I needed to get you out of London because you’re in danger from Damir Ravnikar. Those were his men who tried to abduct you in the street and they were never going to stop until they did their master’s bidding. I was worried for your life, ljubica. I had no choice.”
Silently, I beg for her to understand. To trust me. I’ve proved myself to be trustworthy, haven’t I? I’ve held her, protected her, opened my heart to her. The last thing I want to do is cause her any harm. I hope she knows that.
But at the sound of Damir’s name it’s as if a live current has gone through her. “How do you know about him?” she asks, eyes wide like a frightened rabbit.
I hold out my hand to her, wanting her to sit down, but she ignores me. There’s so much to explain that I don’t know where to start.
The last of Ciara’s tranquilizer haze seems to be passing off and her hand goes to her mouth in shock. “Wait. I remember something. One of those men said ‘Mr. Rav’ right before you hit him. Was he saying—who is—Misha.” She steps forward and clenches her hands on the lapels of my jacket, then winces at the pain it causes her wrist. “Why was he saying ‘Mr. Ravnikar’ to you?”
Her blue eyes are confused and distressed and she’s all but begging me not to say it. It was wonderful to have her love, even for these short hours.
“Because my name is Mikhail Ravnikar. Damir Ravnikar is my brother.”
Chapter Sixteen
Ciara
I hear the words as if from down a long, dark tunnel, and they make no sense. Misha is just a rich man I met on an online dating site. He’s got nothing to do with the cruel, vindictive Damir Ravnikar. Misha Smith is my loving and tender sugar daddy and he doesn’t have a brutal bone in his body.
Except he does. He’s kept it well hidden, but you saw it yourself tonight, that Misha’s as violent and dangerous as his brother.
I let go of his jacket and back away from him.
“Ljubica, I—”
“Don’t touch me!” I shriek. This can’t be happening. I’m trapped in a jet 35,000 feet above god knows where with Damir Ravnikar’s brother. How the hell did this happen? Why did this happen? Is this part of Mr. Ravnikar’s revenge? I have nothing and no one to help me. All I have is the dignity of two square feet of space in Mikhail Ravnikar’s private jet, and I know even this is going to be taken from me at any moment.
“How come I’m not dead yet?” I challenge him, my voice shaking. “What are you waiting for? Or do you want to play with me, too? You should have just cut my face and made me work in one of your clubs. That would have been kinder. This sort of revenge you and your brother have been acting out on me, it’s sick. You’re sick.”
Misha stands up and walks toward me at the same pace I’m retreating from him, his whole body clenched, fists tight at his side. A surge of panic goes through me, but I keep talking. I’ll say my goddamn piece before he forces me into silence, once and for all.
“What was it, some weird game of good-cop, bad-cop? When Damir couldn’t frighten money out of me did you decide to punish me another way instead? How is this fair? I never did anything to you.”
My back hits a wall. There’s no place else I can go. Misha’s on me now, towering over me, a wall of broad chest and dark suit, the painfully familiar scent of his cologne in my nostrils. He’s so close I have to turn my head to one side. It’s too much like all the times we kissed. “Get away from me, Mikhail.”
“I told you,” he grinds out in a seething voice, not moving an inch, “to call me Misha.”
I take a deep breath, and then another. “I’m not calling my murderer by a pet name. How did you get me onto this plane? Did you drug me?” I remember those four pills I swallowed so trustingly and I want to weep. How could I have been so stupid?
His gaze scours my face but he still says nothing. I thought I was so clever. I thought I was winning these past few weeks, but before he kills me I will at least understand how they got the better of me.
“Did you and Damir stage that fight outside the bar tonight? It was very convincing. Bravo.” I have to stay angry otherwise I’ll give in to terror but it’s hard when I know he’s taking me far away from my home. We could have been flying for hours already. What’s that advice they give if you’re being abducted? Don’t let them take you to a second location.
I’m so screwed.
Misha grasps my chin with a thumb and forefinger and turns my face toward him, making me look at him. “I have nothing to do with my brother or the things he’s done to you.”
“Don’t lie to me! You two tracked me down on a sugar dating website. You demanded over and over that I see you, date you, take money from you, and I had no choice because I had Damir in my other ear threatening to hurt me. How did you even find me on…”
I slap my hand to my forehead as if I’ve suddenly got a migraine, but it’s not a headache making me wince. “Bethany. At uni. She’s the one who put the idea in my head. She works for you, doesn’t she? Is that why you wanted me to keep going to class, so she could spy on me?”
Strong emotion flickers over Misha’s face, but I can’t place it. “She did work for me.”
I remember the emails I got from his assistant that made me laugh. That made me like her. Is there anyone I can trust?
Sloane. I can trust Sloane. Thank god. She’ll go to the police when I don’t turn up at class or answer my phone tomorrow. But then hope dies again, because Sloane doesn’t know anything about who I’ve been seeing because I didn’t tell her. I moan softly and sink on rubbery legs to the floor. I’ve walked, well-dressed and smiling, to my death.
Misha helps me onto a sofa and then kneels down before me, speaking urgently. “Ciara, I need you to listen to me. I need you to trust me, because if you don’t trust me then we’re both going to end up dead.”
There’s no way I’m ever going to trust anything out of his mouth ever again. I study his face, the features that I’ve come to know so well. “Why didn’t I see it before?” I whisper. “You even look like him. You’ve got the same brow, the same cheekbones.” His short black beard makes him appear friendlier, less angular than Damir, and their eyes are a different shape, but if I’d looked carefully I would have realized they were related. Misha’s gazing at me with the same icy determination I’ve seen on Damir’s face. This is a man that will move the earth to get what he wants, and screw anyone who gets in his way.
“You can stop pretending now,” I say bleakly. “I know everything. When I wouldn’t strip for Damir you made me prostitute myself to you instead. You just had to get your pound of flesh.”
I feel my face crumple, but I will not cry. He’s already had too many of my tears and I will not show him that his cruelty is making me bleed inside.
“Did you both laugh at me behind my back? After we…” After we made love and I marveled to him that I never thought it would feel like this between us. So pure. So precious. I need my bulletproof sugar baby armor, that powerful feeling that comes from knowing that I’m the one with the power. The coveted luxury. I hold the dice and tell them where to fall. But when I reach for my defenses I find they’re not there. I was never a real sugar baby. Misha’s taken that from me, too.
He’s talking, and even though I don’t want to hear it I can’t block his words out. “I did all this for you, not for him. I needed to protect you from him and this was the only way I knew how.”
I give a gasping half-laugh, half-sob. “You screwed me to protect me?”
“Ljubica—”
I spring to my feet and push past him, and he follows me. “Don’t call me that! Don’t pretend that you ever had any real feeling for me, I can’t bear it.”
I can feel myself edging cl
oser to hysterics and it’s so tempting to give in. To scream. To cry. To lash out at anything within my reach, including him. Misha takes hold of my good wrist and pulls me around to face him.
“Stop it,” he snaps. “Calm down and listen to me. I feel for you, deeply, and I’m sorry this is happening. If there was any other way I would have taken it, but I had no choice. I know you feel the same way about me as I do about you. Remember what you said to me in the car just a few hours ago?”
The memory comes back like a speeding train and plows into me. I’m falling in love with you.
I shake my head rapidly. “I was acting. It’s my job to make you think I feel more for you than I do. I was only interested in your money.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re not made that way, Ciara.”
“I was pretending so you would give me money,” I insist. “It’s what girls like me do to men like you. The oldest trick in the book. You’re so gullible, Mikhail Ravnikar.”
He slides a hand into my hair and grips it in his fist, forcing my gaze up to his. His words are hot against my mouth. “You love me. You told me so. I live in your heart as surely as you live in mine. Forever.”
“It was the drugs speaking,” I manage in a whisper. He wraps his other arm around me and pulls me against his body. This is that other Misha, the one who beat two men unconscious in the street, and there’s something hypnotic about his blazing blue eyes.
His lips graze mine as he whispers, “Did you ever touch me when you didn’t want to, ljubica? Did you ever come and it wasn’t the truth?”
My eyes are threatening to close, my mouth is ready to accept his kiss. “I told you not to call me that,” I whisper.
“Listen to your heart. What is it telling you? Is it telling you that you love me as much as I love you?”
It feels like there’s a knife in my heart and he’s given it a vicious twist. Let him do whatever he wants. He’s too strong, too clever to beat at his own game. I might even enjoy giving in to him.