“Nikita, you won’t be hearing from any of the Gregorovitches for a long time,” I say casually. “In fact, you can think of this as severance pay. They won’t be harassing you and your wife anytime soon. And ideally, you won’t hear from me anymore at all. Think of it as our parting gift.”
“Understood,” Nikita says almost feverishly, and I can hear the sounds of clothes being put on in a hurry over the phone. “I’ll have it ready for you. You won’t even need to get off the boat.”
“You’re a good man, Nikita,” I say mildly, and I end the call before taking a swig of vodka.
Over an hour later, I’m handing over a staggering amount of cash to Nikita in the bowels of the ship, watching him unzip the bag and nearly go bug-eyed at the sight of the stacks of money.
“You can count it, if you like, I won’t be offended,” I say politely.
“That… won’t be necessary,” Nikita says, trying to contain his excitement at the amount of money he’s running his hands over. “This looks more than adequate. You’re a generous man, Vladimir.”
“Don’t mention it,” I grunt. “How much longer? I’d like to get moving the instant you’re finished.”
“Just a few more minutes,” Nikita says, standing up with his payment and nodding hurriedly at me. “I’ll head to the fuel lines outside and text that number you called me from so you can pull out of here the second that last drop has hit the tank.”
“Perfect. Go.”
Nikita turns to leave, but he pauses, spinning back around with his mouth open as if hesitating to say something. I arch an eyebrow at him, and he runs a hand through his hair.
“There was… one other thing I wanted to mention. I’m sure you already know about it, but… is this yacht a… recent acquisition?”
I do not reply.
“I don’t say that to imply anything, of course,” Nikita says hastily. “It’s just that, this is a very nice yacht, but when I was loading some of the fuel, I noticed that some of the ship’s design overhead was a little abnormal.”
“Abnormal how?” I ask, stepping forward.
“Shaped a little oddly,” he says meaningfully. “I couldn’t say exactly how, but when you’ve worked around luxury yachts as long as I have, you just tend to notice signs of custom additions when you see them. That’s all.”
I nod slowly at him as he takes his leave, and I glance up at the ceiling before heading up above deck.
The first thing I do is move to the bridge and wait for Nikita’s signal. Once I have it, I watch him wave to me from the dock, and I slowly move the yacht away from the coast and set the course in the ship’s computer.
If there’s a rat to deal with on the ship, I don’t want him to have an easy escape from me.
I keep my hand on my pistol in my jacket and move all the way over to the master bedroom, where I freeze as soon as I enter.
This was where I heard the sound when I got here. At the time, I was sure there had been someone nearby, but I questioned whether I’d just been hearing things when my search turned up nothing.
But Nikita’s tip that there might be something hidden on the yacht makes me second-guess myself.
My eyes scan the walls, looking for any abnormality. What really alarms me is that my first search of the yacht didn’t show me anything that stood out as an obvious custom design on anything. Yes, the yacht is over-the-top luxurious in every way, but there’s a kind of harmony and smoothness to the whole design. Later additions usually stick out like a sore thumb, especially when absurdly rich Russians are in charge of construction.
All that adds up to hinting that there’s a hidden room on this ship.
It could easily be just a panic room, but it could also be more elaborate than that. I didn’t think my ears had deceived me, and what I heard sounded like human movement. I would not put it past the late Mr. Gregorovitch to have an additional security room squirreled away somewhere on the ship.
Bang bang bang!
I freeze, holding my gun out in front of me at the sound of three hard bangs against metal. My eyes widen the next moment as I hear… a scream? It’s muffled, and if there was a word in there, it is now lost. But my heart is pounding, and my instincts are on high alert.
I am definitely not alone, but now, I’m starting to doubt the “secret guards” theory.
Moving to the bed, I start checking the nightstand for signs of a switch, anything that could either open the door I’m looking for or activate it remotely. I hear the banging again, and I can tell it’s coming from the wall directly across from the foot of the bed. But while I’m investigating the bed, I find a few things that give me pause.
There’s a blindfold in the nightstand, as well as multiple pairs of handcuffs of different kinds. In the drawer below that is a number of other assorted sex toys and lube. I kneel down to look under the bed when my foot brushes against something, and I pull out what appears to be restraints—bondage gear.
My gaze snaps to the ceiling, and I see what are obviously cameras aimed at the bed at various angles, and I spot a few on the walls, too. My jaw tightens.
The boss was planning to do some depraved shit in this bed.
Then comes the banging again, and I look to that wall, almost trying to see through it. The shout comes again, and my heart does a somersault as I pick up on the voice’s pitch.
It’s a woman. I’m sure of it.
I hurriedly start feeling around the walls and the occasional piece of art hanging in the room, mind racing. Who could he have locked up here? The why seems obvious enough, given what I see on the bed. But this has gone from a potential threat to something very different, and I don’t know what to make of it just yet. All I know is I need to find a way into that room.
Finally, I notice a light fixture within arm’s reach that’s fastened in by a ring with small metal screws, but one of the screws looks peculiar. I run my finger over it and find that it’s smooth—not a screw, but a subtle button.
I press it, and I hear a click from behind me.
My gun goes back into my jacket, but I keep my grip on it as I watch a secret door reveal itself, slowly sliding aside right where the banging had been coming from.
There, I see her, and my jaw drops.
She has rich brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail, and her eyes are the same shade. A simple skirt, a blouse, and a vest over it completes the picture of a young woman in her early twenties with a kind of simple dignity, probably educated, and probably relatively well-off up until now, because she looks absolutely terrified.
There’s so much beauty in that face that it stuns me to silence. My first look at her is cold, analytical, like a hunter sizing up his prey. It’s what this life has trained me to do. As soon as that first glance is over, though, I see a vulnerable young woman who was about to meet a terrible fate at the hands of some very powerful men.
And now, her fate is in my hands… and she is a major liability.
Neither of us have spoken. Her gaze has been locked on me. And my hand has been on my gun the whole time.
The only question now is whether I’ll have to use it.
Autumn
My heart is beating so fast, so loudly that I can feel every pulse like a shudder convulsing through my whole body, head to toe. I feel electrified. Electrocuted. And hypnotized. It’s a trance I have found myself enraptured inside before, but only when standing before the truly most sublime of natural landscapes or urban cityscapes.
It’s the way I feel when I stand at the base of some great marble statue or a memorial weighted down with the burden of soul after crushed soul. It’s the gravity of a thousand atmospheres, pressing down on me, turning me from a living bloom to a dried flower pressed and preserved between the crackling pages of some herbalist’s field diary. I am frozen. Riveted to the spot by the sight before me.
Only he is not a statue. I can see him moving, ever so slightly. His muscles tensing and clenching, his barrel chest rising and falling with every massive
breath meant to buoy the strongest lungs a man has ever had. And he’s dressed to kill. He looks like he could have stumbled straight from the pages of a romance novel. But a tragic one. He’s not a Darcy. He is a Heathcliff, perhaps. Or a Humbert Humbert.
A sensation like a rivulet of icy water down my spine seizes me.
Does this make me Lolita?
I swallow hard, not daring to move a single muscle as the beast regards me, his precious prey. He looks at me with the shrewd, hawkish eyes of a man who overthinks everything and sees everything. He catches every detail, catalogues it away for future use. I can see the cogs moving in his skull behind those dark eyes. I can positively smell the smog of industry on him. He’s a man who works with his hands, but his mind is sharper than any instrument. I can sense that instantly. A kindred spirit, a deep thinker. A man who nurses a lot of dark fantasies. Does he live them out? Does he actualize the grim images fluttering like moths in the glowing illumination of his mind? Does he wring meaning out of the meaningless?
Is he more like me than the other captors?
He’s different from them. I can tell. Whereas my kidnappers up until now have seemed more like minions to some greater, hidden mastermind behind the velvet curtain, this man seems self-contained and self-assured. He works for no one but himself.
And whatever job he must have, it must pay really damn well. Because he is dressed in the luxurious brocades and furs and wools of the aristocracy, which is still alive and well and clearly defined in much of beautiful Russia. He looks like a character from a book I would devour in one day. He looks like a tragic hero. Perhaps an anti-hero. A lord or a rogue but not a prince.
Is he part-beast?
The hungry fire burning behind his penetrating gaze tells me I might be on the right track. He looks at me with a calmness, a matter-of-factness that speaks more to the food chain than to social graces. And yet, he doesn’t look like a brute. He’s an older man, probably at least thirty-five, probably older, just judging from the soft lines beginning to solidify in his face. A weathered map of places he has been, people he has seen, lives he has probably ruined. That much I feel pretty confident in—that he is a ruiner of lives. He’s the man at the turnstile, pulling the lever to unravel a life and send it careening off a cliff into the pits of darkness.
He’s not a monster, though.
No.
He’s far more elegant than that. His clothes are perfectly-fitted, which indicates he at least has the time, money, and patience to stand still and pay another person to tailor his clothes for him. He must stay in one place just long enough to do that, at the very least.
But he doesn’t look like a man with deep roots. He doesn’t look like he has a place to call home. I think he makes a home out of every room he enters. He owns every step he takes. He claims every breath of air with gusto, without hesitation. He deserves it all, and he knows it.
Oh yes. He is a far cry from the spineless gremlins who captured me in the first place. This man does not play jester to anyone. He’s the king.
And I can only imagine what he will do to me. Where do I fall on the tree of hierarchy? Which branch? Am I a lowly strip of bark or a blooming flower? Am I desirable enough to be preserved alive, or am I just an overgrown branch ripe for pruning? I lick my lips and drag in a slow, panicked inhale. His eyes are on me, dissecting me, undressing me, reducing me to the sum of my parts. And yet, it’s not the way the other guys looked at me. They treated me like a prized chicken to strut around. But this new man looks at me like I am made of glass.
Or maybe diamonds.
“Who are you?” I ask quietly, my voice rough as gravel under tires.
The man frowns, a darkness coming over his sharp features. My heart sinks. Maybe he doesn’t speak any English. We are, after all, still somewhere in Russia.
“Privet menya zovut Autumn,” I manage to croak out in fractured Russian.
Both of his dark, thick brows arch in surprise, like he wasn’t expecting me to somehow know any Russian. I can only hope he doesn’t press me to speak more of it, because my understanding of the language is extremely shallow. I know just enough to point myself in the right direction, to ask for help or food or drinks, but certainly not enough to carry a full conversation with… whoever this guy is.
He doesn’t say a word yet, but takes a step closer. I gasp in fear and fall backward against the wall, nearly falling through to the wretched cell I just escaped from. My heart aches with every resounding thump, like it can’t pump hard enough to keep up with how frantic my mind is. I feel like a rabbit caught in a trap, a wolf stalking me from the bushes with dark eyes and darker intentions. Will he rip me to shreds or will he set me free?
I don’t have anywhere near enough optimism left in the tank to assume it’s the latter. Especially when I rip my eyes away from the distinguished Russian gentleman and begin to take in the surroundings of the room I’ve crawled into. I realize now that the cell I was originally housed in here is just a part of the walls.
A secret compartment.
Almost like a walk-in closet that got sealed up for… probably nefarious purposes. But this room is lushly decorated. There is what looks to be a bespoke Turkish rug on the floor, round and intricately-patterned with threads of crimson and gold and deep forest green. Across the room is a gigantic, plush-looking bed with four posts and a gauzy, silky canopy draped between each of the posts, creating a sort of mini-boudoir in the confines of the bed. The sheets are shimmery and perfectly-pressed. The pillows are fluffed and meticulously straight.
There is one window across the room, and I can just barely make out the choppy blue waves of some body of water peeking in between the heavy, burgundy curtains. I wonder what body of water it is. I wrack my brain, trying to think of the geography of the continent. I have never been particularly good at geography either, especially not in the nautical sense.
It would appear that someone has put a lot of effort into this room.
I look over at the man again, my heart still pounding. He continues to watch me with silence, like he’s trying to size me up or something. I instinctively smooth down the front of my blouse and skirt. Finally, he opens his mouth to speak.
“Ya ne prichinyu tebe vreda,” he says, and his voice is a low rumble, almost like an animal growling. It positively thrums through the floors under my feet. He slowly raises both hands, showing me his palms in mock surrender. He regards me with a frown of confusion.
“I-I’m sorry,” I murmur, shaking my head. “I don’t actually speak Russian. I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
He nods, never tearing those eyes away from me for even a second.
“Okay,” he says. “I will speak to you in English.”
“Oh. Thank you,” I gasp, totally taken aback.
“I said that I will not hurt you,” the man tells me slowly.
I freeze up. “I’m not stupid,” I mutter. “I know people only say that if they’re actually planning to hurt you.”
“I would not lie about that,” he counters, taking a step closer. “You have no reason to fear me, malen’kiy.”
“I’ve been kidnapped and held in captivity for god knows how long, so forgive me if I’m a little suspicious of a strange man suddenly showing up out of the blue,” I reply, a little more fiercely than I intended.
“I am not one of them,” he claims.
I scoff, folding my arms over my chest while my hand still clutches the small, pointy bit of wood I plucked from the wall. “How the hell am I supposed to believe that?” I asked.
“I suppose you will believe whatever you choose to believe,” he says with a shrug. “But I am telling you the truth. I did not even know you were here.”
“Right. Sure. That makes perfect sense. You just inherited a captive, huh?” I retort.
He nods. “Well, as a matter of fact…”
“Oh, please,” I spit angrily. “Don’t toy with me. I know they sent you to look after me. To keep me locked up
in that… that hellhole.”
“I did not even know that room existed, devushka,” he growls. “It is as much a surprise to me as it probably is to you.”
“Then why are you here? Where are all the guards? Where are the men who kidnapped me? I don’t understand,” I blurt out, throwing up my arms in frustration. “I have no reason to believe you’re not one of them, quite frankly. No matter what you say.”
“Calm yourself, Autumn,” he says, and I immediately feel a tingle roll down my spine at the sound of my name in his mouth.
It sounds different somehow. More exotic. I’ve always hated my name. ‘Autumn’ has always seemed like a weird fit for me. I do love that time of year, but every other Summer or Autumn or Winter I ever met was a spoiled rich girl on a cheerleading squad or dance team, the kind of girls who made fun of me and called me Wednesday Addams in the classroom or at recess. But hearing this distinguished, admittedly handsome older Russian gentleman say my name… well, it brings a whole new shine to my name.
Suddenly, I feel emboldened enough to ask a question.
“What is your name?” I ask.
He stares at me hard, a muscle twitching in his jaw. I can tell he is doing his best to restrain himself… but from what? From hurting me? From giving up too much information?
“Come on. I told you my name. It’s only fair that I should get to know what yours is, too. If you want me to trust you, I need your name,” I insist.
He raises an eyebrow, a dark look passing over his sharp, defined features.
There’s a warning note to his voice when he replies, “Careful, malyshka. You admit it yourself that you do not know who I am or what my intentions are. I say that I will not hurt you, but that does not mean I will allow you to give me attitude. I won’t harm you, but I will demand your respect. My name is not important at this moment.”
“That isn’t fair,” I murmur, surprised by how my body is reacting to his authoritative tone. I feel warm all over. And tingly.
“Life is not fair,” he replies grimly. “I would think your time in captivity has taught you that, at the very least.”
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