Page 68 of Malevolent King

“…you’ll kill him…”

“…I don’t care…”

“Antonio does, he wants the deals with Chernov…”

“Fanculo, va bene, let’s go…”

The voices trailed away, and silence fell.

No, not perfect silence.

Footfalls broke the still air, and a hand turned me over carefully.

“Crap. Nikolai? Can you hear me?” a deep voice asked.

My splintered brain tried to make sense of it.“Angelo, I can’t play with you right now,bratan.I’m busy,” I managed, and turned to spit a mouthful of blood on the floor.

“Fuck, you don’t look good. This isn’t good. The deal only works if I get you out of here alive,” Angelo fretted.

“Don’t worry. I’m not dying here. I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, easy to say when you can’t see yourself. I think we should risk it tonight if you can stand. I’ll think of a diversion or something.”

Silvio’s dark promise ran through my head, cutting my mind with spiked barbs.

I shifted and cracked a swollen eyelid open. “You got a smoke for a dying man?”

Angelo blew out a breath and reached into his pocket for one. He lit it for me and put it to my lips. I drew the sweet poison deep into my lungs. Fuck, that was good.

“Everyone’s got to go sometime. It’s better to die than do nothing.” The nicotine racing through my veins helped to steady the shaking in my abused muscles.

“I don’t think that applies here.”

“It always applies,” I muttered, enjoying the smoke. Silvio’s words were playing in a loop in my head. “I can’t leave like this. I need a few days to recover. Then, we make a move.”

I tilted my head to look up at Sofia’s burly bodyguard. “How are you at making bombs?”

19

SOFIA

My anxious eyes stared back at me from the full-length mirror in the training room. The bruise on my cheek drew my attention every single time.

I’d come to work out in the room where Renato and I had learned our defense skills, hoping that would burn off some of my energy. I should feel tired from barely sleeping, but I didn’t. I felt like nitrous was running in my veins instead of blood. Fear and anxiety were keeping me awake around the clock.

A terrible foreboding dogged my thoughts. Something terrible was going to happen. I could feel it. It wasn’t just me I was worried about either.

There was something wrong with me, and it was sitting downstairs, chained to a pipe. Nikolai might die down there. Silvio might really kill him. The thought sent anxious tears to my eyes.

In my world, finding a man whose hands were clean was impossible, yet even then, Nikolai’s were pretty far from clean. He had never tried to hide who he was from me. He was the most honest man in my life. I had someone on my side, someone in my corner. Someone who didn’t care about my father. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel alone.

I ran through my warm-up routine. If being kidnapped by Niko had taught me anything, it was that despite my skills, I was no match for a man’s strength, head-to-head. My biggest strength lay in taking my opponent off guard and being sneaky and quick.

I pushed my body through a quick routine of push-ups and sprints, dropping and sweeping an imaginary leg before rolling and jumping quickly to my feet.

My chest burned as I pushed myself, and my well-used muscles ached. I embraced the pain. It made it real.

My phone rang on the bench against the wall, interrupting my punishing routine. I stopped, gulping down air, and headed for it. It was Renato’s ringtone. I hadn’t spoken to my brother for weeks, and now I grabbed the handset eagerly.

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