Page 5 of Malevolent King

“I’m so glad it’s you.”

His hand loosened slightly from my lips, and I jerked my head quickly enough that he couldn’t cover it. “I’m not helping you.”

His fingers closed back over my mouth, silencing me.

“Is that right? That’s okay. I don’t need you to be willing, I just needyou.” He leaned in, his lips tracing over my cheek. “And prom queen, I’ve got you.”

My scream of frustration was smothered by his palm.

He leaned away from me and looked around. “Now, are you going to be a good girl and stay quiet for me, or do I have to gag you?”

I glared at him, my fury fizzling, my eyes burning.

He sighed as if I was a minor inconvenience he’d have to accommodate. “How about this? Keep your mouth shut, or I’ll find something to put in it that does the job, and I’ll enjoy every second,” he said, his manic grin returning.

Slowly, he freed my mouth.

I drew a deep breath, working my lips where they had gone numb under his hard touch. “Try it, and I’ll bite it off,” I whispered. My throat hurt from screaming against his hand gag, and I couldn’t get enough moisture down my gullet to do more than croak.

His dry chuckle set my teeth on edge. He was fiddling with something, and I took the chance to work a scream together.

He was still pushing me ruthlessly against the wall, and my neck was turned so sharply that it was hard to project my voice.

“Sounds like fun, but we don’t have time for that right now,” he said, bringing his hand back to my mouth just as I let out the first note of a piercing cry.

His hand clamped over my lips, too close to release more than a squeak. I tasted dry cotton and protested when he knotted what felt like a leather tie around my head, locking the ball of material he’d shoved in my mouth into place.

He turned me while I was still trying to adjust my mouth and caged me against the wall, knocking the breath from my lungs. Now, his hard body pushed into my front, and there was no escape from his probing stare.

I hadn’t been this close to this man in years. Five years, to be exact. A flush of shame and guilt worked through me as I remembered.

“Now, Sofia, we’re leaving. I applaud your father’s ingenuity in taking me, and I understand it was his price to leave my brother alone. But I don’t intend to pay for bratva sins with my blood. I won’t go easy, and you’re going to help me with that. You’re my insurance for getting out of this hellhole, and I don’t need you whole to be effective. I only need you alive. Don’t forget that.”

I shook my head madly and stiffened when Nikolai’s hand came up to my throat, easily circling the slender column. My pulse hammered against his hand. He rubbed his thumb across the pulse point.

He seemed fascinated by the tiny movement. “I don’t want to hurt you,lastochka. Don’t make me. You know what I’m capable of,” he whispered. “Come quietly, and everything will be okay.”

A tear welled in my eye. It wasn’t sadness, it was anger. Since that fateful night we’d met, when I was seventeen and he was nineteen, we’d been hurtling toward this very moment.

“We both know it was always going to come down to you and me, Sofia,” Nikolai murmured, seeming to read my thoughts.

I shook my head, another helpless tear of pure fury and fear falling down my cheek. His eyes burned into mine. He raised a tattooed finger to my cheek, tracing the path of salt, wetting his finger in it. Then he brought the fingertip holding my tear to his mouth and licked it.

3

SOFIA

He tied my hands behind my back, throwing me off balance. I could see the dead guards now, arranged against the car’s leather seats. The dead driver even had his hands on the wheel, posed in a sick parody of normalcy. Nikolai had cut this throat by the looks of it. They’d underestimated the youngest Chernov and paid the price. Hadn’t I done it, too? I supposed I should feel lucky it had only cost me my sanity.So far…

Nikolai searched the dead bodies with one hand and held me in a death grip with the other. I strained against him, waiting for a chance to run.

I studied him in the dim light, from his bloodied face to his unruly dark hair sticking up in all directions. It was mussed in the careless way designers spent hours trying to achieve in magazine spreads. Violent nonchalance was as instinctive to Nikolai as breathing. He wore it so well because that was what he was.

A stone-cold killer. A psychopath born and bred. A monster with no remorse. And now, my captor.

Watch out for weakness, Sofia. Every man has one. The voice of Tinto, myparanza cortainstructor, filled my head. I’d been studying the art of knife fighting since I was a little kid. I clearly wasn’t the best student, as I was about to be taken hostage inside my home. Regardless, Tinto was right. Every man had a weakness, and finding Niko’s could help me escape.

I pushed my fear aside and tried to consider him objectively.He had dark rings under his eyes, a sign of pure exhaustion. If Gino was right—and it seemed he was—Viktor Chernov, thepakhanof the New York bratva and Niko’s father, had died last night. Whatever had gone down after had brought the younger of the two Chernov brothers here, tied up in a trunk in Casa Nera. He probably hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours. I could use that.

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