Page 26 of Scorch

“Do we have to fucking restrain you?” Mikhail spits out, his eyes storm clouds as he glares at me. Lev massages his jaw but doesn't say anything, probably knowing he got off easy. Kolya is fuming, his nostrils flared, but he gets to his feet and brushes his clothes off as if he's dusting himself.

“Sit down, Viktor,” he snaps.

I stand my ground. “None of you know what it was like. None of you know what he was planning to do to her. She did not need to be drugged, and now I have to take a reluctant wife who doesn't trust me because my fucking family drugged her like she was an animal. I told you that I had it under control. I told you that I could handle her!”

My voice rises to a roar, and they are on their feet again.

“No one doubted that you could handle her, Viktor. But we needed to subdue her and get her back here safely,” Aleksandr says. Mikhail is in my face, and so help me God, I'm going to knock his fucking teeth out, and then they'll all have the right to kill me.

No.

I step away from him only to land right next to Aleksandr. I shove him against the wall. His shoulder hits a framed print of the Louvre, and it crashes to the floor, glass shattering everywhere. Aleks rights himself and reaches for me, but I shove him back.

“When is the wedding?” I look at Ollie, the one in charge of international relations who knows exactly why we have to marry right now.

“Saturday.”

I grit my teeth. She won't trust me by then. I have a vision of me dragging her by the hair to the altar. I will if I fucking have to, to save her. To save all of us.

“I need more time. Buy more fucking time.”

Ollie and Nikko share a look. “I can make that happen.”

The lights in the room flicker before they go off. An alarm wails, and that's when I become aware of the smell of acrid smoke.

“I fucking told you I had to stay with her.”

Shit. I turn on my heel and run into the hallway. Smoke billows out from under the door, and all the lights are out. I run to the room and try the door, but it's locked, of course. She's jammed something up against it. What the fuck is she doing?

“Help me!” I scream to my brothers. “I can't open the fucking door.”

“I'll get in through the window,” Lev says. I snatch a fire extinguisher from the hallway and throw it to Ollie. I don’t have that option, but he’s small enough. “Go with him. When you get in there, you do not touch her.”

I run around to the exit, into the garden, and around the house to where the window is. The window to my bedroom is wide open, smoke billowing into the sky, sirens loud in the distance. Lev and Ollie come up beside me, all of us scanning the grounds. How the fuck did she get out?

I stand still. Listen. She's got nothing with her. If she got out of that room, there's only one way out. She's either running or… hiding.

I scan. I haven't been gone long enough for her to get far. Even if she left the second she triggered the alarm, she hardly had any time.

“Get Aleks on surveillance immediately,” I bark out to Lev. I walk with heavy footsteps around the perimeter of the house.

She's hiding. She hasn't had time to escape.

“I know you're here,” I say, keeping my voice quiet. “You know I'm going to find you. There's no point in hiding, Lydia.” I speak in a low voice, the timbre of it carrying through the garden. “There's no use hiding from me. You can try, but you're still going to end up right where you started—here, with me. And I promise it's not going to be as bad as you think it will be.”

I smile to myself. It’s a game. It’s all a game. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” I stalk around the periphery of my garden, to my left, an area of thick rhododendrons. She's there. She's hiding behind the bush. Likely thought she had a hell of a lot more time than she did. Probably didn't suspect that the alarm would go off so quickly. Didn't know that there's no way she could get off my property without my knowledge.

She also doesn't know I have a tracker on her.

“If you come out now, it will go a lot easier for you, Lydia.”

She doesn't move or respond in any way, likely terrified, unsure of what's going to happen with me, scared to be with a man she doesn't know.

I walk quietly toward where she is, aware of the fact that my shadow casts over every inch of this place. Sometimes I wish I could make myself smaller, less menacing. Sometimes I wish I could magnify it.

“Lydia, you need to trust me. I am not your enemy.”

Something rustles in the bushes.

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