Page 65 of Cruel Promise

Dimitri doesn’t.

“Find Dimitri,” I order my men.

“Uh, sir, it’s too dangerous to go back inside,” Silva says. He’s worked for me for only a year because his father used to work for me. Shows what family loyalty will get you.

“Fine. I’ll find him myself,” I growl, heading back into the burning building.

Smoke clogs my lungs and eyes. It takes me a moment to register what I’m seeing. All the dead bodies. All the blood. All of it in flames.

And there’s Dimitri, slumped over the bar. I shake him, and his eyes flutter open. “Get out,” I say, pushing him toward the exist. He stumbles to the front door with me following.

Then I hear the gunshot.

Then I feel the pain in my leg as it buckles, and I fall to the ground. Dimitri doesn’t look back as he leaves the building.

Clutching my leg, I look up as Maxim steps into view. Somehow unharmed. Fucking bastard.

“I just wanted peace,” he hisses. “But you just couldn’t learn your lesson, could you?”

“You needed to be put in your place.” I cough as smoke fills my lungs.

“No. You need to be put in your place, Nikolai.” He lifts his gun, and I stare at him back. I will not shut my eyes as he kills me. I’m no coward. My scar is a testament to that.

And then he whips the gun against my head, sending me sprawling to the ground.

“You can’t die that easily,” he says as blackness takes over my vision. “I need you and everyone else to learn you don’t mess with The Knights.”

All I see is fire before everything goes dark.

AVA

Mrs. Brown unlocks my bedroom door to bring me food. It’s the same old, same old.

Except for one thing.

“I can’t believe he actually locked you up,” she says, shaking her head with a disapproving frown as she sets the food on the table.

“Does that mean you’re going to help me?”

She hesitates.

“Mrs. Brown, please. You just said it yourself. He locked me in this room. How can you be all right with any of this?”

“I’m not,” she says firmly but is unable to look at me. “I’m not all right with any of this, dear. But I can’t help you. He gave me explicit orders to not let you out.”

I eye the open door. “So, if I ran past you right now, you would stop me?”

“Yes, I would. But I’m an older woman, and you’re much younger than me. You could easily overpower me.”

It dawns on me what she’s saying.

“Thank you,” I whisper and run for the open door.

Edmund is standing next to the front door—as usual—so I turn into the kitchen. I can’t risk escaping right away again. Who knows what Nikolai would do to me then?

But I can’t stay cooped up in that bedroom any longer.

I’d put up with a thousand Claudes if it meant I didn’t have to be locked up again.

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