Page 114 of Captive Souls

I didn’t lower my gaze. “What do you think his chance of success is?” I asked Lukyan. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”

He laughed. The sound was chilling. There was no warmth in it. No humanity. I was baffled that a man with such an obvious devotion to his wife was so cold in every other way. But that was the pot calling the kettle black, I guessed. “I’m not in the business of sugarcoating anything, Piper.” He looked once to his wife, as if he was taking cues from her. Interesting. She nodded almost imperceptibly before he looked back at me.

“Even knowing Knox and how … proficient he is at what he does, I would say without you in the mix, his chances would be zero.”

I swallowed sand at his answer, one I’d already suspected.

“Andwithme in the mix?” I probed.

I struggled to meet his arctic gaze. “Slightly higher than zero. But not by much.”

My heart fell to my toes. “And why do I change the situation?”

His eyes once again went to his wife, for longer this time, and when he spoke, he was still looking at her. “Because organizations like that, ones headed by men used to getting what they want, used to controlling, dominating people, see women as weak. They underestimate them. And that will be their downfall.”

He finally looked back at me with his steely gaze.

“That’s not to give you hope. Unfortunately, women still don’t win wars. They don’t prevail. Because men will always fear them. And weak men will always destroy what they fear. The world is run by weak men, Piper.”

I stared at him, surprised by the feminist tilt to the most words I’d heard him speak since I met him.

He didn’t offer me any hope. I didn’t think Lukyan was the kind of man to do that.

But he offered a chance.

A chance, a small chance, at life. The odds leaned toward death, but I was ever the optimist.

I pushed my chair back.

“I know you made all sorts of promises to Knox, but would you consider breaking them?”

Lukyan smiled, if you could call it that, the expression was sharp and thorny and intimidating.

“I think I can do that.”

There wasn’t a timeline on what Knox was doing, therefore, we needed to make a large plan in a small amount of time. I was apt to follow Lukyan’s lead when it came to the nuts and bolts of taking down an international criminal organization.

In the end, the plan was simple.

And it was not thought up by Lukyan, who I was kind of suspecting to be some evil genius in his own right.

The plan was thought up by Elizabeth, her husband immediately deferring to her. The dynamic between the two could be studied. And if I wasn’t wrapped up in the terror of the only man I’d ever loved potentially dying and petrified at what I would have to do to save us both, I would’ve beena lotmore curious.

As it was, my mind was focused on the almost impossible task at hand.

We were in Elizabeth’s closet. The space was as large as my bedroom in my apartment, opulent and decorated in creams and whites with plush carpets and rows of exquisite clothing organized on hangers. It looked like I was in a designer store.

The wealth they both obviously had was vast. Crime paid. And despite my reaction to Lukyan, I couldn’t convince myself that they were bad people.

I was trying on clothes. Not something I would have expected to do when preparing to go to battle. When men went to battle, they wore armor, or bulletproof vests in this generation. When women went to battle, they wore couture and cashmere. Soft. Pliable. No protection from bullets, knives or fists.

After laying out the plan, we had spoken little. Lukyan had retreated to his office tomake arrangements,and Elizabeth and I had gone to assemble my wardrobe.

Once that was done, she sat me down in front of a large vanity to do my makeup.

“Lukyan and I were up against some pretty terrible odds,” Elizabeth said, her voice soft and sweet as she applied bronzer to my cheeks. “We began our relationship in a manner that was not dissimilar to yours.”

I snorted, looking at her in the mirror. “Doubtful. Was he hired to kidnap you as well?” She didn’t deserve the snark in my tone, and I wasn’t usually a person to direct it at someone who had been nothing but kind to me but, I was feeling prickly.

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