Page 33 of Savage Surrender

As I got her to safety, returning to my car to get her in the passenger seat, she didn’t question me at all.

Ihad so many questions for her that I didn’t know where to start.

Why was she there unprotected?

What were those Ilyin men trying to steal her away for?

Weren’t the Petrovs and Ilyins enemies after the business with Lev killing Yusef Ilyin?

“Viktor,” she said once I drove off.

I glanced at her, scowling, but notather. I didn’t like the thought of her being manhandled or forced somewhere against her will. While I lacked the clues and details about what was going on there, I didn’t like what I saw.

“Are you all right?” I reached over to check her arm, looking at her wrist where one of them had held on to her.

“Yes.” She pulled her arm back. “I’m fine.”

“Those men were trying to kidnap you.”

She exhaled a long breath and looked out the passenger window. When she should’ve seemed scared or even mad, she appeared resigned instead. Like this was just fate and she didn’t have the power to fight it.

And I hated it.

Irina was an enemy. She had to be an enemy of mine. The Petrovs and Baranov families were not friends, so therefore, as members of opposing sides, we had to be adversaries to an extent. Yet, the more I planned to seduce her and get close enough for her to talk to me, I was surprised with how much I wished things could be different.

That she could just be a woman I’d met and wanted so badly I ached to close my lips over hers again. That I could just be a man who’d noticed her and whom she wanted to welcome into her arms.

Because she had been born the daughter of Igor Petrov, though, she was my enemy.

Too many lines were getting blurred here. I wasn’t supposed to want her. She wasn’t supposed to get under my skin like this.

“I’m fine,” she repeated, monotone and matter-of-fact about it, which didn’t do a damn thing to convince me that she was anywhere close to fine after that incident. “It’s complicated, but I’m fine.”

“So I shouldn’t have fought them off for trying to force you away with them?” I asked, trying and failing to not sound testy.

“No. I appreciate that,” she replied, sincere but still resigned.

I frowned as I drove, nodding when she asked if I could just take her home. Listening to her give me the address, I pretended that I didn’t already know that detail about her.

Silence filled the car, but I didn’t mind it. I needed the quiet. With her company, I could attest to her being safe. During the silence, I mulled over the realization that I wanted to comfort her and see to her safety—not target her as someone who possessed secrets the Boss wanted me to pry out of her. I wrestled with the urge to pull over and just hold her. I ignored the reminder that I should be doing my duty to interrogate her and intimidate her into telling me family secrets.

Every time I glanced at her, I saw how scared she was. She wasn’t fine. Despite her cool mask, I picked up on enough clues that told me she was frightened and bothered by those two Ilyin men trying to get her away.

I hated that she’d feel like this. But like she’d pointed out, this was complicated, getting messier by the minute as I considered the very real possibility that I had already started to care too much for her than what was wise.

16

IRINA

Viktor dropped me off and waited until I got into my building before driving off. I couldn’t be sure what his game was with me. I also couldn’t begin to guess why he’d been at that party. It was in an even seedier part of town than the other one where I saw him.

A professor going down on his student in his office was scandalous enough. But his happening to show up at a party I was supposed to spy at, then rescuing me from men who thought they could do as they wanted with me?

Weird.

I called everyone I could in my father’s employ to reach him. He wasn’t answering his phone, but that didn’t stop me from calling nonstop.

Leave it to him to be unreachable when I would be demanding an explanation for why Andre Ilyin or anyone else in that family would think that I’d be arranged in a marriage with them.

---