Page 1 of Ruthless Bonds

Prologue

Alora

I’d always found beauty in the darkness. There was a rawness to it, the way it stripped everything away and left only you and your demons.

Most people feared that.

Me? I’d learned to embrace it.

But as I hung from the ceiling in the pitch-black room, my boots barely scraping the concrete floor, I was having a really hard time appreciating its charms.

Beads of sweat trickled down my back as I yanked my wrists.

It was pointless.

I was trapped.

My arms screamed in protest as I twisted against the ropes. Pretty sure I was going to remove “rope play” from my fantasy list after this.

How long had I been hanging here? An hour? Two? I groaned, my limbs heavy as if they were made of lead. If I could just get loose and reach the switchblade in my boot…

The distant rumbling of the subway vibrated against the walls, red lights flashing through windows too high and small for me to escape through. July in New York was already unbearable, the air thick with humidity and desperation, but down here in this basement, it was like a sauna.

The smell of bleach mixed with the odor of what I assumed was death made my skin crawl. I was almost relieved I couldn’t see in the dark. As far as I knew, there could have been a pile of dead bodies next to me. A wave of morbid thoughts ran through my mind, making me shudder.

I had to get back to my sister.

Had she run like I had told her? My heart thumped wildly in my chest. If they caught her—hurt her—

Stop.

Get your shit together, Alora.

The door creaked open, light spilling into the room. Two shadowy figures appeared at the top of the staircase. My eyes darted around, taking in my surroundings. One door. A table with shiny silver tools—what in the Peter fucking Pan was that? A hook?

I jerked my wrists, biting the inside of my cheek to stop from screaming. I would not die here. Not when I hadn’t even lived yet. My fingers, once so swift at slipping into pockets or unclasping businessmen’s watches, now felt clumsy and useless against the bindings holding me captive.

Another light flickered on, a single lightbulb swaying in the center of the room, casting ominous shadows across the graffiti-covered walls. Two men stood, their heads low, their voices urgent as they dumped out the contents of my backpack. One wore an expensive suit, the other a police uniform. But I knew better than that. Cops didn’t ink themselves with Bratva symbols. My gaze dragged from his wolf tattoo to the dried blood on the side of his head.

That was courtesy of me and my lucky bat. Butthat had been the only swing I had got in before I’d been knocked to the ground. A metallic taste still lingered in my mouth from when he’d backhanded me and dragged me out of my apartment.

I hadn’t screamed; hell, I had barely put up a fight when they had blindfolded me and thrown me into the trunk. Because if my sister had heard me, she would have come back. I would not let them take her too.

I had broken my first rule—always trust the goosebumps. If I had trusted them, then I wouldn’t be hanging here like a piece of meat in some torture dungeon.

Earlier that night, when the cop had stopped me outside my apartment and demanded I go to the precinct with him, I’d known something wasn’t right. He sure as hell didn’t look like a real cop. There was no way I was going to just get in his car.

A notorious serial killer had once said his victims could have escaped his wrath if they’d just trusted their gut. “Despite their suspicion that something was wrong, they chose to help out of fear of seeming impolite. They chose kindness over caution, willingly assisting a stranger who claimed to be locked out of his car or had lost his puppy.”

So no, cop or not, I wasn’t getting into a stranger’s car. Then, when I’d seen his tattoo, I’d known I was in deep shit.

Bratva.

Russian mafia.

He was there because of what I had done. What I had been forced to do to save my family. And now I was going to pay the price.

I should have run that night after what hadhappened with Dylan. Taken Dove and gone somewhere safe…

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