Page 98 of Ruthless Bonds

“I stayed there for hours, frozen in fear. Finally, I got up the courage to come out and… I wished I hadn’t. There was so much blood. Pure destruction of everything. I was able to sneak to a neighbor’s home, and one maid helped me. Got me into hiding. She saved me. Her name was Nadya.” She clasped her hands together as if praying, whispering words I couldn’t understand.

While she was speaking, I kept trying to guide the metal piece into the keyhole, and a rush of adrenaline coursed through me when it wedged in. I took a deep breath, letting my shoulders relax against the strain for a moment. There was hope.

“I spent the next two decades becoming the perfect servant. The loyal maid. The injured woman too weak to ever be seen as a threat.” To emphasize her point, she practically skipped back over to the table and grabbed the bottle of wine. Once she had the cork out, she took a hefty swig and held the bottle out to me, as if I should grab it. “Oh, I forgot. Your hands are cuffed.”

Not for long.

Without waiting for me to say anything, she pushed my head back and poured wine into my mouth. I wasn’t expecting it, so it spilled all down my chin and I coughed it up. Crazy bitch was out of her mind.

“You know, I was hoping we could be allies. When he first brought you home as a prisoner, I thought, ‘I’ll help this girl the way Nadya helped me.’ But then you went and fell in love with the monster. It’s sickening really. And the Pakhan is beyond obsessed with you. It’s unhealthy, Mrs. Zokrova.”

I wanted to defend my actions, but knew it would be useless. At this stage, there was no way she was going to show me any mercy. The only thing I could do was stall as long as I could until Kreos got here, or until I got free.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t just killViktor. You worked there with him, had plenty of opportunities to get your vengeance. So why didn’t you?” I gritted my teeth, focusing on trying to press the buckle against the spring-loaded lever.

“Kill him?” she scoffed, drinking more of the wine. “That would be too merciful. He needs to experience what I did, feel what I felt. Utter and complete loss. I want him to live so he can watch his son’s empire crumble while his other pathetic son is stuck in a coma—thanks to me, by the way.” She cackled.

My eyes widened at her confession. Constantine was in a coma because of her? “How? How did you get to his brother?”

She opened up a laptop, grabbed one of the USB sticks, and put it inside the port. “The assassination attempt wasn’t my doing, but when he was in the hospital as a John Doe, I knew it was my chance.” She picked up one syringe and wiggled it in my face. “Tryliportal sodium. Untraceable in the blood. Just a few drops in his IV every day keeps him in dreamland. It’s brilliant.”

“It’s sick, Elena. I understand the pain and hatred you must feel, but you can’t just take it out on innocent people. Constantine wasn’t even born, nor was Bela, when that happened to your family. And Kreos was just a baby. You’re not justified in your actions.” I spit the words out with venom in my voice, which only made her stalk over to me and smack me in the face. My head whipped to the side and I gasped.

“Kreos is everything that is wrong with this world. He’s a worse version of his father, smarter, more controlled, and even more dangerous. Since he’s beenPakhan, his organization has grown stronger than ever before. The Zokrov name instills fear and panic in everyone. It’s not right.”

Her chest rose as her breath came out ragged, and I remained silent, not moving a muscle so I wouldn’t trigger another freakout from her.

“Killing Kreos’ father would be too easy. One bullet and then it’s over? Thirty-five years of waiting for nothing?” She shook her head, a twisted smile on her face. “No, I want Viktor to watch his precious son’s destruction. To see everything he’s built collapse into nothing. Destroying Kreos and his empire ensures that no other family suffers like mine did. I’m breaking the damn cycle, Mrs. Zokrova. And as for you? Well, you made the mistake of falling in love with the Devil himself, and now you’ll have to pay the price. If it gives you any comfort, please know that I won’t harm Dove. I promise you that much.”

At the mention of Dove’s name, I jiggled the metal piece faster. I could almost feel the cuff loosening. Only a little more and I would be free. I just hoped I had enough time. “So, what’s your big master plan, then? You know when he gets here, he’ll kill you? You have to know that.”

“I’m prepared to die, but that’s not going to happen today.” She typed on the laptop, her face twisting with confusion a moment later. “Stupid thing isn’t working,” she muttered and ripped the USB out of the slot. There were stacks of USBs next to her, and she grabbed another, and plugged it in.

The sound of her nails tapping on the table was the perfect cover as I pressed into the lever. My heart skipped a beat when the cuff sprang open, releasing myright wrist. I kept the cuff there, so if she happened to look, I would still appear to be a captive.

“I hate to ruin the surprise, but if you must know, the plan is to kill you in front of the Pakhan. You’re the one person he loves more than anything in this world. He will be utterly heartbroken. Then I’ll inject him with this”—she pointed at the syringe—“and once that’s completed, I’ll go through all these files and start dismantling the Zokrov empire. Unfortunately, I needed the help of the Cruel, so once he helps me take down all of Kreos’ operations, he’ll have to die too, of course. He’s just as vile as the rest of them, but you know I had to pick the lesser evil.”

“The lesser evil? The Cruel is part of human trafficking. He’s a monst—”

“Shut up!” She slammed her hand on the table. “I need to focus. Why aren’t there any files on here?” she muttered more to herself than to me.

I didn’t dare move yet. Now wasn’t the time. At least my hands were free—well, technically just one, but I could use the cuff as a weapon if I needed to. Having my ankles tied to the chair was the bigger problem. Even if my hands were free, I couldn’t run. She had a gun, so I had to be smart about how this played out.

She grabbed another USB and shoved it into the port. Her eyes flashed to mine, and I clenched my jaw. “You know, I have you to thank for most of this, so I’ll do you the courtesy of killing you quickly when it’s time.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, not trusting my voice for a moment. Like hell she was going to kill me. I hadn’t gone through all this bullshit, found the love of my life, just to have her rip it all away from me. Not happening. “What do you mean, thank me?”

“I knew the Pakhan was keeping his files somewhere, but I didn’t know where. I’d searched that house from top to bottom, found five safes, but none of them had these.” She waved her hand at journals and USBs on the table. “That night he came home covered in blood, he was distracted by you and didn’t realize he had opened the safe right in front of me. I knew there had to be another one somewhere, and then bam, there it was right in front of me.”

She went back to fiddling on the laptop, and my gaze traveled around the room. If she came at me with the gun, I would have no chance. My best shot was to get to my knife in my boot, or one of the bottles on the ground. If I could grab one and hit her, then I stood a chance. My ears picked up on a noise in the distance, and my back straightened.

Kreos was here. I just knew it.

“Why are these all blank?” she screamed, smashing the laptop on the table until the keypad buttons started flying off. My eyes widened at her outburst, but then a realization slowly started dawning on me.

Kreos prided himself on always staying one step ahead of his enemies. He left nothing to chance or circumstance. If those were blank, then that meant it was intentional. A decoy perhaps? But why—or how could he have known?

Elena grabbed the brown leather journal I’d seen Gavriil put into the safe and ripped it open. Papers flew everywhere, and she reached down, gathering them up. She gasped as she riffled through them, crumpling them one by one.

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