Page 11 of Capturing Victory

“I’ve given her all that,” Ivan said dismissively. “She doesn’t care. She could afford clothes and jewels well before we picked her up. She chose not to spend her money on frivolous things. What else do women like?”

Keane looked as though he’d rather be eating a bowl of live grenades than having this conversation. “Cats!” he burst out, relief lighting up his bearded face.

“What?” Ivan asked, his lip curling derisively.

“I once dated this looney little bitch that had five freakin’ cats. Nearly killed one when I got up in the middle of the night to take a piss and stepped on it. She shot me in the arm with my own damn gun before shovin’ my naked ass out her back door and then throwin’ all my fucking clothes out the window. Bitch cared more about her cats than anything else,” Keane grumbled and rubbed his arm. “Women like cats.”

Ivan was pretty sure not all women liked cats based on Keane’s single experience, but he gave the idea some merit. Jaya had spent the majority of her life alone, running for her freedom. As far as he knew she’d never stopped long enough to form any solid attachments. Perhaps she would enjoy the company of something small and helpless, something dependant. Something that might bond with her and banish some of her loneliness.

The sneer playing around his mouth slowly softened. Yes, he would get Jaya a kitten. Give her the gift of a bond. And perhaps she would appreciate his present so much she might soften her attitude toward him. He thought about tasking the job to someone else, but the idea was distasteful. No, he would find the beast himself. He would have it flown in that very evening and give it to her with his own two hands. He wanted to see her face when she opened his gift and realized that he was capable of more than bloody vengeance.

Without looking up, he said, “Dismissed.” He was no longer interested in the security reports; he had a cat to find.

* * *

Jaya didn’t bother turning around when the door to her dungeon opened. It would be her evening meal delivery. She continued doing what she’d been doing for the past several hours, tearing pages out of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe in an attempt to teach herself the art of origami. She’d deemed the book unreadable with a stupid title and thus the best choice for paper cranes, butterflies and whatever else she might be capable of. At the moment her bed was littered in failed attempts. Maybe she should request a book on how origami worked. Apparently it was a lot harder than she thought.

“You’ve ruined my book,” Ivan’s voice drawled from behind her.

Jaya twisted around so suddenly her finger slid along the page she was tearing, cutting painfully into her skin. “Ouch!” she yelped and automatically stuck her finger in her mouth. She narrowed her eyes at Ivan as he approached her. She scrambled off the bed, not wanting to be at a disadvantage around him.

The book fell to the floor, landing on her foot. She pursed her lips in annoyance as pain shot through her. She was beginning to hate Ivanhoe almost as much as she hated the real Ivan.

He frowned, his icy façade cracking. “Are you hurt?”

She ignored his apparent concern and, taking her finger out of her mouth, pointed at the box under his arm. “What’s that? Finally giving me a laptop? I’ve only asked about sixty times, but no big deal. I know these things take time, especially when they have to ship it UPS to an evil crimelord’s secret lair. I promise not to use it to escape,” she said sarcastically.

The man hadn’t given her so much as an electric toothbrush or a flashlight. There was no way he was giving her a laptop. Besides the box under his arm was the wrong shape and size. It was perfectly square, about a half a foot wide and high. It was white with a red ribbon and a bow on top, like something you might see in a movie. It was probably another ridiculous sari he wanted her to wear for yet another episode of the bachelor billionaire’s kidnapped date.

Instead of answering, he dropped the box on the bed and reached for her hand. His fingers felt rough against her skin. She was surprised. She assumed he ran his evil empire from an office and let his minions do all the heavy lifting. She studied him while he examined her ridiculously small cut. He had shown amazingly fast reflexes on several occasions and she really didn’t think the appallingly easy way he’d dispatched the poor serving man had been a fluke. So Ivan was incredibly skilled at hand-to-hand combat, which meant he trained to become that way. And he probably trained often. The promise of hard muscles beneath his well-cut, expensive clothing weren’t fake either, she’d felt against her body during their chess match and that time he’d held her down on the bed.

She sighed and rolled her eyes, tugging uselessly at her hand. “Really, Ivan? After everything you’ve done to me, you’re this concerned over a little papercut?”

He dropped her hand, the frown that had been furrowing his eyebrows smoothing into his usual sculpted expression. “There’s the Ivan I know and hate,” she murmured, stepping back until her thighs met the edge of the bed. “I was worried you might be growing a conscience.”

He reached for the box, scooped it up in a large hand and thrust it at her. “Take it,” he snapped.

“And if I don’t accept your generosity you’ll put me in a cage, blah, blah, blah.” She accepted the box, curious despite herself. She nearly dropped the damn thing when it made a horrific yowling, pleading sound. “What the fuck, Ivan, it’s alive!”

“Yes, and I’m not entirely certain how long it’s been in there, so you may want to unwrap it,” he said coolly.

“What the fuck!” she screeched again, wrenching the bow off the box and tearing the top off. Inside was a tiny, shivering ball of striped grey and white fur with wide, terrified eyes. She carefully reached into the box and pulled the kitten out, cuddling it against her chest, then lifted accusing eyes to Ivan. “You monster!”

He lifted his hands as if to say, ‘what did I do?’ but before he could say a word, Jaya stepped into his space and started yelling, “How could you possibly think it was a good idea to stuff this poor, tiny little creature in a box for god knows how long? What kind of cruel monster are you, anyway? You thought it was a good idea to give me something that was living? Is this your idea of a new torture technique? You’re just going to take it to the next level, are you? Get me attached to this poor helpless little cutie and then tear it away. Well… well, it’s not going to work!”

“It’s not?” he asked, looking genuinely baffled for the first time since she met him.

“No!” she shouted, clutching the kitten under her neck.

“And why is that?” he asked, beginning to look a little more cautiously optimistic. Especially now that she’d opened the box and wasn’t outright rejecting his gift.

“Because I refuse to fall for your sadistic tricks,” she snapped. “You can just… just go away. We don’t want you in our dungeon right now.”

His lip twitched and he gave her a brief nod. “I will leave for now, Jaya. But I am coming back and I expect a friendlier reception.”

He turned and walked away, leaving her alone with her small shivering bundle. Before he reached the door, she called out to him. “Ivan.”

He half turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Jaya?”

---