Page 38 of Beautiful Enemy

“Erik is getting tortured by not being able to find Nadia in the first place. Trust me. This is the way to go. I’ll be over there in a moment. Make sure she doesn’t die in the meantime. That would be inconvenient.”

Not just inconvenient but also upsetting. I’m drawn to Nadia. She fascinates me. I don’t want her to die at all.

I shouldn’t care, I remind myself. She means nothing to me.

Matteo greets me at the door of the ranch house and ushers me down stairs. “She’s really sick.”

Nadia is lying on the mattress, shivering uncontrollably, while sweat drips off her forehead. Shit. She really is sick.

“I think she has a fever. If you don’t want her to die, you should get her somewhere warmer. Have her rest in an actual bed.”

“The point of keeping her down here was to make her suffer.”

“You don’t think she hasn’t suffered enough?”

I look at Matteo sharply. “Who’s side are you on?”

“Yours, of course. If you want to continue torturing Erik, then you need to make sure Nadia doesn’t die. You need to get her out of this basement.”

I know Matteo is right. I hate being fucking wrong.

I kneel beside Nadia and place my hand on her head. She’s burning up. Her eyes flutter open and look up at me with so much sadness.

A flash of guilt punches me in the stomach. I did this to her. I made her stay down in this cold basement.

No. I’m doing this for my revenge. I don’t care about Nadia.

I just can’t let her die though. With a sigh, I scoop her and the blanket into my arms. With her being sick, now is not the time to admire her naked body. Even I have certain limits.

I bring Nadia to one of the upstairs bedrooms and wrap her up in blankets.

“I’m so hot,” she murmurs, her eyelids fluttering closed.

“You have a fever. You need to get warm. Matteo, bring me some water.”

He does without question.

I get Nadia to drink some of it but she promptly coughs it back up. “Well, that’s not becoming of you, is it, Nadia?”

She’s so tired and weak, she doesn’t even say anything in return.

The sight of her in the bed, so small and sick, makes my chest constrict. It’s almost like I feel bad for her. She’s not the villain I was hoping to torture. She’s just a young woman, who’s innocent and was the perfect pawn.

“Rest,” I tell her, and without even thinking about it, I give her a kiss on the forehead.

Fuck, I’m going soft. I cannot care about Nadia. I do not care about Nadia. I just need to keep repeating it like a mantra.

I leave Nadia to rest and meet Matteo in the hallway. “Keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t die.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have a meeting with Erik. It’s time to finally talk after four years.”

I call Erik’s number. It isn’t hard to get. All I had to do was go threaten a young Bratva boy whose father knows Erik and got the number from there.

“So, you wanted to meet?”

“Dante,” he growls.

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