Page 13 of Vendetta Crown

"The Triads attacked his mansion hours ago." Potyomkin's voice sounds distant, as if coming from the end of a long tunnel. "He was killed defending his home."

"No." I say it louder this time, as if volume could make it untrue. "That's not true. That's impossible."

But even as I deny it, I remember Kristofer showing me that news alert about a shooting at the Dragunov estate.

I hadn't wanted to believe it then, either, but I should have.

Ruslan is dead.

My legs give out, and I sink back onto the bed. The robe slips from my shoulder, but I can't summon the energy to fix it.

Because if Ruslan is dead, then nothing matters anymore.

4

AURORA

I wake with a gasp,heart thundering in my chest.

For one blissful moment, my mind is blank. A clean slate without memory or pain. Just the soft unfamiliar sheets beneath me and morning light filtering through heavy curtains.

I turn towards the window, expecting to see the familiar sights of the Dragunov estate grounds outside. Instead, all I see is the Las Vegas Strip, neon lights now extinguished, glittering in the morning sun.

Reality crashes down.

I'm not home.

I'm at the Hermitage Casino & Resort. Specifically, Vyacheslav Potyomkin's penthouse.

He'd offered to put me in one of his guest rooms after my rescue. And I, desperate for a safe refuge, accepted.

The guest room in Potyomkin's penthouse is elegant and cold, all marble and gold. Everything about it screams wealth and power. The kind of place where deals are made, and where lives are bartered like chips at a poker table.

I sit up slowly, wincing as my body catalogs the damage. My hand reaches up to feel the tender flesh of my cheek. The skin throbs beneath my touch, and I hiss through my teeth. Kristofer's bruising handprint is branded on my face.

My hand drifts to my shoulder, and finds the angry crescent where his teeth broke skin. The memory of his mouth there makes bile rise in my throat. I close my eyes and shudder, remembering the sound of a belt clinking undone behind me.

If Potyomkin's men had arrived seconds later...

"He didn't." I whisper to myself, thankful for this small mercy. "He didn't."

My legs shake as I push myself to the edge of the bed, and I gasp in pain when I brush against the angry welts left on my breasts, hips, and thighs by Kristofer's sausage-like fingers as he squeezed and touched.

Outside the window, the fantasy world of casinos and excess looks so terribly normal, as if everything didn't completely fall apart yesterday.

"I'm safe," I tell myself, the words hollow. "I'm safe."

But what does safety even mean anymore?

Ruslan is dead.

My protector. My husband. The man who showed me what it meant to feel whole again.

Gone.

I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting the tight knot of despair in my chest. Jamie Fields survived that terrible night seven years ago on her own. Aurora Castellanos found her way to Ruslan.

And now Aurora Dragunov faces a world where she belongs to neither the shadows nor the light.

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