Page 10 of Auctioned to the Russian Pakhan
He didn’t want to think about what that would mean for his carefully laid plans.
“Sir?” Katya appeared in the doorway, her weathered face creased with concern. “Is something wrong?”
“The girl,” he said tersely. “How long ago did you leave her?”
“Perhaps an hour? She said she wanted to bathe, asked for privacy.” The older woman’s eyes widened as she took in the empty room. “Oh no. She seemed so tired, so defeated. I never thought...”
“That’s the problem,” Matvei snarled, already moving toward the door. “You never thought. None of us did.”
He’d underestimated her. Badly. While he’d been sitting in his study, congratulating himself on a plan well executed, hisprize had been climbing out a window like some kind of fairy tale princess making her escape. The irony would have been amusing if it weren’t so infuriating.
Matvei bounded down the stairs three at a time, his mind already calculating routes and possibilities. Where would she go? The obvious answer was home, back to her brothers and the safety of the Nikolai compound. But Irina had proven herself to be anything but obvious.
The front door slammed behind him as he burst into the night, shouting orders to the security team that was already mobilizing. Floodlights blazed to life across the grounds, turning shadows into stark relief. Dogs barked in the distance, trained to track and corner but not to harm.
“Search every inch,” he commanded, his voice carrying across the manicured lawns. “She can’t have gotten far on foot.”
But even as his men spread out in organized patterns, Matvei couldn’t shake the feeling that Irina Nikolai was already long gone. She’d played him from the moment she’d signed that marriage license, lulling him into complacency with her apparent compliance.
The realization should have enraged him. Instead, it filled him with something uncomfortably close to respect.
Standing in his driveway, watching his security team tear apart the night in search of his missing wife, Matvei found himself laughing. It was a harsh sound, devoid of humor, but he couldn’t stop it from bubbling up from his chest.
He’d married the youngest Nikolai to gain leverage over her family. Instead, he’d apparently married a woman who was every bit as cunning and ruthless as her brothers. The irony was fucking perfect.
His phone buzzed with reports from the search teams. Nothing at the perimeter. No sign of forced entry or exit. No trace of her passage through the gardens.
It was like she’d simply vanished into thin air.
“Clever girl,” he murmured, pocketing the phone. “But not clever enough.”
Because Irina might have escaped his house, but she couldn’t escape the fact that she was now legally his wife. And Matvei Volkov always collected on his investments, one way or another.
The hunt was just beginning.
Chapter 5 - Irina
Growing up as the youngest, Nikolai had his perks, but it also meant Irina had spent her entire life learning to navigate various levels of security measures. Her brothers might think they were protecting her by keeping her locked away like some precious artifact, but they’d inadvertently given her a master class in escape artistry.
The trellis outside her window had been almost laughably easy to climb down, the old ivy providing perfect cover as she made her way to the ground. Matvei’s security system was impressive, but it was designed to keep intruders out, not prisoners in. A classic oversight from someone who’d never been on the wrong side of a cage.
Now, three hours later, she sat in an all-night diner in Southie, nursing her second cup of coffee and watching the sun creep over the Boston skyline. Her entire body ached from the events of the previous night, but her mind was sharp, calculating. She needed to call home, needed to let her family know she was alive before they tore the city apart looking for her.
But first, she needed to decide exactly how much to tell them.
Irina pulled out the burner phone she’d lifted from a convenience store clerk who’d been too busy flirting with his girlfriend to notice, and dialed Kostya’s number. Of all her brothers, he was usually the most reasonable, the most likely to listen before reacting.
“Yeah?” His voice was rough with sleep and something that might have been panic.
“It’s me,” she said quietly. “I’m okay.”
The silence on the other end stretched for exactly three seconds before Kostya exploded. “Irina? Jesus Christ, where the fuck are you? We’ve been going insane. Ilya’s ready to burn down half the city, and don’t even get me started on what Viktor wants to do. Tell me where you are right now and I’ll come get you.”
“I can’t do that.”
“What do you mean you can’t do that? You’re my sister, you were kidnapped, and now you’re calling me from God knows where, saying you can’t tell me where you are? Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
The familiar condescension in his tone made something snap inside her chest. Here she was, having survived an abduction, a human auction, and a forced marriage, and her brother’s first instinct was still to treat her like a helpless child who couldn’t be trusted to make her own decisions.
