Page 74 of Savage Love

The thought calms me. This I can do. This I’m familiar with. Pretend to go along with it all, pretend not to have any ideas—although I think Diego is savvy enough to know I wouldn’t walk into this without any plan. Then again, he might be betting that I’m worried enough for Elenanotto have a backup plan.

That would be the best outcome.

The guards take me all the way to a study on the left of the house. There’s blood on the rug, and I feel my fists tighten, hoping against hope that it’s not Elena’s or Isabella’s.If it is—

Easy, Volkov. There will be time for violence later. This is the time for talking.

The guards keep me to one side of the room, and a moment later, the door opens, and Diego walks in. He sees me immediately, a satisfied grin splitting his face, and he stops in front of me.

“Volkov. How good of you to make it. Of course, I thought you would, considering that we have your wife.”

“She better still be in one fucking piece,” I growl at him, my eyes narrowing. “If you laid a finger on her—”

Diego gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Well, you’ll see she has a few bruises. They were necessary—she was quite defiant. Her sister even more so—and I quickly figured out that the best way to silence her sister was to hurt Elena. Don’t worry,” he adds as my jaw clenches, “she’s not badly harmed. A few bruises here and there never hurt anyone. What else happens to her remains to be seen.”

He glances at the guards. “Did he come alone?”

They nod, and a small bit of relief trickles through my veins. That, at least, they’ve bought. It’s the first part of our plan, and if it’s working so far, then we have a chance.

“I want to see Elena.” I try to keep my voice flat, hard, but it’s difficult. The need to see her is beating under my skin like a second pulse, a frantic, desperate need. I have to see that she’s alright for myself.

“Of course you do,” Diego says, almost patronizingly. “She is alive.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe your word.”

Diego lets out a breath, eyeing me. “What’s your plan here, Volkov? What have you come to offer me? What will you do, for your pretty wife?”

Anything. It’s not what I say, but it’s the truth. It always has been, from the moment I saw her and recognized a strength in her that I hadn’t expected, even if I couldn’t admit it.

“I’m the reason for what’s happened since you took Elena from her father. I posed as someone else to buy her from your auction. I killed the men on that plane and got her out of the wreckage after it crashed. I kept her alive—on the beach in Rio. I got her to Boston. I’m the one you should be furious with. So let her go, and you can have me. Do what you want with me. Torture me to death; I don’t care. I hear you cartel types have some creative ways of going about it–do your worst. Show me how much worse you are than the fucking Syndicate, because let me tell you, I have seen them do someawfulfucking shit.”

It’s bravado, all of it. I don’t want to find out what ideas Diego has about how to make a man die slowly. I sure as hell don’t want to die at all, especially not in some creative and extended manner. But if it means getting Elena out of here, I will. I’d do anything in the fucking world for that. I’d suffer anything. And I think Diego sees that—believes me—because an odd expression crosses his face.

“Impressive,” he says, clapping his hands slowly. “Truly the speech I hoped for. Come on then.” He nods to the guards. “Escort our brave assassin upstairs.”

I’m not immune to fear. Even the fear of dying, which I’ve long since lost, can reappear when the means of doing so is in question. But I’m good at handling it. Atmanagingit. I shove it down, deep into the recesses of myself, to deal with later if I have time. I think of Elena, and only her.

She’s all that matters.

We go up a tall and winding staircase, up to the third floor of the house, all the way to a back room down a long hall of rooms. The door is opened, and what I see when I step inside feels like a punch to the gut. The air is literally sucked out of me for a moment, as if someone has reached inside of me and squeezed. It’s like seeing my worst nightmare in front of me, and I must have gone pale, because Diego gives a delighted, maniacal laugh from behind me.

“I heard about your poker face from Vasquez,” he says in a satisfied voice. “I wondered what it would take to get even a flicker of emotion out of you. I’ll remember this moment for a long time.”

“Levin—”

Elena isn’t gagged. Her lips part, my name whispered, and it breaks something inside of me, just as the sight of her does.

She’s on the bed, stripped naked and tied by her wrists and ankles to the posts of it. There are three other men in the room—two guards watching her with openly lewd expressions on their faces, hungry as dogs staring at a plated steak, and one taller and thinner man who looks as uncomfortable with the whole situation as he’s likely allowed, given that his boss is in the room.

It would be bad enough that these men have seen my wife naked.Mine. That they likely stripped her themselves. That they—

“Did they touch her?” I look at Diego, and I think he hears the bald rage in it, the barely restrained violence, because he answers without hesitation.

“No,” he says simply. “She was not touched in that way. I haven’t allowed it. And Jorge here has a distaste for rape—” he motions to the thin man, “—so I trusted him to ensure that nothing happened to your pretty wife while I was gone. Now, as for what they do to themselves when they leave with the memory of this—” Diego licks his lips. “I can only imagine how many times they’ll imagine what we see in front of us right now.”

I’ve never been so thankful for my years of training in the Syndicate as I am right now. It’s only that that keeps me from coming unraveled, from lunging for Diego and undoing all the work I’ve done to get up here, to stall. It’s not only the casual way he says it, or Elena’s nudity, but it’s the bruises I see on her. On her face, marring her cheeks and jaw, on her ribs, on herbelly, and fear for our child spreads through me like a sickness as I look at her.

“It’s okay,” Elena whispers, her voice breaking a little, and I know very well that it’snotokay. But she’s trying to comfort me.Her, comfortingme, when she’s the one naked and tied to a bed.

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