Page 72 of Poisoned Vows

He stands up in one fluid motion. “I’m going to look into this,krolik. Stay here until I get back. Keep your phone near you. Do not leave the apartment for any reason, do you understand?”

His voice hardens on the last word, and I nod. The idea of fighting him for the sake of it feels foolish and far away now, after what’s happened today.

“I’ll stay inside,” I say in a small voice, and he nods.

“Good girl.” He leans down, running one hand over my hair, and presses a kiss to the top of my head. It’s such an innocuous gesture that it makes my eyes well up with tears all over again, and I’m surprised when he doesn’t try to kiss me on the lips. He could have—I’m frozen, utterly confused that, for once, he’s the one I feel safe with. That I almost don’t want to him to go. I’ve never had that feeling for him, and the irony of it isn’t lost on me.

But instead, he takes one more look at me, then turns away, striding back towards the front door.

—

I end up falling asleep on the couch.

I don’t know how long I lay there crying before I fall asleep. By the time I do, my throat feels raw and my face swollen, my body aching from the tension that’s been running through my muscles for hours. I fall asleep out of pure exhaustion, into the deepest sleep I think I’ve ever had that wasn’t actual unconsciousness.

I’m woken out of it by what sounds like a gunshot.

I jerk upright, hands clenched against the leather of the couch, and it takes the sound of footsteps moving quickly across the wooden floor towards me for me to realize that I think it was the slamming of a door. There’s no weapon in the hand of the shadow coming my way.

“Get up,krolik.”

His voice is like nothing I’ve heard before from him. Darker, angrier, filled with a venom that chills me to the bone with terror before I’m even fully aware of what’s happening. I open my sticky eyes and see Nikolai looming over me, silhouetted in the lights of the city streaming through the windows, his face a tight mask of anger as he leans forward and wraps his hand in my hair.

This is the wolf,I think as he drags me up off of the sofa by my hair.This is the Bratva monster. The Vasilev devil. And now he’s come for me for some reason.

“Nikolai—” I can’t bring myself to feel any shame about the way I whimper his name. I’ve never been so afraid. The man holding onto me doesn’t feel or look or sound like my husband. That version of Nikolai, the one I know, was frightening enough. But I think this version is the one his enemies see—thelastthing they see. And every part of me turns liquid with fear as he pulls me to my feet.

“Your father is behind this.” His voice is deadly quiet. His other hand reaches out, and I see in the dim light that it’s covered in bloodstains. As he drags me towards the window, illuminating us both in the light, I see that there’s blood everywhere. On his face, his throat, his clothes. He’s spattered in violence.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper weakly. “My father? My father is no one.”

I wonder if he can hear the conviction in my voice. The certainty. My father has always been no one, and worming his way into the Vasilev inner circle was never going to change that. He will be no one until his last breath, because that’s the kind of man he’s always been.

“He’s someone enough to get intomyfather’s house. To takemyfather’s life. To takemysister from me. And all because he used you to get close.”

Nikolai’s other hand comes up, his fingers sliding around my throat. I realize with sudden, terrifying certainty that he thinks I know something about this. That he somehow thinks I was in on whatever my father has done.

“Nikolai, please.” I’ve never begged him before, neverletmyself beg him, and I know he’s wanted to hear it all this time. I don’t want to start now, but I’m so terrified I can’t help it any longer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything—”

“Don’tlieto me!” He shouts it, his hand starting to close around my throat. “I know what you’ve done. Coming into my home, myfather’shome, playing the wide-eyed innocent. You and your father planned all of this, didn’t you? How to bring down the mighty Vasilev empire from the inside. You conniving bitch—”

Somewhere dimly, as if it’s from outside of my body, I hear myself starting to laugh. My shoulders begin to shake, all of me trembling in his grasp, and the laughter starts to get louder, almost cackling, as if I’m losing my mind.

Nikolai is staring at me as if I already have. His hand on my throat and in my hair loosens for a brief moment, and then they both tighten again, his face a mask of such incandescent rage that for a second, I think he’s going to snap my neck and finish me off here and now.

“This isn’t funny.” His voice drifts over me, cool and hard as ice. “You’re foolish if you think it is. This isn’t a joke,krolik.”

The nickname sounds so much darker on his tongue now. His anger is so cold, so inflexible. It feels as if there’s no escape from it, and I can’t believe I’m going to die over something that I have absolutely no knowledge of.

He turns me around, so quickly that I gasp in fear and shock as he pushes me against the glass. It’s cold against my cheek, and I suck in a breath, my heart pounding so hard that it hurts.

“I’m going to get the truth out of you one way or another, little rabbit,” he growls in my ear. “You don’t know what kind of game you’re playing.” His hand on my throat falls away, reaching down to grab my ass, which is still a little sore from the spanking he gave me days ago. “You think this hurt? You have no idea how it will feel when I punish you again.”

“I don’t—know—anything!” My breath is catching in my throat, tight from fear and his grip on it. I feel like I’m having trouble swallowing. “God, Nikolai! I don’t know what my father was doing!”

“I don’t believe you,” he sneers. He twists me around, my back against the glass now, looming over me. His hand twists in my hair, pulling it so hard that I’m terrified that at any moment, it’s going to start ripping free. “I don’t believe a word out of your lying little mouth.”

His hand leaves my ass, grabbing my hand, holding it up into the light. My nails are still manicured from the wedding, and he presses his thumb against one rounded tip, pushing it back. “Can you imagine how it feels to have these plucked off one at a time,krolik? Yanked away while you’re tied down and unable to move?”

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