Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 95627 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95627 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
A smile tugged at my lips. There she was—my fighter.
“We’ll see about that, wife.”
EPILOGUE
PAVEL
"Enough waiting. We end this now," I snarled, grinding Brutus Slinsky's face into the Moscow map sprawled across the table. His pathetic whimper only fueled my disgust.
Solovyov's American rat had been embarrassingly easy to track.
After the compound attack, my brothers wanted to waste time on security upgrades.
Fucking cameras instead of corpses.
They didn't grasp that our enemy's blood was the only insurance policy worth investing in.
I'd found this simpering fuck at an upscale strip club, bragging about taking down the Ivanovs to a blonde whose American passport belonged to me. She made one call. My men delivered him gift-wrapped.
"I swear, I don't know where he is," Brutus blubbered, snot bubbling from his nostrils.
"Strange. Every Solovyov lackey sings the same tired song." I leaned closer, my voice dropping to ice. "He'll kill you if you talk? I'm going to kill you regardless. Your only choice is how much pain accompanies your departure."
"There's nothing you could do that—"
"He'll never see you again," I cut him off, contempt dripping from every syllable. "But that sounds like a challenge."
My men's low laughter from the back wall only heightened the fear radiating off this waste of flesh.
We'd kept the last batch of Solovyov's soldiers alive for days before feeding them to the incinerator.
Still breathing.
Brutus had watched, pissing himself.
The furnaces remained hot, waiting.
I brought my face to his ear, breathing in his stench of piss and terror. "I'm tired. It's been a long few days, so here's what happens. Tell me where Solovyov is—quick death. Don't tell me..." I straightened, sighing with theatrical weariness. "I just don't have the energy to torture you properly."
Hope flickered in his eyes.
"So I'm calling Roman."
The hope evaporated. His face went chalk-white.
"The devil...the one who…they never found all the body parts," he stammered.
"Oh, you've heard of my cousin? And of course they didn't find everything. He got hungry."
Brutus's terror was a tangible thing now, filling the room like a toxic gas.
Most of my men laughed.
The newer ones shifted uncomfortably, still uncertain which Roman stories were myth and which were worse than the legends.
"Your choice is simple." I lifted my hunting knife, trailing it across his quivering hand. "Tell me where Solovyov is—clean death. Stay silent—and I unleash the monster haunting your nightmares."
"I don't know," he screamed as I drove the blade through his hand, pinning it to the table.
His shriek satisfied something primal in me, but his continued silence finally convinced me he truly knew nothing.
Useless.
I raised my gun and put a bullet between his eyes.
A muffled scream followed by a door slam reached my ears.
I silenced my men with one finger pressed to my lips.
A witness.
In our world, the only acceptable witness was a dead one.
I stalked down the hallway, gun ready.
All office doors were locked.
Only the supply closet remained.
I ripped it open.
Time stopped.
The most mesmerizing pair of green eyes I had ever seen stared back at me, widened in shock and unmistakable fear.
A maid, trapped in the act of backing away, frozen like a deer caught in headlights.
The wires of her headphones dangled uselessly from her ears, music still playing—a haunting melody that somehow filled the silence between us.
Her chest heaved with each panicked breath, the movement drawing my gaze to the curve of her breasts beneath the starched uniform.
The delicate hollow of her throat pulsed with her racing heartbeat, and I found myself wanting to press my lips against that very spot.
Blood rushed in my ears as our gazes locked.
Something primal and possessive unfurled in my chest—a sensation I'd never felt before, not even during my most vicious kills.
My hand, still gripping the gun, lowered slightly.
Not out of mercy or hesitation, but because my body was suddenly battling a different, more daring instinct than violence.
Lust.
She must have read the intent in my eyes because a shiver visibly ran through her slender frame. Her lips—full, plush, and slightly parted—trembled. The pink tip of her tongue darted out to wet them, and my cock hardened painfully in response.
"Fuck," I whispered, the word slipping out unwillingly.
For one heartbeat, two, three, we remained locked in this silent battle.
Her fear against my hunger.
She'd heard everything.
Seen everything.
By all rights, she should already be dead.
Instead, I took a step toward her.
She swallowed hard, her delicate throat working in a way that had my fingers itching to wrap around it, not to harm, but to feel her pulse racing beneath my touch.
"Please," she whispered, the single word carrying a universe of meaning.
This woman had seen me torture and kill a man.
She had heard confessions that could destroy my family.
She knew exactly what I was capable of.
Yet all I could think about was what her skin would taste like under my tongue.
I should kill her.
I needed to kill her.
But as I stared into those haunting green eyes, I knew with bone-deep certainty that killing her wasn't an option. My fingers twitched with the need to grab her, to mark her, to make her understand that her life as she knew it had just ended.