Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
That I had wanted more?
Would she have even cared?
He had been her husband, but it wasn’t as if she had been faithful.
Would that make it better?
Would it make it worse?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know anything anymore.
Except that I needed to leave.
Now.
And yet…
I couldn’t seem to walk away without checking one more time.
Not because I had to.
But because I needed to.
Because it was…Kostya.
I had always thought Kostya was handsome.
So tall, the kind of height that made you feel small in the best way. The kind of broad, powerful shoulders that made a girl want to crawl into his arms and bask in the warmth and safety of them.
Veronika had never seen him that way.
And I never understood why she hadn’t.
I would have given anything to have him for myself.
For years, I had indulged in secret, forbidden dreams. What if it wasn’t her? What if it had been me? I would never have treated him the way she did.
The disdain Veronika had for him never made sense to me. But it had never been my place to say anything.
I was her sister.
My job was to support her.
Not lust after her husband.
But how was I supposed to fight this?
This wasn’t some childish crush anymore, not after discovering the way it felt when he kissed me.
When he touched me.
Now, I knew.
I had never been saving myself for a man like Kostya.
I had been saving myself for him.
How was I supposed to go on living my life now?
Knowing that someone could make me feel this alive, could electrify every cell in my body. How was I supposed to experience that for one fleeting moment and then never feel it again?
And it wasn’t just his touch.
It was all of him.
His intensity, the kind only truly powerful men could pull off without it turning creepy.
The way he looked at me.
The way he saw me.
Not just my body—me.
I didn’t know if it was even possible to lie to him. Not really.
Not if I was looking into his eyes.
Because he would see the truth.
But what was the truth?
Did I even know anymore?
Was he my sister’s husband—or her murderer?
Had he really come after me to protect me?
He said he didn’t kill her.
He said Solovyov did.
And as much as I hated to admit it, that made sense.
Before reading the last message Veronika had sent me, I had assumed she had stolen what she gave me as some kind of prank. But when I got her warning, I knew if it had been a prank, it had gone horribly wrong.
She had told me that if anything happened to her…
I needed to run.
I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking my head, trying to clear the storm of emotions clawing through my chest.
Focus.
Kostya might not have been the man who pulled the trigger.
But he was involved.
One way or another, he was part of this.
And I wasn’t safe around him.
I needed to escape. Now.
CHAPTER 9
KOSTYA
The sound of laughter woke me.
Of course it was stupid to think Var would be discreet about my call for help.
The first time I woke up, it had been to the sound of Marina slamming her bedroom door.
I’d called out for her to get her ass back in the room and untie me, but of course, she didn’t.
No amount of threats brought her back.
A few seconds later, the front door slammed.
She was gone.
And I was still tied the fuck up.
I had to admit, I was impressed.
She had managed to knock me out cold long enough to completely incapacitate me.
I wasn’t sure how until I saw the lamp on the floor, my blood still drying on the ceramic.
She was going to pay for that.
The second I got my hands on her, I was going to take my leather belt to that perfectly round ass.
I had no way of knowing how long I’d been out.
It was dark outside, but it had been dark for a while.
I didn’t even know how long I had struggled to free myself.
That minx had used an extension cord, tying me with my own damn slipknots. The ones designed to tighten with every pull.
If she had done this to anyone else, I would have been so fucking proud.
That thought just pissed me off even more.
I twisted, fought, tested every angle. Nothing.
It wasn’t until I rolled off the bed onto the hardwood floor, slamming my head into the nightstand and landing on my shoulder with enough force that it was nearly dislocated, that I finally accepted it.
There was no way I was getting out of this by myself.
Fuck.
I was going to have to call for help.
It wasn’t easy, but I knocked my phone out of my suit coat pocket. What followed was no doubt an undignified symphony of squirming and grunting as I managed to get the phone in front of my face and unlock it with Face ID.
Thank fuck for Siri.