Huh. I guess I do feel a bit feverish.
“Open,” he instructs, bringing the thermometer to my lips, and I obey, feeling incongruously like a child as he sticks it in my mouth and orders me to hold it. A few seconds later, the thermometer beeps, and he glances at the small screen on the side.
“Ninety-nine point two,” he says, looking relieved as he hides the device back in his pocket and sits on the edge of the bed. “The doctor warned you might run a low-grade fever before the antibiotics kick in.”
“Really? Is that a thing? I’ve never been shot before.”
His white teeth flash in a dazzling grin. “It is—I know from personal experience.”
My unruly heart picks up pace again, and my skin warms in a way that has nothing to do with the low-grade fever. “Great. I guess we each have our war stories now.”
“I guess we do.” His smile fades. “How are you feeling, aside from the fever?”
“Like someone’s used me as a tennis ball in a match with Serena Williams,” I say without thinking, only to regret it as his expression darkens, his jaw going dangerously taut.
“Those motherfuckers. If only I’d gotten there sooner…” His fingers flex menacingly on his thigh.
“No, don’t.” Instinctively, I reach over to cover his hand with mine. “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have—” I swallow, the jumbled images from the nightmare invading my mind. “I wouldn’t have made it.”
And it’s one hundred percent true. I haven’t had the chance to really think about it, but if he hadn’t come after me, if he hadn’t used his scary “resources” to track me down as quickly as he did, I would already be six feet under, after first suffering through a brutal rape.
Nikolai saved me.
However terrifying his methods, he saved my life.
His gaze drops to my hand for a second, and his expression shifts again, the menace in his tiger eyes giving way to a dark heat that feels infinitely more dangerous. “Zaychik…” His voice grows softer, deeper. “I—”
“So thank you,” I blurt, pulling my hand back. Savior or not, I can’t let myself fall under his spell again, can’t let myself forget what he is and what he’s done. “I’m sorry I haven’t said it before, but I’m so, so grateful. I know I owe you my life and more. You didn’t have to come after me, but you did, and I hugely appreciate it. If you hadn’t been there, I—”
He presses two fingers to my lips, stopping my rambling. “You don’t need to thank me.” He leans over me, propping one palm on the pillow beside me and curving the other over my cheek. His gaze is darkly intent, his tone grave. “I will always protect you, zaychik. Always.”
I stare up at him, my chest ballooning with a contradictory mixture of emotions. Relief and worry, gratitude and fear, joy and pain—it’s like a pendulum inside me, swinging back and forth between the two extremes, the two versions of Nikolai that exist in my mind.
The one before Alina’s story and the one after.
The caring lover and the brutal killer.
Which one of them is real?
With effort, I curtail my spinning thoughts and blink to break the hypnotic pull of that golden gaze. The most important thing right now is to figure out where we stand.
“You don’t have to protect me,” I say, injecting my tone with a confidence I’m nowhere near feeling. “Mom’s killers are dead, and even if Bransford sends others, there’s no guarantee they’ll find me. I can just leave the country, disappear and—”
“No.” The word is filled with harsh finality as he straightens and pulls back his hand. His beautiful face is set in hard, uncompromising lines. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“But you’re in danger with me here. Your family’s in danger.”
I’ve made this argument before, and it’s as ineffective now as it was then. Nikolai’s expression hardens further, a savage intensity entering his gaze. “You’re not leaving. The guards will stop you if you try.”
So it is true then. I didn’t misinterpret his refusal to let me out of the car. I am his prisoner.
The knowledge fills me with equal parts dread and relief. It’s out in the open now; we’re done pretending. Of course he’s not going to let me go. I know his family’s awful secret. I’ve seen him kill with my own eyes. The crimes he’s committed would land an ordinary man in an electric chair, but Nikolai Molotov is too rich, too powerful—and more importantly, too ruthless—to ever have to pay for what he’s done.
Whatever his intentions had been toward me before Alina’s revelations, there’s only one thing he can do now.
Detain me. Keep me where I can never reveal what I know.
At least I hope that’s the only course of action he’s considering. Because there’s a much more efficient way to ensure my silence, the one my biological father appears to have chosen.
But no. It might be naïve of me, but I can’t bring myself to believe that Nikolai would kill me. Not with the potent, emotionally charged connection that sizzles between us. Not when he’s gone to so much trouble to save my life.
And that’s the thing, I realize, staring at his implacable expression. That’s why, in a twisted way, it’s a relief to know I can’t leave. I should want to leave. I should want to run as far as possible from this dangerous man and the fixation he seems to have on me. But I don’t want to. Not deep down, where it matters—and it’s not just because of the stupid crush I’ve developed on him.
The truth is, I’m not brave and strong. I learned that today when I came face to face with death, when I felt the bullet tear through my flesh and looked into the assassin’s empty eyes. I’d come close to dying before—the time I’d hidden in Mom’s coat closet after finding her body, the night I’d woken up to scratching sounds at the door of my Airbnb, the couple of times the assassins had nearly run me over with their car, and the time they’d shot at me in Boise—but I had never known such prolonged, nauseating terror as when I was driving my rickety Toyota on that pothole-ridden dirt road with the bullets whining past my ears.
I don’t want to die. I’m nowhere near ready to die—and I know that however ruthless of a killer Nikolai is, he doesn’t wish me dead. The opposite, in fact.
He’s promising to protect me.
To keep me captive and protect me.
I swallow to moisten my dry throat. “May I please have a sip of water? I’m thirsty.”
The fierce expression on Nikolai’s face eases. “Of course, zaychik. And you must be hungry, too. I’ll get you dinner in a moment.” Leaning over me, he arranges the pillows in a mound and gently props me up against it.
My breath catches at his nearness, even as my arm throbs harder at the movement, making me glad I didn’t attempt this on my own.
I must’ve grimaced anyway, because he smooths my hair off my face, looking concerned. “Do you want a painkiller?” he asks, and I shake my head as he brings a cup of water with a straw to my lips.
The pain is not unbearable, and I want to keep my wits about me for now.
I suck down the entire cup, and when I finish, I become aware of another pressing need. “Um…” My face burns as I force myself to sit up, ignoring the spike of pain accompanying the movement. “I actually need…”