Panic started to rise in my throat, but I tamped it down, turning away from the door. This wasn’t the time to panic. I needed to find a way out.
My feet took me to the balcony, and I stepped out into the night, gasping as I looked out over the twinkling lights of LA below. It was a significant drop. The balcony didn’t just hang over the grounds like I thought it would, but over a sheer cliff.
Below, the inky darkness beckoned me to try.
To my right and left were the grounds, and even in the darkness, I could see the guards patrolling the lawn. There was no sound coming from anywhere.
But that wasn’t the most startling thing. It was the barbed wire fence that graced the property in the distance, the sharp edges peeking up over the hills along the edge of the territory.
From the outside, the mansion probably looked just like the others: a high stone wall encircling the property and hiding the interior from prying eyes.
But from the inside, it looked like a fortress capable of withstanding a siege.
Drawing in a breath, I clenched the stone railing between my hands, wishing I had the balls to just jump off the balcony and pray I would go quickly. It would be so easy to do.
Did Kirilenko plan this?Did he put me in this room so that I’d be tempted to try? What would Kirilenko think if I did just that?
Would he even care?
No, I thought. He would care.
I would ruin his plans. And I was certain he had other plans lined up in case I did something as foolish as this. Hell, maybe he even had another woman to kidnap.
But then I thought about Ilsa, the child that she carried in her belly, thought of my parents, and knew that I couldn’t give up.
I couldn’t jump. I had my true family to live for, and I knew that they would be devastated if I was gone. Even more so, Ilsa would want to find out who had made me jump, and I couldn’t ruin the happiness she had found.
I couldn’t. I would die ten times over rather than be the cause of other people’s sorrow.
Turning away from the cliff, I went back inside, systematically opening the wardrobe and drawers. As Vera had said, they were full of clothing. The labels in the wardrobe alone must’ve been an eye-watering expense. To say nothing about the designer shoes that were lined up just right at the bottom: Louboutins, Louis Vuitton, and even some Stuart Weitzmans.
The drawers were full of expensive silk lingerie, from racy thongs that were no more than dental floss to delicate gowns that slid through my fingers as I touched them.
And designer bags—each one easily tens of thousands of dollars—in every shape and size to complement the different outfits.
This was every woman’s dream wardrobe.
I shut the drawer and yanked open the rest, finally finding normal clothes in the very bottom. Even here, the casual athletic clothing was luxury brands like Lululemon.
I pulled out a set and walked into the bathroom, marveling over the stone walk-in shower with multiple showerheads and a sunken tub that was big enough for two. The image of a naked Kirilenko pushing me against the shower walls as his rough hands forced apart my legs crossed my mind, and I turned away.
My cheeks heated. I knew there would come a time that he would want to consummate our marriage, to stake his claim on Sveta.
What would I do then?
I wasn’t a virgin, hadn’t been for a number of years, but given the conversations I’d had with Sveta right before her death, I imagined she was pretty green in the nature of passion and sex.
Which meant I would have to find some means to explain it or tell the truth. My stomach knotted at the thought, and I removed my clothing quickly, ignoring the full-length mirror on the wall as I did so. I didn’t want to see myself, to see the woman who was living a lie.
After pulling my hair up and brushing my teeth, I climbed underneath the fluffy comforter and lay in the dark, hot tears leaking out of the sides of my eyes. I didn’t sob aloud, afraid that there might be bugs in the room, listening to my every movement. It hurt to know that I might be looking at my death at some point in the next few weeks.
Maybe the cliff didn’t seem so ominous after all.
** *
Morning came all too quickly. I barely opened my eyes as the door opened and Vera marched in, carrying a tray of food. The smells made my stomach rumble in agreement.
“Up,” she snapped, setting the tray on the bed. “The master wants to see you downstairs within the hour.”
“I’m not a child,” I replied in Russian, barely remembering to do so at the last minute.
“If you were,” she answered, “Then I would have a bigger problem with his plans. I will come back for you in thirty minutes. Wear something pleasing.”
She was gone before I could respond and I cautiously lifted up the silver dome from the plate, finding steaming eggs and two slices of bacon along with some fruit. There also was one slice of toast, perfectly browned, and a small pot of coffee, with various creamers and sugars to put in it.
Heaven on a silver tray. God, I hadn’t eaten since I’d been taken.
Heedless of the time, I devoured the food and drank all the coffee before finally rising from the bed and digging through the wardrobe to find something that wasn’t going to show a lot of skin. I finally settled on a romper that showed off my legs and bared one shoulder before crossing over my breasts to gather at the other shoulder. With my hair down, I looked like the woman he expected me to be:
A young, innocent Sveta, frightened and unsure of who this man was.
When Vera knocked on the door again, I slid on a pair of flats. “You look like an American,” she sneered, motioning for me to hurry. “I suppose it will have to do.”
I mean, I was. What did she expect me to wear? Stiletto heels?
Numbly, I followed her down the stairs and through the foyer, to a room that was flooded with light. It would be a wonderful place to spend idle days reading, but today there was only one thing that caught my attention.
Gavril Kirilenko stood in the center of the room, dressed in a suit with the dress shirt opened at the neck. His hair was slicked back off his forehead again, and I idly wondered if anyone had ever mussed him up before or what he would look like waking in the morning. I spotted a tattoo of a church spire peeking out from the V of his dress shirt, and for a moment I wondered what other tattoos dotted his body.
A flush moved through me at the thought, and I looked away, my cheeks red.
“There is no need to be embarrassed, Sveta,” Kirilenko said softly. “I will know everything about you, every inch of your skin until you are marked as mine. And you will do the same with me.”
My stomach clenched at the thought, the breakfast I had nearly coming back to make an abrupt appearance. It wasn’t a horrible thought. Gavril was a gorgeous man and, in another time, I would have been very interested in having him in my bed.
But not like this.
As I turned my eyes back to him, I noted the racks behind him, and Vera hovering in the distance. “What is going on?” I asked in Russian.
His expression didn’t change. “You are here to pick out your wedding dress.”