Chapter One

Alek

“Are you ready now?”

Of course not. The man standing in front of me knows that I will never surrender. I won’t break. No matter what he does to me. No matter how many days of torture he forces me to endure before my heart finally gives out and I die, I will not break.

I think that’s what Nikolai Volkovich gets off on the most.

Even though it’s a futile endeavor that he’s undertaking, the bastard has always been a sadist. He likes hurting people just to see them scream. Something about him craves blood. Whether he’s inflicting bruises on his opponents in the boxing ring or with full out torture, he loves it.

I swear the bastard is circling me with a predatory half chub in his black slacks.

Not that I can see much of a bulge there. Guess that he’s not packing much inside of his pants. It would make sense that all his bravado and violence are a result of needing to compensate for a shrimpy, small dick.

I smirk. I can’t help it.

The very action makes my eyes water with pain – the one that isn’t swollen shut anymore.

Nikolai stops his circling appraisal of the carnage that he’s inflicted on my suspended body. My hands chained up above my head have been numb for at least the last hour, maybe two. Every breath that I suck in feels like I’m inhaling shards of glass. But if thinking about the likelihood of him being lacking in the manhood department keeps me sane? Who cares?

“Something funny?” Nikolai asks as he grasps my chin in his beefy hand so hard I wince.

“No, of course not.” I wheeze.

Nikolai snarls and releases me with so much force that I spin in a half circle where I dangle.

He’s got to have at least seventy-five pounds of muscle on me and he’s a good three inches taller than my six foot one. I have always been fast on my feet, but he’s a brick shithouse. It really wouldn’t even be match a fair match between us if I wasn’t chained to the ceiling of his rank ass basement. Those stains on the floor? Not just my blood. It’s rude, really, to bring me of all people into a room that he’s already tortured somebody in before.

At least bleach the floors or something.

I, Alek Ivankov, deserve a little more flourish at the very least. A private torture room isn’t too much to ask for. It’s not like the rich bastard can’t afford one with all his blood money.

Now my mind’s eye switches to a delusional scenario where I’m being led down into Nikolai’s basement and being shown various torture rooms like they are the finest hotel suites for me to take my pick before being shoved into one.

That thought makes me laugh out loud. The action might cause my bruised ribs to puncture my lungs. Only one of which is working right anyway. It’s been what – two weeks that he’s had me down here? With the lack of natural light everything blends together.

Nikolai hates when I laugh at him.

Sometimes, I think that my own defiance of him is going to break him first. What’s that saying again? Topping from the bottom? Does that apply here? Torture from victim or something? It’s just so funny that I can’t seem to stop.

At least until Nikolai’s brick fist collides with my kidneys and my laughter shifts to a spurt of blood from my mouth. That’s not so funny anymore. I gasp and strain to breathe. My feet don’t reach the floor so the very tips of my toes try to steady myself just enough to lift up to relieve pressure on my lungs as I swing in place. It doesn’t help.

“Much better.” Nikolai gloats before the chain holding me up is suddenly dropped and I collapse into the puddle of my own sweat, blood and drool on the ground. The chain from my wrist shackles is instantly shifted to the thick iron band around my neck that makes it almost impossible to hold my head at a normal angle – and I’m chained to the wall all over again.

Everything hurts.

No, this is something more than hurt. This is something that doesn’t stop. There’s no abating it. Nothing I do seems to make it better. I want to say something snarky to piss him off again, but I’m seeing double as it is. Vision swimming, consciousness only hanging on by a thread here. It’s not looking great in my world.

“Have it your way.” Nikolai speaks in a voice like razors. He swaggers toward me, full of false bravado and overwhelming ego. He squats down to talk to me, to relish in his little victory with a wry smile on his annoyingly chiseled face. “Tomorrow, you will tell me where that bitch is, or I’m going to start taking limbs.”

I believe him.

It still won’t be enough to make me tell him what he wants to know. I would rather endure his torture than tell him where my sister Helena is. My loyalty runs deep. If this is the very last thing that I can do for her, I’m happy to pay whatever price is asked of me.

My only acknowledgement that I’ve even heard a word that he said is a deep groan of pain as I struggle to roll onto my side so as not to choke to death on my own blood.

The sheer force of blood rushing back to my abused wrists and hands is painful enough that I almost don’t register the kick in my ribs that Nikolai finishes today’s session off with before he spits at the ground by my face. I don’t even have the impulse to flinch before he turns his heels, muttering under his breath in heated Russian, and slams the door to my prison.

Leaving me in darkness once again.

I’m not delusional enough to think that I’m ever going to see sunlight again. I know that I’m going to die in here.

I think maybe it would have been a mercy for Daniel Colombo to have killed me. His visit last week was unexpected to say the least. Was it only a week ago? Perhaps it was longer. Time has been blurring together. Maybe this is all just a nightmare. Still, his mug was yet another face that I never thought that I would see again. He has more of a reason to want me dead than Nikolai does. After all, Daniel thinks that I killed his sister, Lilian. I forgot how much they look alike. Looked. Nikolai had offered me up to Daniel in exchange for making some sort of deal with him. I couldn’t hear the terms of whatever it was that Nikolai wanted from him. But I do know that Daniel refused him and went on his way without taking my life. Talk about character growth. The Daniel I knew before, he swore he would kill me with his bare hands the last time we spoke.

The image of Lilian’s face swims to the forefront of my mind’s eye. And, for a moment, all the pain in my body disappears. Her lovely visage floats there, her smiling, laughing at something dumb that I said. And then it shifts to the portrait of rage that she was wearing the last time I saw her and the pain returns fast.

I’m almost thankful when oblivion pulls me under.

The black inky unconscious nothingness might be kinder still than the thought that maybe… just maybe… I deserve everything that I’m getting.

Time loses meaning so quickly.

There’s no way to know how long I’m passed out for. Even with my eyes open it’s dark enough in this little room that it’s hard to tell where the floor meets the wall apart from when the occasional sliver of light appears under the door. It’s not constant. They don’t feed me on a schedule, so unless I want to start obsessively counting the seconds, I have to let the concept of time fade entirely.

It could be hours, or maybe it has been days before the door opens again.

At no point does my body stop hurting. The gnawing in my stomach is just as bad. Never mind the rest of the bodily functions that I’m pointedly ignoring.

I don’t expect Nikolai to come back too soon – but when the door opens again I am ready with a sarcastic quip that doesn’t leave my lips because the body standing in the doorway is far, far too small to be Nikolai.

Something dark and anxious flops in my stomach.

For all the death jokes that I’ve been making to myself during my lovely stay here, I certainly didn’t think that I was actually going to die.

The silhouette of a woman that can only be described as heavenly comes quickly into the room. The little sashay of her hips is all I can make out of her features until she comes closer to me – the light behind her is so brilliantly bright that I can hardly even look at her for more than a second before my eyes burn.

The woman stops in front of me, and I can make out stunning olive skin and exotic features with a metal box in her hands.

She speaks, but in my delirious state I can’t really understand what she’s saying.

What game is this? Some new fresh hell, or have I died and this is it. An angel has come to patch up all the hurt.

“Am I dead?” I don’t even really recognize my voice as I speak because it sounds so much rougher than I expected it to. “Finally kicked the bucket?”

The angel smiles. A light all of its own.

Water – cool and crisp runs over my lips and I flap my mouth like a fish on land trying to guzzle every bit of it down. Moments later her cool, soothing touch is on my forehead before she replaces it with a damp cloth as she fishes around in her metal box of healing for something to help patch me up. I try my best to remain still. I don’t want to scare her away. It doesn’t matter to me if she’s real or not – or if she’s only helping patch me up with the express intention of hurting me all over again. If this face is the last one that I ever get to see, it will have been worth it.

“Stay with me.” She says in a sweet voice as she blots up blood and gingerly dabs salve on my bruises. Normally I detest physical touch but I’m far too weak to do anything but appreciate the soothing contact as she tends to me.

The angel asks me to stay with her, and I want to. I want to do anything she says. And anything is better than the state that I’ve been in until now. Except eternal sleep, which would certainly be the easier. But there is still a lot of work left for me to do on this mortal coil.

“I’m sorry if this hurts…” She mutters in a voice full of compassion as she tries to dip that same ointment from her kit between the ruined skin of my wrists and the thick metal of my cuffs. I watch as she eyes the thick band around my neck with what I can only assume is pity. She lifts her hand to touch it, and I flinch away. “…I’m sorry.” she mutters again.

I catch her hand, something my body protests violently, but I am shocked by how real she feels. I stare at the place where I’m holding her wrist in disbelief. My thumb passes over the inside of her wrist, seeking her pulse because I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like. I need to know if she’s real or if she’s an angel to carry me into the afterlife. I don’t think I would fight her. It would be better passing than I could have imagined myself worthy of.

“You have to let me go if you want me to help you.” She teases with a hint of a smile on her voice.

My blue eyes finally lift to her and study the fine details of her lovely face. “Help me?” I ask in disbelief. “Angel, I’m beyond helping.”

Chapter Two

Anya

I’ve been hearing screams coming from the basement for weeks. Weeks of forcing myself to endure the fact that, despite this brand-new house in a brand-new state, Nikolai’s already put in a torture dungeon.

Not the sexy kind that was in our last place in Vegas either.

I don’t even know why I’m surprised.

Nikolai has always been the sort of man to get off on violence. He is the very best at what he does and most of the time he’s a scary bastard. But he’s my scary bastard. My protector.

But even still – there’s only so much that a girl can take.

I’m not the kind of person that can just sit around and allow somebody to hurt when I have the power to do something about it. I don’t have the stomach for it. Even if I had never taken the Hippocratic oath – I still couldn’t have done it. I’ve been helping his personal doctor since we arrived here in Houston. It’s not exactly going to get me my legal nurses’ license but at least it allows me to practice. All the work that we do is strictly off the books and primarily pertains to the men that Nikolai brings in from this war that he’s in with Daniel Colombo.

The same war that’s been keeping him out of the house for several hours of the day – every day.

Nikolai will be furious with me when he finds out that I’ve stolen his key. I hope that he won’t notice until I’ve had a chance to help as much as I can. He’s expressly forbidden me from coming down here. Says that it’s where he’s working. Since we’ve moved here to Houston, he’s made it expressly clear that I’m to be kept wholly separate from his work now.

More than just at arm’s length.

I don’t love that he’s been pushing me away. We haven’t been married for nearly long enough for him to use that as an excuse either. I tried asking Nikolai why he was keeping the man in the basement and he just said that he deserves it. I can’t imagine what this man might have done to deserve enough pain to fill my nightmares for weeks. I can’t sleep. More than that, I have to be able to live with myself.

I just have to hope that my meager training in first aid will be enough to help in some capacity. Even if I can’t do much to help, I have to try. If I can just give it my best shot and know the extent of his injuries, then maybe I can finally get some sort of sleep tonight.

At least that’s what I’m going to tell Nikolai if he happens to catch me.

The very walls of this giant house feel like they are conspiring against me as I sneak down the large winding halls and stairs. I still have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that this is something I have to do inside of my own home. But it doesn’t really feel like that these days, does it? Whatever magical thing that makes a house into a home? This one doesn’t have it.

I sneak down into the basement with the help of Nikolai’s key and instantly wish that I had grabbed a sweater or something to fight off the intense cold lurking in the concrete halls. I hug my metal first aid kit to my chest as I wrap my arms around my body and slink down the long, winding hall. There’s nothing and nobody down here. Which is for the best. I don’t want to run into one of Nikolai’s men when I’m already breaking so many rules.

Most of the doors are unlocked and slightly ajar. But there’s one that’s locked and so I unlock it and brace myself for what I’m going to see inside of it. It’s so dark that it takes a moment to spot the lump of a man in the back corner of the room. The smell coming from inside of the room isn’t something I want to put into words.

“I’m a professional.” I mutter to myself and summon what is left of my courage before heading inside. I’ve attended to gun shots and stab wounds aplenty in the clinic. Broken bones and contusions. I can do this. Nothing that I can see in here can look any worse than what I’ve seen at the clinic – and then I see him. It’s worse. It’s so much worse. I’ve seen Nikolai’s men in just about every state and all manner of injuries from the war that he’s in with the mafia – but this is something else.

For a moment I’m frozen in the doorway.

My husband did this. This brutality. My husband, my Nikolai, is the one that inflicted these wounds and put this body in this state. I know he’s capable of violence. Some of it I like even, but this is on a whole other level. This man looks like he has one foot in the grave. There’s a wheezing rattle coming from his chest each every time he inhales and exhales. I don’t even know where to start. This is way beyond what I know how to handle – but I have to try.

It takes everything I have to keep my hands from shaking as I go closer.

This man is a stranger. Clearly, he’s done something truly horrible to Nikolai for him to have done this. He’s far too injured right now to be of much danger to me though, so it’s a risk that I’m willing to take.

Only one of his eyes seems to be able to open and he looks up at me with a crystal-clear blue eye. Like ice in the dead of winter when the sunlight hits it just right. He doesn’t move or flinch from me as I start to blot at some of the worse wounds. Everything looks like it’s clotting at the very least. I offer him water – and that’s the first real response that I get from him. The bottle is gone in seconds. Who knows the last time that he was given anything. I don’t even know if they have been feeding him. Not much. That’s obvious. There are hints of the man that he once was when he looks up at me again. A little less crazed, a little less distant. I don’t even know if he’s capable of really seeing me or feeling what I’m doing for him but I hope it helps. Even if it’s just a little.

Then he speaks. A rumble of words from somewhere deep in his chest. His voice sounds like he’s close to death, knocking on the gates of hell. Maybe that’s why he keeps calling me angel.

When he grabs my wrist, his touch impossibly soft and cold. He keeps a cage of fingers around my wrist without actually holding too tight, like somehow I’m the fragile one, while he claims that there’s no saving him.

“That’s impossible.” I force a tight-lipped smile. “There’s no such thing as being beyond helping.”

“Why else would an angel be here to take me to the afterlife?” He asks. I can tell that he means it. I wipe a bit more of the grime off him and try again. I can’t imagine the sort of pain he’s suffering this very second if he’s asking me questions like this. My stomach ties into knots and I bite back tears. No point in crying, I have to help him.

“I promise you I’m no angel.” I force another smile. Maybe if we both relax a little, it won’t feel so hard.

“Look like one.” he grouses and slips back down to where he’s lying on his side. The purple bruising on his torso bothers me the most. The pants that he has slung low on his hips are filthy. It can’t be helping. He’s seconds away from raging infections if he doesn’t have any already.

“How can you tell? Having only one working eye and all.” I tease, hoping to bring some levity to the situation.

The corner of his lip quirks upward and it transforms his whole face. Even as battered and swollen as it is, I can see more of the man underneath it all. I can’t imagine how strong he must be to not have broken.

“Careful, he doesn’t like it when I laugh. Walls probably have eyes.”

A single fingers of his moves, attempting to gesture to the walls around us. His brow knits and he stares at his hand for a moment like he doesn’t understand why only one finger moved when he meant to move the whole limb.

I don’t want to think about what that might imply.

“Do you have a name to go with your sense of humor?” I ask, hoping to bring him back into himself.

“Maybe.”

“Very unique name. I’m sure you got a lot of crap for it in school, didn’t you? Teacher calls attendance and you’re just like, maybe.” I laugh at my own lame joke. More of a nervous gust of air than anything else.

“Stop, smiling hurts.” He wheezes and lets his good eye close. “It’s Alek.”

“Got a last name?”

“Ivankov.” he runs his tongue over dry lips. I move for the water bottle as the weight of his surname crashes around me. One that’s not uncommon but only one person with that name would have meant anything to Nikolai. The woman that he almost married. The one who caused enough damage that I had to repair him.

“Helena’s brother?!” I blurt with more affliction than I mean.

He rolls his good eye toward me. “Maybe.”

He is probably wary of me now, but I can’t stop. I can’t help myself. “I’m sorry…”

He doesn’t answer me at first.

“For your loss… I mean…” I mumble pathetically. How can I feel guilty or jealous over a deceased woman? What does that say about me?

“She’s not dead,” is his only answer.

My eyes widen in shock. Of course she’s dead. Nikolai told me how he did it. He told me what happened that night. There’s no way that somebody could survive a fall like that. I never thought to ask what he had done with the body, if anything at all.

“Don’t put that on me, either. My sister is very much alive. And Nikolai is keeping me here until I tell him everything about her, but I won’t. I have ruined a woman’s life, that’s true, but I will not ruin hers. I’m guilty enough without adding more to it.”

“What are you talking about? Whose life did you–”

Whatever else I might learn from the conversation with this man is cut short by the door banging open wider behind us. Nikolai’s hulking frame fills most of the open space and the rectangle of light that I was sitting in just moments ago is now in the shape of his large body.

I whip around to look my husband in the eye. I know he’s going to be mad at me for doing this. I know that I’m going against his orders but until this very second the only punishment that I thought that I was going to get from it was a sound spanking. Which, I’ve never minded from him before. But the look on his face is something that I’ve never seen before.

Nikolai and I have been through a lot. He’s done some not awesome things to me before the nature of our relationship changed. He wasn’t always the man that I love – but I’ve never been afraid of him before right this very second.

“What the fuck do you think that you’re doing?!” Nikolai snarls.

I scramble to close my first aid kit, but my hands are shaking. Why? I try to stuff everything back into the compartments as sloppily as I can, but it doesn’t help – Nikolai closes the distance between us in the span of a heartbeat and then his hand is a vice grip around my bicep. He yanks me off the floor and drags me toward the door so fast that I can’t get my feet up under me.

My hand goes to where he’s holding me, attempting to pry his grip loose on instinct alone. “Stop! Nikolai, stop, you’re hurting me!”

“Let her go!”

There’s a clanging of chains and a rustle of metal against the concrete before the resounding clang of the man that I had just been helping clearly reached the end of his allowance. He must have hit that chain hard to make it make that sort of noise. I claw desperately at Nikolai’s grip but chance a glance back at the man holding the chain attached to his collar in both hands – his swollen, battered face a mask of pure rage that twists something primal low in my belly.

“Got something to say, finally?” Nikolai snarls at the man.

“Let her go! It’s me you have an issue with!” The man yells at Nikolai. There’s such authority in his tone that I can feel it.

Nikolai drops me. Hard.

I fall to the ground, my first aid kit wholly forgotten.

Nikolai punches the man so hard in the stomach to shut him up that I recoil from the force of it. The man spits blood straight onto the concrete floor and Nikolai scoops me up before I can fully process what’s even happening. He throws me over his shoulder and the last thing that I see before Nikolai slams the door to the man’s cell shut is that striking blue eye trained directly on me. His mouth moves – and I focus on his lips to make sure I hear whatever is so important for him to say even if Nikolai has my blood ringing in my ears. There’s a wild sort of desperation in his eyes. “Ask him… about… Lilian…”

The door slams shut and the lock automatically clicks into place.

“Put me down!” I demand.

Nikolai ignores me until we’re upstairs. He deposits me heavily on one of our plush couches and holds his hand out expectantly. “Key.”

I don’t care for his tone.

I scowl at him and fish the key out of my bra where I had hidden it and slap it into his hand with as much indignation as I can muster. I refuse to cower. I don’t break eye contact as he glares at me.

“What the hell were you thinking?!” He demands as he shoves the key back into his pocket. “I told you not to go down there. I forbade you from going down there!”

I sit up on the couch – but he’s clearly not done yelling at me. “And that gives you an excuse to manhandle me like that?!” I scream right back.

“Do you have any idea what could have happened?! Do you have any idea what he could have done to you?! You were right up next to that bastard, Anya! He could have hurt you. For fuck’s sake he could have killed you with his bare hands, Anya!”

I start to reply. I start to get indignant, but then I see the look on his face. The worry that knits his brow. The actual fear that something could have happened to me. Whatever I was going to say dies on my tongue as he sinks down onto his knees in front of me so that we’re eye to eye.

“Whatever he said to you Anya, that man is one of the most ruthless, merciless, blood thirsty criminals that I have ever encountered in my life,” Nikolai says as he cups my face in his hands. His thumbs sweep out over my cheeks as he tilts me face up to his. Softly, I place my hands over the top of his.

“I’m all right. Nikolai, I can handle myself. He was chained to the wall. He couldn’t–”

“He could. He would have. I promise you, he was just biding his time with you before acting. He doesn’t deserve your pity or kindness and he sure as fuck doesn’t deserve your cures.” Nikolai insists.

“I didn’t mean to make you worry… I’m sorry…” I answer automatically.

“He didn’t touch you?!” Nikolai asks with a far softer tone to his voice. “Are you sure that you are unharmed?”

I nod and smile softly. He loves me so much. “I promise. Nikolai, I’m fine.”

Nikolai kisses my forehead sweetly, his lips lingering for a long moment before he pulls me into his arms tightly in an embrace. “I’m sorry for reacting that way… I just… seeing you near him… I couldn’t…”

I wrap my arms tightly around him, holding him so that he knows I’m here. I’m solid. I’m okay.

“I’ll make it up to you. Dinner. Wherever you like. Anywhere at all – dress up nice and make a whole spectacle of it.” Nikolai offers as I pull back from him.

My heart soars. It’s been so long since we’ve been able to be alone with each other. It’s been even longer since we’ve been able to go out in public. My eyes lift to him, hope fluttering in my chest.

“As soon as this war is over, we will go out.” Nikolai continues.

That hope plummets like a rock in a lake. Of course he doesn’t want to go until business is over. Now that I know Helena is alive… that’s got to be why he uprooted everything. He was only moving on because he was coming to grips with killing the woman he loved… who betrayed him. He had moved on. To me.

At least I thought that he had.

How long has Nikolai known that Helena is alive? Is that why he moved us here? How do Daniel and his father’s mafia fit into all of this? There has to be more to this story. I’m supposed to be his person, the one he tells everything to and I have clearly been excluded from a lot more than he’s let on.

Is Nikolai lying to me?

I look up at him and his dangerously, painfully handsome face. The same eyes that I fell in love with. The man who I took vows for and tied my life to. I never had any reason to doubt him before right now, but the man in the basement had no reason to lie to me. I can’t help him, I can’t set him free. There’s nothing to gain from being anything other than honest. If Helena is his sister… there’s just too much that I don’t know.

But more importantly… who the hell is Lilian?