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Done.
That paper towel dispenser had actually been my first clue as to where I was. When the guards finally let me use the toilet in my new gray cell the day before, I noticed that everything in the bathroom had been bolted down as well. The hand soap, shampoo, and paper towels were all in unmarked metal dispensers attached to the white tiled walls. There were no decorations. No shower curtain or bath mat. But when I dried my hands, I noticed that the paper towel dispenser had a sticker on the side with instructions on how to open it.
And those instructions were written in English.
Alarm bells had immediately gone off in my head, but it wasn’t until I’d walked back to the bed—at gunpoint—and caught a glimpse of the world outside my window that the reality of the situation really grabbed me by the fucking throat. A horrifying, nauseating sense of failure washed over me as I stared down at Steeven’s Lane—gutted, bombed-out buildings on one side, a massive stone wall on the other, and inside that wall, scattered across the grass below my window, debris from a recent rocket strike.
I hadn’t made it to Russia.
I hadn’t even made it out of Dublin.
I was right back at St. Patrick’s Psychiatric Hospital.
And this time, I was the one trapped inside.
Lift … flip … slide … click.
My surrender had been for fucking nothing. The soldiers at Heuston Station had beaten me unconscious, carried me half a kilometer down the street, and locked me in an empty room in the psych ward until they could get my father on the phone to decide what to do with me.
And his decision had only verified the fact that I didn’t fucking know him at all.
I’d expected him to whisk me back to Moscow so that he could see to my imprisonment and torture personally. I’d expected his wrath, his rage, but what I hadn’t expected was his thinly veiled pride. My murderous rampage had proven to him that I was every bit as fearless, violent, determined as my old man, and now, he was more eager than ever to continue doing what he enjoyed most.
Trying to break me.
Alexi had thought that a year in the Kletka would do it, but not even five had been enough to make me bend the knee and kiss the ring on his iron fist.
He’d thought that making me lead the charge against my homeland would do it—force me to submit to his power and accept my fate as his heir and successor to the Bratva throne.
But it had quite the opposite effect.
Because I wasn’t motivated by fear or power, and my treasonous killing spree had revealed that to him.
He knew now that my sole motivation was protecting Clover Doyle, that I would do anything for that woman.
Which meant that if he had her …
I would do anything for him.
I would accept the role of vice president, be his puppet in Ireland so that he never had to leave the safety of the Kremlin. I would strip my fellow countrymen of their identities, their names, their heritage, and their lives if they didn’t fall in line. And in exchange, he’d let Clover live when they captured her in Shannon.
But they weren’t going to capture her in Shannon.
I might not have known my father, but I knew Clo. There was only one place that girl wanted to be, and it wasn’t fucking America. I would bet my life that Clover had gone back to Glenshire. I prayed that she had because right now, that was the safest place for her to be. The Russians would never bother invading a village that small, and Nora would take care of her until she could get a job and save enough money to buy our old house back.
But I was going to play my part anyway, pretend like I believed them when they told me they’d found her, let Alexi think he’d finally broken my will.
Because the sooner he believed that he had me by the bollocks …
The sooner he’d let me get close enough to kill him.
Press … latch … slide … done.
So, I sat in my bed like a good boy, fastening and unfastening my restraints, as I stared at the designer suit hanging from the corner of the TV. I had no idea how Alexi had gotten it to me so fast, but he must have given the soldiers guarding me strict orders not to let it get wrinkled. As soon as the press conference was over, they’d made me change into the institutional-blue T-shirt and trousers that all the other residents of St. Patrick’s hospital wore, but I knew that in a few hours, they’d make me put it back on. And that was when my real punishment would begin. When I’d have to enforce the new treason laws that Alexi had just decreed. When I’d have to stand there in my designer clothes and do nothing while my fellow citizens were dragged from their homes and shot in the streets for not cooperating. When I’d have to absorb the hatred in their heartbroken eyes as they used their final breath to spit on my Italian leather loafers.
That would be my real punishment. This was just a security precaution—restraints, solitary confinement, and three Russian soldiers stationed at the hospital to guard me at all times. One was positioned outside my door, one at the front entrance, and one patrolled the perimeter of the building, but there were half a dozen more at Heuston Station that could be there in five minutes if they needed to subdue me.
Not that I was going to fight back. I was going to be such a model VP that Alexi would have no choice but to invite me to the Kremlin for a father-son photo op once my job here was done.
