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Surely, his man who follows me, Archer, is already aware.
Right?
I go to reach for my necklace but tighten my interwoven fingers. It’d become a habit to touch the necklace Dmitri gifted me. But I refused to draw The Lion’s attention to anything so precious to me.
“Yes, my Lion,” I say as my throat constricts.
He sneers at my obedience and snaps his fingers dismissively. “We’re done here.”
At the click of his fingers, one of his guards jumps the waiter and wraps a thin chain around his throat. Within seconds, he’s struggling for his life, silently choking as he tries to fight against a man twice his size.
I try to avoid looking in his direction, staring at the steak knife to my left. Seconds. It would only take seconds to plunge it into The Lion’s chest.
“I wouldn’t try that trick twice, girl,” he growls, and Sergey’s hand firmly touches my shoulder to escort me out.
Twice. I look at the jagged scar on his throat. Because the first time I’d attempted to take his life, I’d failed.
The young waiter is slowly being ushered to the floor, and the man behind him has a splitting smile as the life dims from his eyes.
The Lion doesn’t even look in his direction, unaffected by the cruelty born from his nature.
I stand and dip my head in feigned magnitude, then turn to follow Sergey.
Just place one foot in front of the other, I remind myself, and begin to count my steps.
45
ELANEE
In. Out. I focus on my breathing. I look over my shoulder, where Sergey casually trails me outside the restaurant and through the hustling crowd.
He’s here. The Lion is here, and I don’t know how to tell Dmitri.
I don’t want that man touching me ever again. I can’t do it again. Memories resurface of my years with The Lion. The cold twist of pleasure and violation. Stupid. I’d always been such a stupid girl.
My legs are carrying me; I don’t even know where. I just want to run. Run as far away from this place as I can.
I walk for what feels like forever and yet not far enough. I round a corner into a narrow street. No one’s here, just overflowing trash. My legs pick up pace before I realize it. I push through the pain, trying to push this terror out of my body.
He’s going to break me all over again.
I don’t have anything else to give.
My mind plays in a loop, creating its own suffering in memories and manifestations of what surely is to come.
Sergey casually jogs behind me because I can’t run fast, but he has a twisted smirk as if reveling in my obvious weakness. I was nothing but a cripple trying to flee once again.
I thought you would’ve killed yourself.
The words play in loops. I want to be strong. I want to fight. But there was hardly anything left to give.
I forgot what it was to stand in front of my captor and tremble under his gaze alone.
I’d fallen under someone else’s potent spell; Dmitri’s, believing with a sliver of a chance I might make it out of this living hell. But the cold rush of reality torches me alive.
The moment I burst out onto the other side of the street, looking this way and that in a panic as to which direction to go, my eyesight is blanketed and a cloth placed over my mouth and nose. I grapple with the person strongly holding me from behind, trying to fight off the overpowering smell.
Two gunshots go off and what sounds like s a screeching car comes to a stop. I kick and scream but the last inhalation draws the poison into my body and I fade into black.
