Page 37 of The Bratva’s Captive Flame

"He'll say yes."

"Demin…" I'm frustrated. This isn't an answer. I feel exposed and weak, like I need him to reassure me that he won't let my Papa die over something so stupid as making his meth. "Promise you won't kill him…"

He tenses, but his grip doesn't tighten. Instead, he presses a soft kiss to my cheek and says, "I can't and I won't make promises I can't keep."

Then he gets up, leaving me lying in that bed where he just owned me, feeling like letting my heart believe he could really want me is the biggest mistake of my life.

He's not going to hold himself back for a single second. If Papa doesn't do what he wants, they're going to kill him.

What have I done bringing him here?

20

DEMIN

I've waited long enough. Mr. Cruz has been insolent and stubborn, refusing to do anything I've asked him nicely to do, and using Isabela is the only way to get at this fucker and make him work. He insists that all he wants is to get out of here, which will never happen, and I have to report in to Sebastian soon to let him know where we're at.

So this morning, as I walk toward the basement lab, I'm spinning ideas of just how to make my guest understand the position he's in so I don’t have to do anything I'd rather not do.

I burst into the lab where he sits on a chair with his arms crossed. Mishka stands in the corner watching the stubborn old fool and nods at me as I walk past. Neither of them says a word, but the tension in the air is palpable. Mr. Cruz sure knows how to ruffle feathers. But to his credit, Mishka hasn’t laid a hand on him yet. Following orders as he's been instructed.

"Mr. Cruz, I expected to see you working by now." He glares up at me as I hover over him speaking his native tongue. By now he's surely picked up a few phrases in Russian, but he has yet to speak in anything but Spanish.

"Go to hell," he grumbles, but I sweep my eyes over the lab. It's all new, pristine condition, the best tech money can buy.

"You've seen the room," I tell him. "There's nothing here Solano gave you that I haven't given you better. Glassware, reagents, ventilation, a chair if your legs get tired. All of it yours. Pick up the work."

"No."

This cocksucker is going to piss me off and when he does, Isabela is not going to like my reaction to it. When she asked me to promise I wouldn’t kill him, she meant in times like this—when I get angry and he's being stubborn. She has no clue the cost of business, the pressure on me to make this happen.

"I built this room for you. Do you understand the cost of a room like this? The men I paid, the things I imported, the eyes I bribed shut?"

He doesn't even glance at the bench. "I did not ask you to build it. I want to go home."

"Your daughter⁠—"

"She asked you to free me. Not to move my chain to a colder country." His chin stays up, his jaw set as he glares at me. "If you think better tools can buy my soul, you've wasted your money, Roshin."

I've been patient with this man longer than is even reasonable. He should've had a week's worth of supply made by now but he's pissing me off. My patience is wearing thin.

"You can't keep refusing to work, old man. I could end you, you know?"

"Que te jodan." I’m not fluent enough to know exactly what he means, but I get the picture when he spits on the floor by my boot. "I told you the first day. I will not cook for you. You can stand there until you grow old, Roshin, and you will never make me yield."

He sweeps his arm across the corner of the bench, and a tray of clean glassware slides off the edge and shatters across the floor, beakers and stir rods and a graduated cylinder splintering on the concrete.

I don't even flinch but I do look down at the mess then back up at him. "That was expensive," I say. "If you can't follow my orders, I may have to be unpleasant."

"Then be unpleasant. What is left to take? My freedom? Gone. My country? Gone. My name, my work, the only thing my hands were ever good for, you want to take that too." He's breathing hard, his thin chest heaving. "Shoot me. Go on. A dead chemist makes no poison."

I take him by the front of his shirt and turn him, pinning him against the edge of the steel table. And the message arrives on his face as he begins to understand just how serious I am. His eyes grow wide, and his hands wrap around my wrists.

"You keep talking about what I can take from you," I say, so close to his face, I'm sure he can feel the heat of my breath. "You're thinking about the wrong person. I don't have to touch a hair on your head to make your life unlivable. I have your daughter."

His jaw goes slack as his eyes draw in, and sweat sheens on his forehead.

"Every time you refuse me," I go on, "she's the one who pays for it. Not you. You think you're being a martyr, but she's the one at risk of death."