Page 28 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

I drag in a breath and force myself to look out the window. We’re in Chicago!

Winter-bare trees, dirty snow, and flat, colorless parks whiz by. That realization slams into me so hard, my lungs forget how to work. Why am I back in Chicago?

I wait for my stomach to settle. I start to taste the ice cream I had with…

“Oh God, Elodie,” I gasp, jerking upright, panic rising fast and vicious. “My cousin. Where is she? What did you do to her?”

The man doesn’t answer, just watches me.

The cold metal cuffs bite into my wrists when I instinctively pull at them. I’ve never worn handcuffs, as far as I remember. I’ve seen them on television. Those were props, I guess. These feel too heavy to be a prop. The kind of man with his own plane would have.

“Wait.” I raise my hands, the chain between the cuffs clinking a sinister metallic sound. “Are you bringing me back to Lakeshore?”

The man frowns. “We don’t live on Lake Shore. We live on North State.”

“We? I don’t live with you.” The thought makes my skin crawl. “You’ve made a mistake,” I say, louder now, because I need him to understand. I need someone to understand. “I don’t know you.”

“And I don’t know you either,” he snaps back, his voice low and edged with anger.

It doesn’t make sense. Nothing about this makes sense.

The SUV slows, stopping in front of iron gates, tall and black and impossibly final. Is this a prison? Was I some wanted criminal before the accident?

Beyond the gate, a mansion rises into the sky. Its stone facade is dusted with snow. Its windows are arched on higher floors and bowed out below. Everything is trimmed in black lead.

It should look beautiful, but it doesn’t. It looks like the exact place I don’t belong.

As we pass through the gate and head toward the back of the house, a large row of windows exposes a vintage interior. A flash of bodies flickers behind my eyes. Yelling. A man bruised terribly in the face, wheezing. Blood, lots of blood.

I feel sick. Was it him? Did someone hurt him here in this house?

I suck in a breath and press my cuffed hands to my temples.

“Stop,” I whisper. “Stop it. This can’t be happening.”

I was nineteen when I fell. I had nineteen years of a life that no one can give back to me. Lourdes showed me pictures of us as children. Smiling. Playing. Hugging. But what happened after that? Between then and my accident?

What about the woman I was before I woke up in a hospital bed with a stranger telling me he was my father and that my name was Jessica? A name that never felt right. But what choice did I have? I had to accept it.

My gaze flicks back to the man with impossible blue eyes and a presence that stirs feelings inside me in a way I don’t understand. Even with fear clawing at my throat.

Even with a gun pointed at my head.

Elodie’s voice echoes in my brain, teasing and curious.

Have you ever had sex?

Heat creeps up my neck, misplaced and unwelcome. A connection I don’t want to this man stirs in me. It’s deep and unsettling.

The car rolls to a stop at a side entrance, and everything moves quickly after that. It’s a blur of doors opening, cold air flooding in, and hitting my skin. Sharp. Biting.

Hands reach for me, strong and unyielding, pulling me from the seat before I can brace myself. My flip-flops dangle from my feet as I’m lifted completely and carried like I weigh nothing.

“Put me down!” I shout, thrashing, punching the man’s back. “Let me go!”

The man with the blue eyes steps out from the other side of the car.

“Quiet.” Gun in hand, his gaze locks on mine as he follows me being carried.