Page 26

My heart stutters.

“What?”

He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t blink. He just stares down at me.

“I said I’m not letting you go, Rosie.”

Chapter Eight

Andrei

Four years.

Four long, fucking years I’ve been looking for her.

There were nights I started to believe she never existed at all, that she had been nothing more than a fever dream, a ghost my mind had conjured up to torment me.

Every strawberry-blonde woman with similar curves, I would catch myself staring, heart kicking hard, only to feel the bitter crash when it wasn’t her.

And then she walked into my club.

I was sitting in the private VIP balcony overlooking the main floor, discussing logistics with Igor, the club manager, when the doors opened and she appeared.

For a split second I actually rubbed my eyes like some lovesick idiot, convinced I was hallucinating again. But no. It was her. My plamya. Walking in with three other women, smiling wide, laughing, her red dress hugging every dangerous curve exactly the way I remembered.

Everything else blurred.

Igor was still talking, but his voice faded into nothing. I couldn’t tear my eyes off her. If I looked away, she might disappear again.

I watched every step she took as the hostess led her group toward the reserved VIP section on the lower level.

I had been told earlier that a bride was having her bachelorette party here tonight. I hadn’t cared. Until now.

Is she the bride?

The thought hits me like a knife to the gut. The idea of her belonging to another man makes my fingers tighten around my glass so hard I hear the crystal creak. One more ounce of pressure and it would shatter.

Igor says something else. I don’t even register the words.

“We’ll finish this later,” I mutter, waving him off without sparing him a glance. My eyes stay locked on her.

If she is the bride, then that wedding isn’t happening. A single bullet is all it would take to remove the sorry bastard who thinks he can have what’s mine.

I keep watching, jaw clenched.

One of the women pulls out a white sash and dramatically drapes it over one of her friends. “Bride to be” glitters across her chest in bold letters.

A slow smirk pulls at my lips. Guess I won’t be killing anyone tonight.

I signal a passing waiter. “Send the ladies in that VIP section top-shelf champagne, on the house. Whatever they order tonight, put it on my tab.”

I keep my eyes on her the entire night. I let her have her fun with her friends. I even tolerate the male strippers when they show up, though my jaw ticks every time one of them gets too close. But the second that worthless idiot on the dance floor thinks he has the right to put his hands on her waist to press himself against what belongs to me, I see red.

I’m already moving before I consciously decide to.

My hand closes around the back of his neck and I rip him off her with barely restrained violence.

And then the shootout started. Four years of searching, and I almost lost her again in the span of a single night.