Page 4

“No.” I slapped at the hand, but the needle was already gone. The alley tilted so violently that I stumbled against the man holding me. Panic exploded, sending my heartbeat soaring. “What did you–” My tongue was too thick to continue, but I kept trying to mutter around it. The men caught me when my knees folded. I kept fighting, even when my arms felt like lead weights and my legs refused to cooperate, I fought until my vision turned hazy and the lights dimmed.

“Got you, Alina.”

The name sparked a new surge of fight. “Wrong. Woman.” I forced my mouth to cooperate even as my head lolled to the side.

“They all say that.” He laughed in my ear, the sound disgustingly satisfied.

The last thing I saw was my bakery tote lying open on the pavement, tomorrow’s invoices scattered beside a crushed box of macarons. Somewhere across town, Nora was putting on her pajamas and waiting for me to tuck her in.

When I came to, I was lying on a concrete floor. My head rocked side to side while music pounded somewhere beyond the walls. Bass vibrated through the floor, and when I tried to lift my hands, metal bit into my wrists. The chilling reminder snapped everything back into focus, and I jolted upright.

Nausea pinched my stomach, and I slapped a hand over my mouth to keep from vomiting on the man sitting next to me. My cuffed wrists clanked, and I tried to focus on the room instead of my gut. Men and women alike were cuffed in similar fashion. Some wore expensive clothes. One man had dried blood on the side of his face and a woman in a silver dress stared at the floor and cried.

“What is this?” I stood, swayed, and pressed my shoulder into the wall before my knees gave out again. A guard outside the barred door glanced in. “Where am I?”

His gaze traveled over me with nothing more than bored contempt. “Sit down.”

“I was kidnapped.” I held up my shackled wrists. “They think I’m Alina. I’m not.” Shut up, Anika. I tried to stop shaking, but realizing I was about to be punished for yet another of my sister’s crimes had me more than willing to throw her under the bus. She wouldn’t think twice about doing it to me.

A cold, hard feeling settled where my heart was supposed to be. “I want out of here.”

“Then by all means, step right this way.” The guard unlocked the door and grabbed my chains.

I tried to fight, but the drug was still in my body, leaving my legs weak and my coordination worse than ever. They dragged me through a corridor bathed in red light while the voices up ahead swelled to an unbearable level. Men laughed, the caustic sound pushing bile up my throat again. It sounded like a party, but what kind of party needed captives?

Oh fuck. Fucking shit in a woven basket. No. My stomach turned over. “No.” I dug my heels into the floor. “No, no, no. You have the wrong person.”

The guard hauling me forward laughed as an amplified voice boomed. “Our next offering needs very little introduction.”

Applause rippled through the crowd, followed by whistles. The curtain opened, flooding the corridor with light.

“Everyone take a good look at the woman responsible for stealing from Pakhan Volkov and his partners.”

2

MAKSIM

I had watched men beg for their lives with more dignity than some of the bastards bidding tonight, but dignity had never been a requirement for doing business. The auction had been running for almost two hours, and too much money in too little space always made men stupid. A Serbian underboss three tables over had already thrown a glass after being outbid on a shipment of military-grade rifles, and one of his soldiers was currently explaining to security why that did not qualify as a threat. The man from Brighton Beach who’d won the lot watched with smug satisfaction, thinking tonight’s purchase had made him powerful.

Across from me, Roman checked his watch without attempting to hide his boredom. Kirill had stopped pretending to care forty minutes ago and sat tipped back in his chair, balancing on two legs while he watched the argument near the bar.

I gave his chair a pointed glance. “Put it down. You look twelve.”

Kirill didn’t bother looking at me. “Rich twelve-year-olds are terrifying.”

“They’re significantly less terrifying after they crack their skull open on concrete.” Roman lifted his whiskey, though I had yet to see him drink more than a mouthful.

I ignored both of them and returned my attention to the stage, where the auctioneer had said my name. I’d intentionally taken my time looking, refusing to let anyone think I cared too much by reacting too quickly.

Roman’s glass stopped halfway to the table. The change was small enough that no one outside our circle would have noticed it, but I did.

A woman stood beneath the white auction lights with her wrists cuffed in front of her. Chestnut hair had come loose around her shoulders, her off-white cardigan was ripped and hanging loose off one shoulder, and a red mark darkened the skin near her temple. Her face was paler than I remembered, perhaps thinner through the cheeks, but five years disappeared the instant her hazel eyes swept the room.

Red silk. Black lacquer roses. A silver ring catching candlelight while her thumb worked nervously over its edge. Her laugh filling a room. Then morning, an empty bed, and thirty million dollars gone before breakfast.

Kirill’s chair struck the floor with enough force to turn several heads. “Fuck me.”

Roman said nothing. He didn’t need to. The woman’s face was burned too deeply into all three of us for doubt to survive even a second. We knew every line of it because she had been the only one who removed her mask that night. Now she stood twenty meters away in restraints.