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I reach for the handle and twist, but it doesn’t budge. I turn it the other way. Nothing. What the hell?
A laugh claws up my throat. I’m so stupid, of course I know what’s going on. My brothers are teaching me a lesson for sneaking out all the time, they’re trying to show me the dangers of slipping my security team by scaring me. My racing heart starts to slow as I swallow the giggle lodged in my throat. I can’t let them know I know what they’re up to. It’s more fun if I let whatever fucked-up plan they have run its course.
I cross to the window next, I’m interested to know where exactly they’ve brought me for this little lesson, but when I look out into the street, I don’t expect what I see. We’re in the old part of the city, the part where the rich singles live in fancy brownstones. Why on earth would they bring me here? We’ve never even been to this part of the city, and I’ve helped Wynter enough to know we don’t own any property around here.
A flicker of doubt ignites in my belly. What if it wasn’t Rayne and Storm playing a prank? What if someone actually took me? And not just any someone. A someone who knows exactly what my bedroom looks like from the inside, right down to the brand of sheets and the decorative pillows I bought in Paris last year on a girl’s trip with Mom and Wynter.
The thing is, and the thing that has a cold sweat breaking out on my brow is that my brothers wouldn’t get all these details right. Even an interior designer would have a hard time getting every single one of these aspects right.
I turn toward the door again, my eyes running over everything in the room once again. The dizziness I felt when I stood up returns, and a moment later, I crumple to the floor, the plush rug softening the blow when I hit the ground. The softness envelops my body, the familiar texture almost allowing me to pretend I’m at home in my room. When I was in high school, my friends and I used to lie on the rug while we flicked through magazines and talked about boys, and it’s that memory that I allow to drag me back into unconsciousness.
Sometime later, I wake, my body surrounded by plush bedding. Someone moved me. Someone was in here, and they moved me back to the bed.
I sit straight up, fear beating through every fiber of my being as my eyes dart around the dark room. The moon shines brightly out the window, and the street below is quiet. What time is it?
Slowly, I slip out of bed, the rug I fell asleep on soft beneath my feet. Instead of feeling groggy like I did when I woke up the first time, energy courses through my blood. I need to figure out where I am, who has me, and how the hell I can get out of here.
My eyes fall on what I think may be the bathroom on the far side of the room, and I quickly cross to it. Once I’ve done my business, I look around the space and sigh with annoyance. The tiles are the same as the estate, the clawfoot tub almost identical, and even the products I use every day in the shower are lined up on a shelf just like the one at home.
This has to be a fucking parallel universe.
I pick up my favorite shampoo, the bottle full and unopened. My brothers wouldn’t have thought of this much detail. They may be the best at organizing large shipments of weapons and wide-scale hacking into government databases, but there’s no way they would think to stock wherever the fuck I am with my favorite beauty products.
I need a weapon. Something to protect myself when whoever has taken me comes in here to get whatever they want. There has to be a reason they’ve taken me, but I don’t have a clue what it could be. I’m not involved in any of the shady shit my family does. I never have been, and I’m almost certain I never will be. They’ve always tried to protect me from the extent of what we’re involved in, and I’ve never felt the need to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but maybe I should have asked a few more questions.
It never occurred to me that I could still be in danger after the Russos were killed. I thought they were the end of the danger. Not that them being on the loose ever stopped me from slipping out from under my securities’ nose occasionally.
But maybe I should have listened to my brothers when they told me how dangerous the city can be, especially for someone like me. I’m the weakness of my family, not because I’m not strong, but because I’m the youngest. There’s nothing my brothers and sister won’t do to protect me, and every bad guy in the city knows it.
I drop to my knees, the cool tiles making me wince on impact, but I ignore the pain and start rummaging through the cupboard below the vanity for anything I can use as a weapon. I know self-defense. My brothers insisted I know how to protect myself, considering how little I liked having a security detail, but something tells me this is different. This isn’t a matter of fending off some two-bit thug on the street. This is someone who has planned to take me. Someone who has plotted over a long period of time, someone who has watched me, who has been in my house enough to know every single thing I have in my bedroom and bathroom. Whoever has me probably hasn’t taken me just to extort my family out of money.
No. The man who took me wants something much more sinister. I just don’t know what yet.
6
Elijah
I’m not normally someone who smiles. Emotions are a liability in the life I was born into and certainly within my family. If you want to survive life as a Russo, you have to be cold and dead inside. There’s no room for feelings, or love, or happiness. Those things are myths you hear about from other people, but you can never feel them yourself.
Except, I haven’t stopped smiling since I left Snow asleep in her bed. The corners of my mouth and cheeks ache from the foreign gesture, but I can’t help it. A part of me has clicked into place, and I’ve never felt so settled in myself. My whole life I’ve looked over my shoulder, waiting for something to go wrong. But now Snow’s here. Everything in my world feels right.
In my family, happiness was always a weakness. One time when I was seven, a friend at school gave me a toy car. I’d never had one before because my father and uncles didn’t believe Everett and I should have a childhood. Our sole purpose was to be the heirs to the Russo name, and we started training for that role almost from when we took our first steps. He was luckier than I was. His mother was alive for some of his life, so he felt love and compassion, even if he did experience such loss at a young age. My mother died when I was a baby, meaning the only parent I ever had was a cold, heartless father.
When my father found the car in my backpack, he threw it in the fire and forced me to watch it melt, and once it was nothing more than the metal frame, he made me reach into the open flame and retrieve the burning hot remnants of the toy I loved so much. I still have the scars from where he forced me to hold it until it was cool enough for him to throw in the trash.
That was the day I turned my emotions off, and I didn’t turn them back on again until the day I laid eyes on my beautiful Snowflake. She’s the only one to ever make me feel anything and having her in my home feels right.
I watch as she rummages through the bathroom looking for something to protect herself, just as I expected her to do. Every move she’s made since she woke up has been exactly as I thought it would be. Confusion. Panic. Reasoning with herself. Survival. Each reaction is so uniquely Snow it only makes my smile grow wider.
She’s incredible. The perfect mix of fire and uncertainty she’s always lived her life with. I’m addicted to her rebellion and obsessed with the shyness she hides behind the mask she shows the world. I’ve been hooked on Snow Saint James since the first time our eyes met, and there isn’t a drug on this earth I’d rather be addicted to.
I’ve planned everything from when I first laid her down on her new bed. I should be walking in there any minute now, taunting her with who I am, but something inside me makes me stop. Dare I say my conscience? I didn’t believe I had one up until now. Hell, when you’ve done the shit I have, the word itself is foreign, but there’s something about my Snowflake that makes me second guess everything I’ve ever known.
She’s scared. Whether she’s willing to admit it or not, she’s a frightened little lamb, and me going in there to taunt her is only going to make it harder to make her trust me. We have a long way to go to get her where I want her, and while my baser instincts call to me to hunt my prey, make sure she knows the danger lurking in the shadows and then pounce when she’s least expecting it, the part of me that Snow softens wants to ease her into her new reality.
A knock at the door startles me. Already Snow has become a distraction, but I can’t bring myself to care. One of the main reasons I partnered with the Saint James family was so I would have more time to spend with her when she arrived, and soon I'll start hiring some more staff to help me. A second in charge, maybe even an enforcer to do the dirty work. As much as I crave the blood of my enemies, the screams they let out as they get closer and closer to death, Snow won’t like it if I come home covered in blood, so I may have to take a step back from that side of the business.
“Come in,” I say just loud enough for whoever is outside the door to hear.
