Page 136 of No Longer Mine

He straightened, adjusted his cufflinks. “I won’t ask again. Where are the drives? And don’t insult me by pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about. I saw the footage of you leaving the building beside mine—sans wig.” His smile was thin.

That’s what did me in. My bright hair minus the wig. If only I’d kept it on. Maybe he wouldn’t have found me.

“You came all this way for some missing files?” I tilted my head, feigning boredom. “Bit beneath you, isn’t it?”

His eyes darkened, but his tone stayed smooth. “When they’re the kind of files that could ruin empires? No. Nothing is beneath me.”

I forced a smile, despite the pounding of my pulse. “That’s funny… that’s exactly how I feel about burning yours to the ground.”

That was when he punched me in the stomach.

Not hard. Not enough to knock me backwards. But enough to knock the breath out of me.

“You’re not as clever as you think,” he said coldly. “But I do love a challenge.”

He turned to the scarred man. “Bring her somewhere quiet. I’ll deal with her myself once Dimitri is finished brooding. I don’t want him finding her.”

“Are you going to kill me?” I didn’t know why it mattered at this point. He had the upper hand.

He turned and looked at me over his shoulder. “Kill you?” He laughed. “No. I have some high-paying clients that would love nothing more than to break you.”

Rough hands grabbed my shoulders and ripped me up from the chair. I didn’t bother with fighting back. I didn’t try to escape. I hung limply as they dragged me from the room.

The hallway was dim, lit by flickering overhead lights. My bare feet scraped against cold concrete as the scarred man dragged me forward, one of his companions trailing behind with a gun held low but ready. I kept my head bowed, my body slack.

Sinclair had made a mistake.

He thought breaking me would be simple. That selling me off like some prize to his monsters-for-hire would make me fold. He didn’t understand that I’d already lived through hell once. That I’d clawed my way out of Vanewood’s pit with blood in my mouth and rage in my bones. I sure as shit wasn’t going back.

As the man hauling me forward fumbled with a keypad on a reinforced steel door, I glanced down—just long enough to clock the knife tucked into the inside of his boot. Hope bloomed in my blood.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Dimitri

Fuck everything.Fuck my career. Fuck the next campaign. Fuck every single person in the godsdamned world.

My grin stretched wide—feral—as I stalked across the cold concrete floor of the warehouse. All that mattered was Scarlett. I would lose it all if it meant she was safe. I doubted after all of this that she would ever be mine again, but at least I knew that I did something worth a damn in my life. My knife clicked out as the man across from me thrashed in his bindings.

“What’s wrong?” I crouched in front of him, dragging the tip of my knife up his pant leg, slow and purposeful. “You thought I went soft, didn’t you? Thought daddy’s little councilman wouldn’t get his hands dirty?”

His eyes widened a split second before I drove the blade into his thigh.

He screamed through the duct tape stretched across his mouth, body convulsing against the restraints. I left the knife buried in muscle and stood to my full height, watching him struggle.

I turned toward the table behind me, lined with tools. I let my fingers drift over them until they wrapped around the handle of a rusted meat tenderizer.

“Tell me,” I said, “do you need all your fingers?”

He sobbed behind the tape, shaking his head violently.

“I guess not.”

Tears streamed down the man’s face in a thick current as he watched me get closer. I would break every bone in his body before I let him die. He would know unmeasurable pain.

Rapidly, he shook his head and then nodded.

“Are you ready to talk?”