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My jaw tenses as I remain silent, glaring up at him. I clench my teeth against the urge to tell him the truth, as if it would wipe away the cold fury on his face.

This man, who, I realize more than ever now that the feeling is gone from his expression, was falling in love with me.

Who I, for the first time in my life, might have been falling in love with, too.

His eyes narrow further. His free hand moves to my throat, thumb pressing lightly against the wound he'd inadvertently made. "Who are you, really?"

I twist again, nearly breaking his hold. We roll across the floor, knocking into the legs of a chair. It topples over with a crash as we grapple. I see a takeout container overturned on the floor from where we crashed into the table at first, rice and tiny, pink shrimp scattered across the floor. A dark red sauce inches across the wood, like sticky blood.

A shudder runs through me as I buck in his grasp, twisting until I lurch upward, sinking my teeth into his arm. He recoils with a startled shout and I manage to get free, swinging my arm upward and landing a solid hit to his jaw that makes his head snap back.

All those boxing lessons were good for something.It’s not the first time I’ve ended up in a fight, but never have the stakes felt so high, or the possibility of losing felt so real. This has only ever happened twice before. Once, a close-range shot failed to take the target down immediately. The second time, the poison didn’t work fast enough. Both times, the man I was fighting was injured, slowed, halfway to dead while he tried to take me to hell with him.

Konstantin is none of those things. For the briefest moment, as I hear his teeth click and see blood seep from where he’s bitten his tongue, I think I’ve gained the advantage. I scramble backwards, looking for another knife, another weapon of my own, but Konstantin recovers quickly, lunging forward with a speed that belies his size.

He pins me to the floor once more, his knee wedging between my thighs. "Who are you?" he demands again, this time managing to capture both my wrists, pinning them above my head with one large hand.

Who are you?My heart pounds in my chest. That’s what he seems to want to know most of all. Not who sent me, or who I’m working for, or who it is that wants him dead, if it’s still Genovese and the Slakovs or someone else. He wants to know my identity, who I really am, who the woman that he thought he was falling for was all along.

Even in this moment, that’s what he wants to know the most. It feels like a dagger in my heart, like a slow death.

I thrash beneath him, wild and desperate to get loose again. "Let me go!" I glare up at him, wild-eyed. “I’ll leave if you let me go. I’ll call off my boss.” It’s a lie. I’m going for a weapon as soon as I get away from him, and I couldn’t call off Kane no matter what. Konstantin knows that as well as I do, and he laughs coldly at my feeble attempt to appeal to him.

"Not a chance." His eyes are like ice. "Not until you tell me what your real name is, and who sent you. And even then—" The look on his face is calculating. “Then we’ll get to the heart of what’s going on here.”

I glimpse another knife, fallen on the floor next to where Konstantin would have been sitting. It’s inches away; I could reach it if I could get free for just a moment. I roll my body to one side, twisting as I shove my leg between his, bringing my knee up sharply as I try to aim for his groin again. He anticipates the move, shifting his weight to block me.

"That won't work twice," he growls.

Using his momentary distraction, I arch my back hard, using my body weight and the leverage of my pinned arms to headbutt him. The impact sends stars across my vision, but it connectswith his chin hard enough that he loosens his grip for a split second.

I wrench one hand free, clawing at his face, my nails leaving red streaks across his cheek. He curses in Russian, grabbing for my wrist again, but I'm already rolling away, lunging for the knife on the floor.

My fingers close around the handle just as Konstantin's body slams into mine from behind. We crash into the overturned chair, sending it skidding across the floor. The knife is in my hand now, but his weight pins me down, one of his hands gripping my wrist so tightly I feel my bones grinding together.

"Drop it," he snarls against my ear.

"You’ll kill me if I do," I gasp, trying to twist the knife around despite the crushing pressure on my wrist. Pain shoots up my arm as Konstantin applies more force, his grip like iron.

"Who are you?" he demands again, his breath hot against my ear. "Tell me!"

I manage to roll onto my side, the knife caught between us, both of our hands fighting for control. His weight bears down on me, and his eyes lock with mine. For a split second, I see the hurt and betrayal shining through the cold rage. The heart of Konstantin, gleaming through the cracks in the cold, hard man that he’s been shaped into all his life.

"It doesn't matter," I gasp, struggling beneath him. "You wouldn't understand. And you’ll torture me. Kill me. This is over. There’s only?—"

"Try me," he growls, using his weight to press me harder into the floor. “You don’t know me, Sophia. It’s clear you never did. So try being fucking honest,volchitsa.”

The nickname, growled in his angry, thickly accented voice, feels like another slash through my already-bleeding heart.

For a moment, I wonder what would happen if I was honest. If I told him everything, if I appealed to the part of him that cared for me, that might still be in there.

And then I remember Elia, and the look on his face as we interrogated her. The blood dripping down her arm, salt mixed into the wound. He hadn’t known her or cared for her, but still…

The only person in this world that I can trust fully is myself. And right now, I’m all I have.

I thrust my elbow backward, connecting with his ribs. He grunts but doesn't loosen his grip. Instead, he shifts, using his leg to pin mine down, his other hand moving to grab my hair, yanking my head back painfully. I let out a cry of mixed pain and frustration, still fighting for control of the knife between us.

"You've been lying to me since the beginning," he growls, his voice dangerously low. "Everything was a lie. The chosen bride. The willing wife. All that effort, all that seduction. Pretending to want to make a life with me." His grip tightens on my wrist, making me wince. "Was any of it real?"