Page 117 of Beautiful Secrets

In this small, dark room—all I have is the chair I’m tied to. That, and my boxers. Yuri and his nightmarish brood of Bratva took everything else—my clothes, my phone, my dignity.

One of my teeth.

Yuri had his thugs hold me down so he could smack me around, although we both knew he could probably have taken me in a fair fight. But I’m guessing fair doesn’t translate in Yuri’s mind.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. It feels like days, but since I’ve only had two pints of water fed to me and I’m not passing out, it can’t be more than a day. Two at the most.

The worst part about the thoughts running rampant through my mind are those featuring Mika.

Christ, I still can’t believe I let her leave. In my defense, I didn’t have a fucking clue about all this shit that was going on in the background—the politics and death.

I thought I was doing her a favor. Giving her what no one else even considered hers in the first place.

Her freedom.

I might as well have shoved her into an open grave and shoveled dirt over her face.

Wherever I am, I’m not as alone as they’d like me to think. I hear faint noises—footsteps, doors slamming, raised voices. After I blacked out, thanks to Yuri’s fists, this is where I woke up.

I could be anywhere.

Mika could be dead.

And all I can think about is whether or not she suffered first.

Because that’s on me.

Whatever happens to her—happenedto her—it’s all on me.

I could have turned around that night and taken her straight back to Dimitri. Yeah, her life would have sucked—arranged marriages don’t sound all that appealing to me—but instead she might be dead.

That thought makes my chest close up.

Now I keep replaying the last few days, trying to spot a clue that I somehow missed. Some sign the universe sent me that I must have overlooked because I’d been too fucking busy using Mika as collateral.

Because in what world would I not have been given a sign? It’s obvious we have something—now that I know I’ll never see her again it’s fucking blatant.

I kept telling myself I was desperate for human companionship. That she was the most interesting person I’d met—and that coming from a guy who’d just done a five-year stint in a mental institution.

Why the hell did I keep lying to myself like that?

Was I honestly such a pussy that I couldn’t admit that I was falling for a girl I barely knew?

Even if that was the case, none of it matters now. I should stop thinking about Mika, and start figuring a way out of this—

A shiver courses through me when the barely-distinguishable metal door a few feet away squeals open like a creature from hell. Orange light floods the tiny room I’m in.

I blink at the silhouette filling the doorway until the man steps deeper inside and the light reaches his face.

“You lied,” he says.

I grimace at him. “Can you be more specific?”

“She is not in Moscow.”

Ice spreads through my body, crackling my bones and making the hair on my arms stand up as Yuri drops to a crouch in front of my chair. But despite the dread soaking through my flesh, I manage a shrug. “Why is that my problem?”

“You said she is in Russia. That she took a flight to Moscow.”