Page 84 of Emerald

I can’t pay any attention to it, because as soon as the bottle leaves my hand, I feel Remizov’s fingers seizing me by the hair. He yanks me backward off my feet.

I try to kick and punch and claw at him, but he’s dragging me backward, my scalp screaming with pain, and my feet stumbling in those detestable high heels.

Remizov knows this house, with or without light to see by.

He drags me across the dining room, out a separate set of doors, and up the stairs behind them.

The whole house is pitch black. There isn’t the slightest sound of a heater or fan. I can still hear the grunting and shouting of the struggle in the dining room.

Before we’ve gone up more than a couple of steps, I hear three gunshots, muffled by the closed doors.

“Ivan!” I scream.

There’s no answer from Ivan, or anyone else.

Remizov is still dragging me up the stairs, one hand wrapped tight in my hair, and the other locked around my wrist. He’s abominably strong, despite how slim he is. I’m hampered by the goddamned dress and my throbbing head, which hasn’t recovered from being tackled by the linebacker, and was aggravated again by Remizov’s slap.

I still intend to fight him, even if it sends both of us tumbling down the steps. Feeling this, Remizov jerks his gun out of his jacket and presses it up against my head.

“Stop struggling,” he says, “or I’ll blow your brains out on this wall.”

I don’t think he’s the bluffing type.

I stop fighting him.

He keeps hold of my wrist, yanking me up the stairs.

I hear more shots outside the building—bursts of gunfire from several locations on the grounds.

I assume that Ivan’s men are storming the house—or at least, a few of them. I don’t know who he’s brought, though I’m sure Dom is there.

Whether they’ll make it inside before Remizov kills me is a different question.

I’m not thinking about myself, though.

I’m hoping, praying—actually praying for the first time in my life—that Ivan was the one who fired the gun in the dining room. Assuming I hit one of the guards with the wine bottle, that left two for Ivan to contend with. They were armed; he wasn’t. And he’d already been beaten bloody by that damned linebacker.

Yet I’m looking down the staircase, desperately searching for any sign of him.

Remizov drags me relentlessly upward.

When we get to the top floor of the house, he pulls me through a reading room, out onto the balcony. He stands with his back to the rail, facing the doorway. He holds me in front of him, the gun pressed tight against my side.

And then he waits.

It’s obvious that I’m his insurance policy.

He can hear the gunfire as clearly as I can.

He’s waiting to see who will prevail—Ivan’s men, or his.

If it’s the linebacker who walks through that door, he’ll probably shoot me and throw me over the railing.

If it’s Ivan . . .

I don’t see how that can have a happy ending, either.

I wait, and Remizov waits too, his breath hot against my ear, the barrel of the gun digging into my ribs.