Page 16 of Her Cruel Empire (The Devil’s Plaything #1)

Robin

I t’s not a dungeon.

It’s not a torture chamber or some medieval oubliette where Eva keeps her enemies.

It’s a hospital room.

Monitors beep softly in the dim space. IV lines snake from hanging bags to a pale man lying motionless in a hospital bed. The equipment is state-of-the-art—better than anything I’ve seen outside of TV medical dramas.

And beside the bed, dressed in blood red, sits Eva herself.

She holds the man’s hand, stroking it with infinite tenderness. Her dark hair falls like a curtain around her face, and for the first time since I’ve known her, she looks…small. Vulnerable.

Human.

Her head lifts. Her amber eyes meet mine.

The transformation is instant and terrifying.

Eva explodes to her feet, her chair clattering backward. In one quick motion, she grabs a gun from God knows where, and points it directly at my chest.

“Who sent you?” Her voice is as hard as I’ve ever heard it.

I freeze, hands instinctively rising. “What?”

“Are you here to finish the job? Are you a plant after all? Or a fucking assassin—one of those Syndicate mercenaries? Christ, how could I be so stupid? ”

The composure I’ve seen her maintain through every interaction—with her men, her staff, even in moments of passion—has gone completely. Rage and grief and humiliation all seem to be boiling up from somewhere deep inside her, and I realize she feels exposed. Caught.

“Eva, I don’t understand?—”

“Don’t.” The gun doesn’t waver. “Don’t you dare lie to me. Not now.”

Her finger rests on the trigger, and I know with crystalline clarity that she will pull it. This isn’t the Eva who bought me expensive clothes or whispered commands in bed.

This is the other Eva. The descendant of a long line of very vicious and dangerous people.

“I’m not an assassin,” I say, my voice steadier than it has any right to be.

“Then why did you creep in here?” she snarls.

I look at the man in the bed—older, with a strong jaw and silver hair. Even unconscious, there’s something regal about him. Something that speaks of power.

“Because I was scared,” I admit. “Because I thought you were hiding something awful. Because...” I meet her eyes again.

“Because down in the village, they told me things, warned me, and I had to find out for myself what was going on. But this...whoever this man is, I can see you love him. That you’re protecting him.

I understand that. I’m here because I want to protect the people I love, too. ”

My words seem like stones thrown into still water. Eva’s grip on the gun doesn’t loosen, but something flickers across her face.

Recognition, maybe. Or understanding.

Slowly—so slowly I can barely track the movement—Eva lowers the weapon. She doesn’t put it down, just lets her arm drop to her side.

“This is my father.” Her voice comes out cold and flat. “Zoltan Novak.”

I stare at her. “You told me he was dead.”

“After he was shot in Paris, I let it be known that the hit had been successful, even though it wasn’t.

But whoever it was who tried to kill him, they would have tried again and again.

If anyone knew he’d survived, he would be hunted.

So I buried him away here in the castle, instead of in the ground.

” She tilts her head to one side. “How did you get in here? The door is locked, and there is a guard and a nurse here at all times when I am not.”

“I found a way to slip in,” I say guiltily. I feel terrible, now. “Will he…ever wake up?”

Eva’s silence stretches so long I think she won’t answer. Then: “It was a sniper. He was shot in the chest. He was too busy protecting me to worry about himself.”

“Oh, Eva?—”

“The doctors said he wouldn’t survive the first night. Then the first week. Then the first month.” She finally turns to face me, and her eyes are hard, no sign of tears. “It’s been years, now. Years of watching him exist somewhere between life and death.”

I look at the monitors, the IV drip, the man who built a criminal empire and now lies helpless in a hospital bed, hidden in his own castle.

“He looks peaceful,” I say.

“He’s trapped.” Eva’s voice breaks on the word. “Locked inside his own body while I try to hold together everything he built.”

I approach slowly, carefully. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

Eva’s laugh is bitter. “I know you won’t. Because if you say a word to anyone, you’ll die. I’ll kill you myself.”

I meet her gaze steadily. “I know. And I still won’t.”

She stares at me for a long moment, searching my face. Whatever she sees there must satisfy her, because she sinks back into her chair beside her father’s bed.

“You need to understand,” she says quietly. “The moment anyone learns he’s alive, it would be a catastrophe for the Consortium. His enemies. My enemies. They’d come for him. For me. For anyone who knew.”

“The Consortium?” I ask.

She glances up at me and gives a small laugh.

“My God. I forget, sometimes, that people like you exist. People who don’t know about the underbelly of this world.

” I can’t read the look in her eyes, but she relaxes back in her seat, and when she speaks again, she sounds as no-nonsense as usual.

“The Novak Consortium was built out of the remnants of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union. But my family, the Novaks, have been around for much, much longer than that. We swallowed up other enterprises and organizations once the Iron Curtain fell, used them and helped them in equal measure. I took over after my father’s so-called death.

But not everyone in the Consortium was happy to have a woman in charge—especially one who would not even hear marriage proposals from, shall we say, the worthy bachelors of Eastern Europe.

Heirs to all kinds of crime families tried to make a marriage alliance. I turned them all down.”

“Didn’t they know you’re, uh?—”

“I came out when I was fourteen years old,” she says sharply.

“But these organizations I speak of…it doesn’t matter to them what I want.

Only what they can achieve. Unfortunately for them, I hold more power than they can even dream of.

And so I do as I please, and I put down anyone who steps out of line. ”

She says it so matter-of-factly that it seems completely reasonable. I settle into the chair on the opposite side of the bed. Up close, I can see the family resemblance more clearly. The same strong bones, the same commanding presence—even in unconsciousness, her father has it, too.

“I understand now,” I say. “Why you keep people out. Why you push them away. But you can’t carry this alone forever.”

Eva gives a laugh. “Don’t be ludicrous. I’ve done it for years.

Besides, I’m not the only one who knows.

Leon knows. My father’s younger brother, Stefan, knows.

And his son too, my cousin Dimitri. The nurse and the guard—he’s really her guard, to make sure she doesn’t let slip to anyone.

And the staff, of course. They all know. ”

“You trust them that much?” I ask, surprised.

“They know what would happen if they ever told. And besides, all of them love him. You couldn’t know my father and not love him. He was warm and generous. People flocked to him.” She gives a twisted smile. “They say I am more like my mother. Cold.”

I reach out and gently touch the man’s other hand. It’s warm, alive. “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Eva. That you live with this stress, constantly.”

Eva stares at me. “Why would you care?”

“Because I know what it’s like to protect the people you love at any cost,” I say quietly. “Even if it breaks you. Even if it means sacrificing everything else.”

For the first time since I’ve known her, Eva’s mask disappears completely, leaving behind someone who looks tired. Lost. Alone.

“I failed him,” she whispers. “I wasn’t supposed to be there. He pushed me to safety, shielded me from the bullets.”

“He saved his daughter’s life. And then you saved his life. You’re still saving him.”

“He’s not living. He’s just…existing.”

“He’s breathing. His heart is beating. That means there’s hope.”

Eva’s laugh is hollow. “You still believe in hope.”

“Don’t you?”

She doesn’t answer, but something in her expression softens. Just slightly. But it’s enough.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, the steady beep of monitors providing a strange kind of comfort. I watch Eva watch her father, and I see the little girl she must have been before the world taught her to be hard.

“What did they say?” she asks suddenly, making me startle back to the present moment. “The villagers. What did they say to make you so afraid that you disobeyed my one rule?”

For a moment I think she’s going to start ordering me around again, but her question is idle rather than brittle. “Well,” I start slowly, “they said some girls from the village who came to work here never returned. That they disappeared.”

Eva throws back her head and laughs. “Is that what they said?”

Emboldened by her genuine amusement, I go on. “They’re afraid of you, but they also said you were a protector.”

“The Novaks have protected this region for generations. Even before this castle was built, we kept the local warlords and bandits away, made sure supplies got through to the village, kept away raiders. It became our duty. And our privilege.”

“And now you do it.”

“Now I do it.” She strokes her father’s hand. “Among many other things.”

“Can I ask you something?” After a long silence, she gives a very slight tilt of the head that I take as assent. “Who shot him?”

Eva goes very still. Her hand stops moving on her father’s.

“I don’t know,” she says slowly. “Yet.”

“You’ve been trying to find out.”

“Every day since it happened. I’ve torn apart every rival organization, every enemy we’ve ever made. I’ve tortured men until they begged to tell me something—anything—just to make it stop. I’ve offered bounties that could buy small countries.”

I swallow hard, because I don’t think any of that was hyperbole. “And…nothing?”

“Nothing. But I know one thing. It was planned carefully. It was personal .”

“You mean…someone you trusted.”

“Someone who knew exactly where we’d be. When we’d be there. Which building across the street would allow them the right angle. And that someone is still out there.”

I stare at her father’s peaceful face as I think about what Eva has been living with for all these years. Not just grief, but paranoia. Not just loss, but the constant fear that the person who did this might come back to finish the job.

“That’s why you don’t trust anyone,” I say.

“I can’t afford to.”

“But you trust me?”

When she doesn’t reply, I glance up at her. She’s shaking her head slowly. “Oh no, little bird. I don’t trust you at all. But I have leverage over you, and that’s just as good.”

That’s fair. It stings, but it’s fair. “What about Leon? The staff? Your relatives?”

“Yes,” she says. “Them, I trust. Which is why I looked even more closely at all of them. And still I found nothing. So I’m back where I—” She stops abruptly.

I realize then that the most dangerous thing in this castle isn’t Eva Novak. It’s the secret she hasn’t uncovered yet. The unknown enemy who’s still out there, somewhere in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike again.

And in turn, I see Eva considering how much she’s just revealed. How much trust she’s already placed in me simply by letting me stay in this room.

How vulnerable she’s made herself, almost without thinking.