Page 55 of Prince of Control

“He tried to roofie Lili,” Leo growls. We throw the guy onto the floor, and he scrambles to his feet. “I watched him put something in her cup when she walked away.”

“I didn’t! It was alcohol!” The guy yelps.

Leo shuts the door behind Lara and Lili. The five of us crowd in the small bedroom. I make a vague mental note to send the women out before we torture and kill him.

“I asked him to!” Lili exclaims. The fear in her voice makes me need to kill this guy soon.

She turns to Lara. “Help me stop Ben—please.”

Stop Ben? That doesn’t compute for me. Is the guy’s name Ben?

Lili tugs my biceps. “He offered to spike my drink when I complained that Leo wouldn’t give me alcohol. He did not roofie me.”

I hear her, but the words have no meaning. I’m honed in on the guy, considering how I will hurt him. Problem-solving how I will get rid of the body.

Lili blocks my view of him, stepping right in front of me. Lara stands beside her, touching my arm.

“I’m fine.” Lili waves her hand in front of my face. “Look at me, Ben. We’re not back there. That’s over.”

Lara presses her body against mine. I’m still focused on the guy, trying to see around her, so I don’t register her presence at first, but something about the softness of her body feels at odds with the hard contraction of my muscles preparing to fight.

“Are you listening, Baron?” Her voice sounds far away. She repeats the words. Instead of raising her voice, she speaks softly. Seductively, like the words are only for me.

“I need you,” she says in Russian. “I need you to look at me.”

My gaze leaves the target of my violence without my brain’s permission, finding Lara’s big, lovely eyes fixed on my face.

There’s a moment of disorientation, like when disparate elements from your life mix in a dream. Why is she here?

Why is she looking at me?

My arm bands around Lara’s back. I fucking love the way she fits against me. Like she’s necessary to my survival.

“What did you say?”

Lara

There’s something wrong with my husband. Something that turns him into a killer. And the switch has definitely flipped.

The proper response from me should be fear.

Instead, all I feel is an ocean of compassion. Something happened to him. To both of the Baranov siblings.

We’re not back there. That’s over.

Whatever it was must explain why he’s so aggressively protective of the people he cares about. It explains the nightmares. Did he lose someone who meant something to him?

He looks at me now, withdrawing his gaze for the first time from the guy Lili is trying to save. The dead look in his eyes disappears. He blinks a few times, searching my face like he’s confused about who I am and why I’m here.

For a moment, I’m not sure he knows who I am. I’m just grateful he heard me ask him to look at me.

His arm loops around me almost as if on instinct. Something hard in his expression softens. “What did you say?”

“Did you hear Lili? She wasn’t roofied. You need to let this guy go.”

I have mad respect for Baron, who shows nothing on his face as he looks from me to Lili’s would-be suitor, then to Lili and Leo. I can practically see the wheels turning in his brain. Like he’s trying to catch up without showing that he lost his grip on reality for a moment.

He releases me. “You put liquor in her drink.” Baron says it like a statement, but he’s watching the guy.