Page 25

As soon as Vlad recognized whoever had come out of the next room, he shoved me to the side and whipped out his gun, raising it to shoulder height as I tumbled against a side table. What was going on?

Before I could reason with Vlad or lunge forward to bring his arm down, the two burly guys who had been sitting on the couch on the other side of the suite jumped to their feet, raising guns of their own as the man who definitely wasn’t the famous food critic I’d been eager to meet snaked around behind them and headed straight toward me.

While all of this seemed to happen in slow motion, within the next second, everything went hyper-fast. Vlad shouted something, but it was cut off by a muffled thumping sound as one of the other armed men moved closer to him.

As I watched Vlad crumble to the ground, his trigger finger firing off a wild round as he went down in a heap, I screamed at the top of my lungs. This wasn’t something I thought about. No thoughts at all were going through my mind. I was in total survival mode, with my heart racing a thousand miles an hour.

Vlad was down and not moving at all, and before I could rush to his side to help him, the young, fit assistant who’d let us in the door had me in a stranglehold. We were about the same size, and even though her arm was pressing against my throat hard enough to make the edges of my vision go fuzzy, I fought like my life was on the line.

It probably was.

The fake critic stood only a few feet away as I clawed at the assistant’s arm to get a proper breath before I passed out. Or worse. He had a deranged smile, watching as raptly as if he had money on our fight. As I started kicking at the assistant’s shins and slamming my head back into her chin, the man actually looked at his watch as if this was taking much too long.

That made me fight more furiously because it could only mean the real bad guy hadn’t arrived yet. I managed to get the wiry assistant’s arm away from my neck enough to slip down and clamp onto the meaty part of her forearm with my teeth. She snarled out a few rude words as I tore into her like she was an overcooked steak. Her skin burst with a snapping sound that made me want to puke, and the coppery taste of blood flowing into my mouth didn’t help at all.

What if I bit all the way through her artery? It was a horrifying thought, but if she thought about it too, it might get her to let me go.

Dizziness started to overcome me, and the assistant got a grip on my hair, but I only bit down harder as burning pain shot through my scalp. Why were we even fighting like this when everyone in the damn room was armed? That had to mean they didn’t want me dead, right?

It wasn’t an especially comforting thought. It probably meant they didn’t want me dead yet . The one thought that consumed my mind was that I couldn’t let them take me from this place. Not if I died fighting them.

My energy was draining. Running a busy kitchen was hard work, but nothing like fighting for my life. My assailant had wrenched her arm out of my jaws, and I spat blood onto the floor as I tried to twist free of her iron grip on my hair.

“Just let me go,” I screeched, headbutting her again and again.

“That won’t be happening,” the fake critic said, the amusement in his voice making me want to get free solely to punch him in the face.

With a vicious curse, the assistant swept my legs out from under me, and I ended up with my face smashed against the carpet. For a split second, there were no hands on me, and I rolled to my back, kicking out with all my might as I frantically tried to get my bearings.

The door was behind me, and seemed a million miles away. Oh God, Vlad lay nearby with a growing red stain on his chest. The assistant cradled her injured arm with a look of fury on her face, and the fake critic was moving toward me much too fast for my liking. I had to get up now and get to the door.

A loud, crashing sound had me screaming again and covering my face. Peeking out through my fingertips, I saw the door had swung open, and someone was pounding into the suite.

It was over. Arkadi had arrived. I wasn’t going to be able to escape. Curling into a ball, I tried to gather what was left of my wits in order to lash out as soon as the next person put their hands on me again. That didn’t happen, though, and the same muffled sound as the shot that took out Vlad sounded in quick succession. Two grunts of shock and two heavy thumps.

I opened my eyes and looked up to see the armed guards slumped on the floor and the back of a big, blond man hauling back his fist to take out the fake critic with three pistoning blows straight to the face.

It wasn’t the man who wanted to possess me at all, but the one who already did. Nik had arrived to save me. He glanced down at me with pure murder in his eyes, then turned to the assistant who was scrambling to get past me and Vlad to make her escape.

Nik easily snatched the collar of her crisp suit jacket and yanked her back, dragging her toward the back room. I jumped up and hurried over to catch up, hauling back my hand and slapping her as hard as I could across her cheek before Nik tossed her in the closet.

“Nice,” he muttered to me, before calling to her, “Come out, and you’re dead.” His voice dripped with fearsome sincerity.

Her shrieks abruptly cut off, and she fell silent. Nik turned to me and gripped my shoulders. I began to shake from the bottoms of my feet all the way up to my burning scalp.

“Jesus,” he said, that fury still blazing in his eyes as he reached to wipe blood from my lips.

“It’s hers,” I said, leaning over and spitting again, utterly disgusted.

“Good girl,” Nik said proudly. “Want to hit her again?”

The trembling intensified, and I shook my head. He led me to the bathroom and dabbed at my face with a wet towel. I rinsed my mouth out and then held onto his arm for support as we made our way back through the suite. What in the hell had just happened? I was having trouble focusing. Everything seemed hazy and unreal. As we returned to the suite's living area, Ivan and some other men had arrived, spreading out through the room.

“One of them shot Vlad,” I said, my voice breaking.

Ivan dropped to his side as Nik pulled me close. “He’s alive,” Ivan said, his fingers on Vlad’s throat.

The relief that hit me was like a gale-force wind, and even with Nik’s arm around me, I sank to the floor. My knees simply stopped working. A few more men swarmed in, and two of them began tending to Vlad, while some others wrapped up the fake critic’s guards in tarps. Before the fake critic himself could come to after being knocked out by Nik, someone secured his wrists and ankles with zip ties and pulled a sack over his head.

How was any of this real?

Nik leaned down and pulled me against his chest, hoisting me into his arms. Holding my face close to his chest, he carried me out of the room and to the elevators. I melted against him, listening to the reassuring sound of his heartbeat and breathing in his familiar, spicy scent. All too soon, the elevator stopped at the lobby level, and he set my feet on the ground, keeping his hand on my arm in case I wavered.

“It would be better if we sorted this out without police interference,” he said, searching my face with concern. “Can you walk out of here?”

I wasn’t sure, and ignored the question. “What about Vlad? He needs an ambulance.”

“Ivan will get him to our private surgeon. He’ll get all the care he needs.”

It was clear he’d done all this before. Maybe worse. Probably definitely worse. He didn’t seem fazed at all that he’d just killed two people and knocked another one into a different dimension, all within the span of seconds. I’d bit someone and slapped her and felt like I’d never recover. Nik looked like he was in his element. The realization had my knees giving out again.

I pulled myself together when he picked me up again, not giving a damn what anyone in the lobby might think.

“I’m fine,” I lied, but proved I could make it to his car by taking a few steady steps beside him.

As soon as we were in the garage, I let the facade crumble and collapse against him. Nik tenderly helped me into the car, pulling my seatbelt across me and getting home as fast as he could. Back at the compound, he carried me inside, and I didn’t bother arguing. His quiet strength was a balm to my shredded nerves, and his strong arms around me were as comforting as a security blanket.

Once he set me down in the kitchen and started a fresh pot of coffee, I felt almost normal again. Maybe I was in shock, but I wanted to go back to the restaurant when I realized not too much time had passed at all.

“I can still make the dinner shift,” I said. “We got these beautiful halibut this morning.”

He whirled around to look at me like I was off my rocker and laughed, but not at all in an amused way.

“You were almost killed. That man pretending to be your food critic was Arkadi’s number two man. He sent him to bring you to him. If I hadn’t figured things out, who knows where you’d be right now, or what shape you’d be in.

I wanted to argue, but the image of Vlad with the blood stain on his chest kept me quiet.

“It’s safe at the restaurant, though,” I said, pushing aside the cup of coffee he placed in front of me.

“Not as safe as here. This isn’t up for debate.”

“Do you really think Arkadi would try something at Khoroshiy when you just killed two of his men? Anyone with a lick of sense would go into hiding.”

“Once again, you’re underestimating him. Damn it, Emerson, you’re not going back to the restaurant. The fucking halibut can rot for all I care, but you know that Kerri can take care of it just fine.”

I slumped. Of course, Kerri could handle it. I had somehow let myself believe I actually had some special talent when Torrance Harding wanted to interview me. Except he didn’t, not really. It was all set up by Arkadi, who was probably laughing his ass off somewhere right now. It made me want to get back in the kitchen and work even harder, to prove to myself at least that I wasn’t a big pretender.

When I didn’t answer and refused to eat or drink anything, Nik sighed and picked me up. The next thing I knew, I was back in our bedroom. Okay, fine, we could have it out up here. One way or another, I was going to convince him to let me go back to work. I didn’t want to fight with him, but I didn’t want to be treated like a victim. I really didn’t want to have to relive the horror in my mind, and that was less likely to happen if I kept busy.

Instead of staying and hearing me out, Nik assigned a guard to watch the door, giving him clipped instructions to bring me whatever I wanted but to not let me out of that room until he returned.

Until he returned?

“Where are you going?” I asked. The guard already had me bristling, but the fact he was leaving was too much.

He gave me a long look, not deigning to answer. Of course, I knew. He was going to hunt Arkadi. It was deja vu, just like the night he first kidnapped me and brought me here. And I foolishly thought things had changed.

“We still have things to talk about,” I said, clinging to hope that I could persuade him to let me go back to the restaurant. Or get him to stay.

“We can talk later,” he said, turning away.

“If you leave, I swear I’ll never speak to you again. They’ll have to drag me down the aisle,” I shouted.

Without so much as slowing down, he left anyway. The door clicked shut behind him, and once again, I was alone.