Page 31

What a complete mess. The restaurant had turned into a circus within seconds, and everyone was enjoying the show except me. This was my life. All I wanted to do was hide away in the kitchen and get everything back on track so the people in the dining room would remember they came here for the food, not a brawl between the owner and who they might have believed was just an innocent patron.

Every inch of my skin burned with embarrassment, and when I saw the look in Nik’s eyes when he turned to me, I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell of getting what I wanted. The final humiliation was getting picked up and hauled over his shoulder. There was no way I’d make it to his car alive if he carried me out this way.

I went completely limp. “I’ll walk out without making a fuss,” I said, utterly defeated.

He grumbled, as if he wasn’t happy about the situation anymore than I was, but it wasn’t true. He had never wanted me to return to the restaurant, always citing it wasn’t completely safe, no matter how many guards he had scattered around the place.

Case in point: Arkadi had managed to ooze right in under their noses, camouflaged by his innocuous guests. He’d made Nik feel foolish and proved him right at the same time, and I was the only one paying the price. Well, Arkadi had taken a few good jabs to the face, but he had still walked away and was once again on the run.

By the time we got to the car and Nik unceremoniously dumped me into the front seat, I was done. Over it. The first thing I did was try the door handle but he was too fast for me and already had it locked from the driver’s side. With a stern look, he shook his head in disappointment and reached over to pull my seatbelt across me.

He was disappointed in me? What the actual hell?

I swatted his hand away and clipped myself in, not prepared to go flying through the windshield in case of an accident, just to spite my bossy fake husband. I couldn’t believe I had lulled myself into thinking we had a shot at some kind of relationship. Where was the communication? The two-way street?

I was a prisoner again, and from the hard set of Nik’s jaw, my days at Khoroshiy were over. Shockingly, I wasn’t the least bit scared by Arkadi’s appearance at the restaurant. My embarrassment over the scene Arkadi caused turned to pure rage at my loss of freedom. Again.

“Nothing would have happened, and you know it,” I said, getting more pissed when he kept his eyes straight ahead. “You had more guards than customers in there, and Mila even said he was just trying to get under your skin. Well, congratulations, he won.”

“He didn’t win, Emerson, because you’re the prize. And I’ll die before I let him touch you, or even look at you again.”

“I was asking him to leave when you came in,” I said, sick to death of being in the middle of this tug-of-war between the two big dogs in LA. He only snorted at the idea that Arkadi would have gone quietly. If he hadn’t come in, the guards would have taken over, but I was still in denial about that.

“If he was determined to stay, all I had to do was get him his meal, and he would have been gone in a couple of hours. You could have waited, followed him, and done whatever you wanted when he was far from the restaurant. Without a scene!”

He turned to me with a twist of his lips. “I’ll concede that might have been a better idea, since no one can get eyes on him now.”

I glanced at his phone, which was in its holder on the dashboard, and it wasn’t set to a GPS display, but a running string of messages. All the same.

Nothing.

Nothing.

No sign .

“Well, all the more reason I should be able to finish out the meal service and try to smooth things over with the VIPs.”

“Why do you care so much about my restaurant's reputation?” he asked, his brow raised with honest curiosity.

“Khoroshiy is like my baby,” I said. Didn’t he know that already, when I practically bent over backward, pouring my heart and soul into every little challenge he put before me to prove I deserved to be there? “Of course, I don’t want bad press.”

“Even at the expense of your safety?”

We were circling back to the same tired argument, with Nik in brick wall mode, refusing to budge. I turned away, crossing my arms and refusing to admit I was ever in any danger. I never would have left the property alone with Arkadi and I only approached him to try to prevent the huge scene that ended up happening anyway.

“Where are we going?” I asked after I realized we were heading in the opposite direction of his compound. I was back to thinking of it as the compound, when, just that morning, it was beginning to feel more like home.

It was Nik’s turn to ignore my question, and I huffed, going back to staring out the window at the city lights. Why did I possibly think I’d have any say in where I was going when I had no say in any part of my life? The past few days had been a beautiful illusion. I was like a person who was lost in the desert and dying of thirst, eager to believe I was drinking cool, fresh water when I was, in fact, pouring sand into my mouth.

It was only a few minutes before we pulled off the highway, and Nik pulled into the underground garage of a luxurious highrise. We were surrounded by other buildings with shops at street level, but I may as well have been on Alcatraz for all the chances I had at getting to any of them.

“I didn’t know you had an apartment,” I said, feeling a little bit hurt.

“It’s my brother’s,” he grunted, then noticed the flash of emotion that had slipped past my shield. He smiled gently. “I have a place in London, and a beach house in Cabo. I’ll take you to them when this is all over.”

I arranged my face into one that simply didn’t care and tried to get him to see reason again. Once I was up the elevator and in the apartment, I was well and truly trapped, and who knew for how long?

“You can’t really mean I’m never going back to Khoroshiy,” I said.

“For now, that’s exactly what I mean. For as long as it takes.”

“Nik,” I said with all the force I could muster. “Please.”

“Sorry, but it’s still no,” he said, oblivious to my desperation. When I tried to get him to take me home instead, he shook his head. “You should be somewhere he won’t think to look. Only my family knows about this place, and we only use it in extreme emergencies.”

“So we’re hiding out,” I said. “I get no say in the matter.”

His grin boiled my blood. “That’s right.”

I flatly refused to get out of the car, but that only meant he picked me up again, as easily as if I was a half-filled bag of groceries. He kept his arm tightly clamped around my backside, with my head hanging down his back and my hands hammering uselessly wherever I could reach. I gave up in the private elevator, but he still didn’t let me down. Was he enjoying this?

Once we were in through the door, he snapped on the lights and slid me down the front of his body. Resting his hands on my waist, he looked down at me with a twinkle in his deep blue eyes.

“I really am sorry it has to be like this, but maybe we can find a way to pass the time that isn’t fighting?”

I shoved away from him and glared, fuming at the audacity to try to sweet talk me after basically kidnapping me yet again. “Oh, I’m not going to fight with you,” I snapped.

I wasn’t going to do a damn thing with him. Not even act like he existed. Whirling around, I made a beeline for the first hallway I saw in the sprawling apartment, threw open every door until I found a bedroom, then slammed myself in and locked the door.