“Miss. Move!” the guard commanded. I tried to stand. I pressed my fist to the ground to try to lift myself, but I fell back down. The pain in my head was too much.

“I said leave! That’s an order!” the female repeated.

The men were silent, when the female again said, “Leave! Pereyti teper! Or so help me God I’ll have you punished for insubordination!”

“B‘lyad!” one of the guards shouted in response. “We’ll be watching. If he does anything to you, we’re coming back in to kill the fucker! I don’t care what the knayz’s instructions are. Keeping you alive is our priority. Those are your father’s orders.” I heard the footsteps leave and the door slam shut.

The pain left my head, but my heart still beat too fast. Muscles weak, I fell back to the floor. I could feel the female nearby, but my body was numb. I could barely move.

Forcing myself to turn, the woman was sitting in the corner where I’d put her. Her brown eyes were looking at me in fear. Her hands were still shaking.

I crawled closer, but the chains were too heavy. Collapsing to the ground, I stared at the female’s eyes, but darkness was taking me again.

Darkness was pulling me down.…

Chapter Seven

Talia

Zaal’s body slumped to the floor beside me, and I pressed a hand over my frantic heart, trying to calm down. I closed my eyes and inhaled through my nose. I’d been wrong. So damn wrong. Kostava wasn’t dead, he was very much alive.

I thought back to early this morning. Thought back to the moment I’d looked at Zaal’s lifeless body on my laptop screen. Thought back to the moment my heart chose to control my head.…

As I heard the front door close from downstairs, Ilya and Savin off to patrol the grounds, my palms twitched with the knowledge that it was just me in the house. Just me and Zaal.

My stomach filled with butterflies at seeing his beautiful face again. Checking in on him each morning had become my daily ritual.

Jumping from my bed, I made sure the bedroom door was locked and I ran to my laptop. Zaal had fallen asleep early last night before I’d gone to bed, after minimal movement all day. But I knew he’d be awake right now, right this minute. He was no longer pacing the floor and snarling at anyone who came near as of this week. Rather, he’d sit against the wall, his head often hanging low, his large body twitching and sweating. But he didn’t move. His jade green eyes were dull when he stared off into space, his attention fixed on nothing.

I didn’t know why, but I watched him, watched him lying there like a broken and abused animal. My chest would ache and no amount of rubbing over the skin could soothe it.

I’d always felt kind of trapped, mentally and emotionally lost in this Bratva life, and staring at Zaal Kostava, the man I was conditioned to hate, just broke my heart. Because he mirrored how I felt. Especially of late, I felt broken and scarred on the inside. He looked broken and scarred on the outside. I felt a connection to the Kostava. I supposed he and I were kindred spirits.

Opening my laptop, I expected to see Zaal in that same slumped sitting position, tied up in chains, hair matted and dressed only in the black pair of sweatpants Luka had insisted he wear when he was drugged that first night.

I clicked on the desktop icon, chose the camera for the basement, and waited with bated breath as it connected. As Zaal came into view, my heart immediately fell. He wasn’t sitting up as expected. He was still sprawled on the ground, body eerily still.

I leaned in closer willing him to move. But two hours passed and he hadn’t even flinched. A deep pit had formed in the center of my stomach. He looked … what if…?

I swallowed a thick lump in my throat and felt an unfamiliar hollow feeling in my heart. I knew he’d been getting worse, his demeanor had changed dramatically over the past few days. But he was strong. I thought he’d survive. I thought it was another phase of his recovery. He’d had several over the past couple of weeks.

Leaving my laptop on the dresser, I jumped off my bed. Hands on hips, I stared at the locked bedroom door and forced myself to do something I vowed I would never do.

I needed to see him up close.

I reached up and palmed the necklace lying on my chest. I thought of why my father had disapproved of Zaal’s rescue. Of why Luka had had to bring him all the way out here to the Hamptons rather than to a holding cell in Brooklyn. But no matter how much I tried to persuade myself not to do what my heart was urging me to do, a pair of jade green eyes would dominate my mind, taking it captive, and with it all rationality. Derr ‘mo! Those eyes! The sadness they held. The torture, the hurt and confusion shining in their depths, calling to me.

I had to go. He needed me.

Eto piz ‘dets! This is fucking crazy! I thought silently in Russian.

Rushing to my door, I took a deep breath at the top of the stairs and frantically ran down. Savin and Ilya, clearly back from patrolling, came busting out of the kitchen.

“Ms. Tolstaia?” Ilya enquired, “What’s wrong?”

Pushing my hand through my hair, I said, “I was at my window and I think I saw someone outside. Maybe more than one. I can’t be sure?”

Savin straightened and immediately pulled out his Glock. Ilya moved toward me. He looked me straight in the eye and ordered, “Stay here!”

In seconds, they’d run out of the house. Knowing I had only a short amount of time, I hurried to the hidden safe, entered the passcode, and retrieved the basement key.

With shaking hands, adrenaline fueling my reckless plan, I arrived at the basement door. Without overthinking any rebuke from Savin, Ilya, or Luka, I entered the dark room and quietly closed the door behind me.

Pausing on the tiny landing, I inhaled a shuddering breath. Move, Talia, I told myself, just move. He needs you.

Leaving the key on a ledge, I placed my trembling hand on the handrail and began my cautious descent. With every step on the wooden stairs, my heart beat louder and louder.

When the expanse of the dark room came into sight, and my gaze fell on an unmoving Zaal Kostava, it took all my self-control not to rush over and beg him to awaken.

I couldn’t hear his breathing. His back was facing me, his oversize body curled into a fetal position, like the pain had been too much to bear. His bloodied and bruised arms and legs were completely stiff.

Reality hit home—he’d died.

Derr ’mo! What had Jakhua pumped him full of? Had whatever was leeching from his system for the past two weeks been too much for a person to bear? Even for a man as formidable as Zaal?

Folding my arms over my waist, I walked silently toward his comatose form, flinching as I saw the chains that held him so tightly in place. His tanned skin was pale and, finally seeing for myself that he was gone, I fell to my knees beside him and my shoulders sagged.

I’d watched this man for weeks; long hours spent in fascination, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t hate him. I wanted to, felt obliged to … but, hell, it had been impossible.

How could anyone hate a man breaking so badly? A man who had never known love? A man filled with such pain? A man kept chained in the darkness?

An urge hit me. I needed to touch him. I had to, something within me told me to reach out. No person should die in such a way. Alone, with no caring person there to offer comfort in their final hours.

My mind raced with the scant information I had about his life. He was now twenty-nine. That meant he’d endured over twenty years of being experimented on like some clinical rat. Twenty-one years of being subservient to the man who had caused the demise of his family. Twenty-one years of killing, on instruction, anyone in his path.