Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 124446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
This can’t end well for me.
He walks into the circle of light and stops right in front of me, staring down at my face with cold calculation. “It looks like it was someone very skilled.”
Yan and Ilya follow on his heel, Yan a little too closely. The twins’ faces are stark and forbidding as they scrutinize me, but it’s Yan’s stare I feel viscerally, as if he’s cutting me open and looking right inside.
I dampen my dry lips. I can’t betray Gergo. Everything I am, I owe to him. I won’t repay him by ratting him out. Anyway, I’m dead. We all know it, all four of us in this room. There’s only one solution with a dreadful implication, something that intensifies the nausea in my empty stomach.
The men regard me silently. They’re not going to let the question about the disguises go unanswered. They want whoever has done it too badly. Eventually, they will find out. There’s no other way.
A part of me dies even before I gather the words and form the lie. It’s Sokolov who poses the biggest threat, hovering over me like the brutal killer I sense him to be, but it’s on Yan’s face I focus as I say softly, “Me. I did it.”
The declaration is huge. I’ve just admitted to framing Yan and his team in the dirtiest way possible. The mere idea burns like a ball of fire in my stomach, and it’s not even the truth. Yet there’s no reaction in Yan’s frosty gaze. Nothing in his expression. Not even a twitch.
Whatever magic we so unconventionally shared in the dark hours of the night is as dead as his flat, green eyes.
10
Yan
It feels as if flocks of vultures are at war in my chest, picking the meat clean off my bones, but on the outside, I show nothing. I won’t give the pretty little bitch that pleasure. She framed me. As a terrorist, no less.
What we shared meant less than shit to her.
I don’t pause to dissect why that thought guts me. It just does. Perhaps because while I searched the streets for her like a crazed lunatic, she didn’t give a damn. While the delirious intimacy we’ve shared has been playing in a loop in my memory, she’s easily forgotten all about me, maybe the very second she escaped from my room.
No matter. I’m planning on reminding her. Thoroughly.
Sokolov regards her skeptically. “Is that right?” He seems to have a hard time believing she’s done the disguises.
The nostrils of her dainty nose flare, as if his doubt insults her honesty when we’ve already established her honesty is questionable at best.
“Why would I lie?” The anger that shows on her elfin face carries on her voice, but it doesn’t make it less musical. “I’ve already given you all those names. What’s one more in the grand scheme of things?”
An idea settles in my frayed mind. Call it hope. Call it stupidity. Call it raving fucking madness. “This will be easy to verify.” Not liking how close Sokolov stands to her, I impose myself in his space. If what she says is true—and that stupid part of me I can’t fully suppress still hopes she’s lying—I’ll be doling out the punishment she deserves. It’s my right, and mine alone. “She can show off her skill on me tonight.”
“And on me,” Ilya adds like an insolent child.
Like hell. Nobody touches her but me. She had a choice. She chose my bed. It’s me she fucked over when she gave me everything and nothing at all.
Sokolov asks more questions. She answers them all. During the exchange, I watch Sokolov closely. Because of Mina—or rather, my deceiving little Mink—Sokolov’s in-laws are dead. I know my former team leader well enough. He’s not going to let it slide. Even as he stands there, regarding her with a stony expression, I see what’s brewing in his mind. Mina’s execution is a given. The petite sniper isn’t walking away from here. Her tongue will never tangle in a kiss again, her pussy never stretching for a cock like it did for mine, as if it was the most perfect fit. A lie will never leave her lush lips again.
The cut on that lip bothers me. It doesn’t fit there. Neither do the bruises on her translucent, perfect skin. It’s a good thing the guys who delivered her are already gone, or they’d be leaving in body bags. Liar or not, they had no right to rough her up. I should’ve said to take her unharmed, not just alive.
Sokolov is playing her, letting her believe her cooperation will win her freedom, but I see the knowledge in her startling blue eyes. Mina is cleverer than that. She’s not some civilian girl we snatched off the street. She tells him what he wants to hear, but says she only met Henderson in person once, and she doesn’t know where our impersonators are, though she’s worked with them in the past.