Page 24 of Pageant

The bottom falls out of my stomach. My legs give out beneath me, and I sit down, hard, on the metal bed. Only one man calls me that. Speaks my name like that, like he’s drawing his tongue across my flesh. Savoring every inch of me. Forbidden fruit.

“You arealiar,” I whisper through numb lips.

He steps forward into the light. Two glacial blue eyes appear above his clenched fingers, burning with hatred. His proud cheekbones stand out in the stark light from above, and his fine, ashy hair is swept back. It’s impossible.

It should be impossible.

He should be in America, or Russia, or in prison. Not here in Italy. Did he orchestrate this somehow? Did he send that other Russian man after me, the one with the knife and the dark hair and eyes?

“Elyah Morozov,” I say in a shaky voice. “What the hell am I doing here?”

He takes a key from his pocket and unlocks my cell. His huge frame fills the doorway, and he grabs hold of the lintel above his head. Eyes narrowed. Biceps clenched. Body looming over me. Every line of his posture is to intimidate me.

How many times did I open the door to him in the brief months I was married? It must have been a hundred times. His chiseled jawline was always freshly shaved, his body scented with sharp, cold cologne that never failed to make my mouth water. A living weapon with a gentle smile touching his lips, speaking softly so I wouldn’t be afraid of him. Sitting his huge body down at my kitchen counter. Asking me about my day. What I liked. What I hoped for. Covering up his tattoos beneath black shirts until the day came for him to bare them to me and reveal what he was capable of, what he wanted to do.

He never said out loud that he would kill my husband for me, but his tattoos said it. His eyes said it. His kisses said it.

Then he’d turn the killer inside off again like flipping a switch. I’d make him coffee, and he would sit at the kitchen counter and smile gently, and gaze at me like I was the most precious creature in the world. Elyah Morozov pretends to be a tame wolf, but he’s a savage predator who’ll pretend to be anything to get what he wants.

“You are the one in cage now, Lilia Aranova. You are the piece of scum who is nothing.”

My chest heaves with despair. “You were never nothing to m—”

Elyah slams the wall over his head with the flat of his hand and shouts, “Shut up! I do not want to listen to your lies.”

He looms deeper into my cell, blocking out the light with his huge back until his features are cast in shadows so deep that I can’t make out his eyes. His breath fans my face as he leans closer, and his voice is thick with hatred. “You will beg me for mercy before the week is out, and I will show you no mercy, just as you showed me none.”

His hand slips around my throat and squeezes tight. I swallow hard against his fingers. When in hell did he ever need my mercy?

“I have waited two years to say this to your face. You are dead fucking woman, Lilia Aranova.”

When a Bratva man vows to do something, he will never give it up while there is breath in his lungs. His honor as a man and to his code won’t allow anything else. Elyah has spoken my death sentence, but he won’t kill me right away. He wants to play with me first.

Elyah seethes fury into my face, and then he abruptly pulls back, slams the door of my cage, and locks it, then disappears into the darkness. I can hear him pounding upstairs, and then his footsteps fade away.

“Number Eleven?” whispers a voice to my left. “Did he kill you?”

It takes me a minute to realize that the voice might be addressing me. “Eleven? Do you mean me?”

“We all have numbers. They call me Number Ten.”

“And I’m Number Twelve,” says a voice to my right. “Did that man call you by your name? Do you know him?”

I’m still shaking from the shock of Elyah looming over me, pure venom in his eyes.

“My name’s Lilia,” I whisper back. Elyah and that unknown, dark-haired man seem to be working together. “Why have they taken the three of us prisoner?”

“Three of us?” says the woman on my left. “There are more than three of us. Everyone, say hi to Number Eleven.”

Sad whispers fill the air. “Hello, Number Eleven.”

“Hi, Number Eleven.”

“I’m sorry, Number Eleven.”

I push my cheek against my cage and peer left and right. I can make out a few hands holding bars just like the ones that lock me in. The row of cages stretch on and on. I wonder if we’re being trafficked as sex slaves back to Russia. “How many of us are there?”

“Sixteen,” replies Number Twelve. “They’re obsessed with there being sixteen of us. They want to play a game.”

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