Page 10 of Sold to the Russian
Right. Fuck, he was still wearing his disguise.
A young nurse with wide, dark eyes took one look at the blood, at Fedya’s expression, and at the limp body in his arms, and immediately called for a stretcher. Within seconds, hospital staff surrounded them, lifting Luca’s unresponsive body onto a gurney.
Fedya’s hands flew to his face as he ripped the bald cap from his head and tugged the fake beard away. His hands and the disguises he held were coated in crimson blood. His own pulse hammered in his skull as one of the nurses, who managed to recognize him even with the brown contacts still in, rushed forward, throwing a barrage of questions at him.
“Save him,” was all Fedya said to him. On the outside, he appeared calm, but if Luca died, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.
The nurse hesitated. “Sir, we need?”
Fedya growled as he grabbed him by the front of his scrubs, forcing him forward so their faces were only inches apart. He couldn't care less that the blood on his hands was tainting the nurse’s sky-blue scrubs.
“You do everything you can to save him,” he hissed in his face. His American accent was gone, replaced by his originalRussian tongue. “Or I swear to God, this whole place will be in ruins by morning.” He tugged him closer, curling his fists around his scrubs. “You understand me, Nurse?”
The nurse paled but nodded frantically.
Fedya released him, watching as they wheeled Luca towards the emergency room. He tore his eyes away and slumped down on one of the chairs in the waiting room.
He sank his head between his knees and buried his hands deep in his hair, tugging desperately at the roots. Everything had gone wrong tonight, complications he could never have seen coming, piling one on top of the other.
By the time Cormac arrived, he was seriously doubting he’d survive this mission. He was sure he was one leg deep in hot water.
Somehow, a simple act of infiltration caused him to walk out of that bar with a woman he’d wed in three days.
A woman.
Fedya screwed his eyes shut tighter as he rememberedher.
Cormac’s daughter.
Red hair that tumbled down her back in ringlets, pale green eyes she shared with her father, pale red lips that were slightly parted as she stared at her shoes, struggling to draw in breaths, as if every attempt hurt her lungs.
There wasn’t much he could see about her body since she was donned in a black hoodie that was twice her size. But she was tall, taller than most females, and from her fingers and cheeks, he could tell she was slim as well.
Her face was angled at the right corners. High cheekbones. A slim nose splattered with a dusting of freckles that touched the top of her cheeks.
She was easily the most beautiful creature Fedya had ever seen.
It was almost impossible to think that a demon like Cormac could produce a woman as flawless as… Fuck, Fedya didn’t even know her name. Cormac hadn’t even had the decency to properly introduce her.
Fedya had no intention of walking out of there, promised to a woman he didn’t know, much less the daughter of his enemy.
But the moment he laid his eyes on her, his obsession with her was instantaneous.
It wasn’t love. No. Fedya wasn’t a romantic, and the last thing he believed in was love at first sight.
It was something darker, something so sharp it possessed him the moment their eyes met. A pull so immediate and visceral that it felt almost unnatural. A carnal need to have her, no matter what.
All it took was one glance at her, one look into her eyes, to know she wasn’t like the women he was used to?the kinds he’d spent his life around. Scheming flirts who knew exactly what they were getting into when they entered his world.
Shedidn’t look like she was meant for this life, which was ironic considering she wasThe Butcher’sdaughter. His first and only child. And yet, there she was, standing in front of him, thrown at his feet?a prize he never would have seen coming.
The moment Cormac offered his daughter in exchange for ammunition, Fedya knew he had to think of whatever waypossible to get out of it. It was a sticky situation?getting married to his enemy’s daughter without his family’s knowledge. She should’ve been insignificant. Just another unfortunate girl trapped in a deal she had no say in.
But then she looked at him, and he felt that shift?the kind he couldn’t explain or put into words. The kind he could still feel even as he thought of her right now. She was wary,afraidof him, but at the same time, he saw the way her hands balled into fists, the way an addictive kind of defiance pushed through the wariness in her eyes as she held his gaze, the way she sunk her teeth into her bottom lip like she was forcing herself not to say anything, the way her eyes burned into his.
She wasn’t cowering, despite her father’s callous exhibition of her like she was a zoo animal. She wasn’t trying to please him either.
She wanted torun.
