Page 33 of Tarnished Tyrant (Zhukova Bratva 1)

“If you’re lying to me to get to your sister, I’ll destroy you,” he warns. His voice is eerily flat.

I know he’s serious.

I meet his eyes. “I’m not a liar.”

He watches me for another second and then jerks his head to the adjacent seat. “Get in.”

Before I can start to wonder just how badly I’ve screwed myself, I hurry around to the passenger side door and climb inside.

* * *

As we drive, I stare out the window, expecting the city to fall away. Maybe Nikolai will drive me to a cement bunker buried out in the woods. I imagine armed guards and barbed wire and barking, snarling dogs.

But that never happens.

He pulls out of the parking garage and turns right. And for twenty-five minutes, we cruise, with the Hudson River on our left and a wall of glassy skyscrapers looming up on our right.

Finally, he stops in front of a tall, luxury hotel. The man behind the valet stand rushes towards the car as if his life depends on it.

“What are we doing here?” I ask. I unconsciously cling to my seatbelt like I’m drowning and it’s my life preserver.

Nikolai ignores me and opens the door. He nods at the terrified valet and tosses his keys over the roof of the car. It’s disarming how casual he can look when he wants to. I’m not sure I ever would have passed by Nikolai on the street without noticing him, but I would have thought he was a typical man, at least.

Now, I know better.

He looks back through the driver’s side window. “Are you coming or are you going to stay here?”

The valet is waiting on the curb to take the car, so I climb out reluctantly and follow Nikolai towards the front doors. “You said you’d take me to my sister. Where are we?”

“Look around.”

“The Zinc?” I read, frowning up at the gold-plated sign above the revolving doors.

“Zhukova Inc,” Nikolai explains impatiently. “Zinc. Do the math.”

I groan. “You own this place, too? Maybe you are God in this city.”

"And maybe you can be taught after all," he chuckles. He gestures for me to go first through the door.

I want to fire back with a barb of my own, but then I step into the building and lose the ability to speak.

The lobby is a mid-century modern slash Japandi dreamscape. The ceilings are cathedral-esque high, but the entire space features horizontal lines that make it feel earthy and cozy. There are low bamboo benches built into matching bamboo accent walls and forests of actual bamboo. The front desk is wide and sunken into the floor a few steps. A delicate paper screen separates the guest-facing front from a more secluded back office. And there’s a small pond in the middle of the room with a smoothed marble walkway around it, fat koi fish swishing around just below the surface.

“Holy shit,” I breathe. “This place is gorgeous.”

Nikolai smiles. I feel myself softening towards him. It’s my weak human desire to relate, to form some kind of connection to the being next to me.

But I have to resist it.

A man like him will take that connection and wrap it around my throat like a noose.

“What are we doing here?” I say, shifting tones.

He opens the elevator and steps in, but I stand on the other side, stubbornly refusing to move.

“I’m not going anywhere with you until I know where you’re taking me.”

“Worried I’ll bind you up in my secret sex dungeon?”

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