One year later…

My aunt is crying. Helenka and Yuri have sobbed themselves hoarse. Even the heavens weep for me today. The sky is the color of dull lead, the clouds hang low and sullen. Fat drops spatter the sidewalk and dot my silk Versace dress. I shiver despite the damp June heat and hug myself, rocking on my heels.

My aunt and cousins are inside their faux-Colonial monstrosity of a house, peering out the barred windows at me. Locked away, safely. Where they should be.

I’m standing outside on the curb, clutching a Louis Vuitton suitcase.

“I’m sorry about this. It won’t be too bad; he just wants you to work as an assistant. It’s only for a little while,” my uncle mutters, avoiding my eyes.

When my parents died in a plane crash five years ago, he vowed to care for me. Now he is handing me over to a monster.

Originally, Sergei demanded one of my uncle’s children, a horrifying prospect. They’re sheltered children whose gilded lives have never known hardship.

Despite my aunt’s screams, her pleas, her hysterical weeping, Vilyat was prepared to obey Sergei’s command – until I offered to take their place.

He knew I would, of course. He made sure that their fights took place right in front of me. He raised his fist to my aunt for daring to beg him to spare their children, and I jumped in, like I always do.

Sergei has had his eye on my uncle’s criminal empire for the better part of a year now, and he has slowly, and with increasing violence, worked his way up to destroying it.

It started the day after the awards ceremony. He made his intentions clear from the beginning, and he followed through with them. He would tear our family apart slowly, like a cruel boy ripping the wings off flies. He would take everything we owned and leave my uncle a broken man, with nothing.

Why?

Who knows why. Because he could. Because that’s what men like him do. They dine on the fear and misery of others, and it sustains them.

At first my uncle was cocky, amused, confident. He sent his best men to wipe out this new interloper.

Sergei sent my uncle’s best men back to him. In pieces. The parcels would appear on the front steps of my uncle’s mansion, at places of business that he owned…bloody, dripping parcels.

Sergei won every war with my uncle, and my uncle’s men began abandoning him. Some even went to work for Sergei. Openly. A slap to my uncle’s face.

The worst was when the parcels began appearing inside my uncle’s mansion. That meant Sergei had someone on the inside. Or several someones; my uncle has a huge staff, and now he could trust no one.

I saw the inside of one of the parcels. I threw up and nearly passed out. It was a box containing the head of my uncle’s top enforcer, a brutal, savage killer known as The Wolverine. The Wolverine’s face was distorted in a silent, eternal scream. If the rumors are true, it’s the same look that was on the faces of his victims. Twisted justice, come full circle.

Uncle Latvi and Uncle Edik didn’t come to Vilyat’s rescue, any more than he would have helped them if their circumstances were reversed. Our family is about as close, as cuddly, as sharks – and shark babies eat each other in the womb. They were disgusted by his weakness, and began distancing themselves from him. They stopped taking his calls. Didn’t answer his emails.

Now Sergei has announced that my uncle must pay him five million dollars immediately if he wants to be allowed to continue operating in his own territory, and further, my uncle will pay him sixty percent of his profits. That number was not chosen by accident. My uncle is now paying Sergei more than he makes himself; he is working for Sergei.

And Sergei demanded that my uncle send a member of his immediate family to live with Sergei for one month as collateral. My uncle must deliver the five million dollars by the end of that month, or… The threat hangs in the air like acrid, choking smoke, all the more terrifying because it is unfinished.

Why doesn’t he just kill my uncle and get it over with? He could, quite easily. Then he’d have a hundred percent of my uncle’s take. What kind of a psychopath is he, to drag this out for so long?

A limousine glides to a stop. It is enormous and as dark as a hearse.

I start to walk toward it, and my feet freeze in place. I have seen first hand what Sergei does to his enemies. What if my uncle can’t satisfy his requirements? Will Sergei take it out on me? Of course he will. His reputation as an ice-hearted sociopath is on the line.

What kind of “assistant” work will I be doing? Is he going to expect me to help him hurt people? Witness his brutal punishments and take notes? I won’t be able to do that, but if I refuse…

The door opens, and a big, bulky man climbs out of the front passenger seat. He opens the car’s rear door. Not Sergei. I’ve seen Sergei up close, several times, when he’s come to my uncle’s house. Just walked right in, smirking and unafraid.

Sergei has never even noticed me, but I’ve certainly noticed him. You can’t ignore him any more than you could ignore a Bengal tiger strolling through the room. It isn’t just his size; at least six four, with muscles that his bespoke suits can’t hide. It’s his presence. He moves like a predator; there is brutality and grace in his stride.

He is handsome, in a hard, savage way. He has broad Slavic cheekbones and sensual lips. His cold blue eyes pierce my heart like a laser. The thick white scar that slashes through his eyebrow speaks of some violent encounter in his past – an encounter which he survived.

Whenever he’s come to visit, I’ve hidden in the shadows, trembling. He terrifies me, but I had to know. What did he have planned for us? What would he do to us next?

Now I am about to find out.

I steal a final glance at the house. Aunt Anastasia moves through life in a medicated haze. She’s so out of it these days, she bumps into walls and trips over her own feet. How will the children make it without me?

I’ve done everything I can to prepare them. I’ve already printed out a schedule of all their activities – French lessons and piano lessons for both of them, fencing class for Yuri, ballet for Helenka – and given it to the nanny who’s been hired from an agency known for their discretion.

I swallow hard and tear my gaze from the window. From the crying children.

I’ve told Helenka that she’ll have to make sure her mother remembers her medication. Will she get it right, the dosage, the days? So much responsibility for a little girl. It’s not fair that I have to dump this on her.

Life’s not fair.

A couple of other men slide out of the car and tower over me. Holy hell. Karl and Mikhail – my uncle’s former bodyguards. I wondered where they’d gotten too lately.

Their gazes rove over me in a way that makes me sick.

I swallow my rage and contempt. You bastards. You backstabbing weasels. I hope you’re every bit as loyal to Sergei as you were to my uncle.

The big man grabs my suitcase from my hand and tosses it onto the lawn. What does that mean? Am I going to wear the same outfit for thirty days straight, or are they going to kill me on the way to Sergei’s house?

“Well? Are you waiting for an invitation?” he snaps. He gestures at the open rear door.

My uncle glances sullenly at Karl and Mikhail, and they meet his gaze coolly, smirking. How much lower can Vilyat sink, without drowning?

The two of them clamber into the front seat, and I get in the back. The big man gets in next to Karl and Mikhail. As I slide in next to Sergei, my uncle leans in close and says, “This is a gesture of my intent to carry out the terms—”

Sergei yanks the door shut in my uncle’s face, and the car pulls away with a screech of burning rubber before my uncle can finish his words.

We drive away, and Sergei is silent. He’s wearing a dark suit today, and I can’t help but think of undertakers. He stares straight ahead, ignoring me completely.

My nerves are humming with terror.

“Where are we going?” I blurt out. “Where do you live?”

He glances at me and shakes his head in disapproval.

“Who are you to question me?” he says coldly. He speaks perfect English, but his accent still reveals his Russian countryside roots. I’ve been on enough summer vacations to know the difference between the speech patterns of the upper class and the peasant. Sergei’s way of speaking reveals that he grew up poor. That’s even more frightening – only a brutal killer could start out at the bottom and muscle his way to the top.

He’s staring at me now, with no expression at all on his face. The look in his eyes…like a shark slashing its way through icy waters, toward its prey.

I’m nervous; I can’t stop babbling. “My uncle said I’m just going to work as an assistant to you. For one month.” I’m wringing my hands, clenching them together in my lap. I’m trying to reassure myself.

Sergei throws his head back and roars with laughter. “One month is correct. That is all the time I could stand to have a Toporov in my home. As for being my assistant, he lied to you. But then, he does that. The words ‘honor’ and ‘Vilyat’ can never be spoken in the same sentence.”

If he doesn’t want me for an assistant, then what does he want? Panic seizes me, squeezes my heart. “But…”

He pulls a tiny silver tape recorder out of his pocket and presses a button.

I hear my uncle’s voice. He’s practically sobbing. “I swear to God, do whatever you want to her, as long as you want. She’s young, she’s gorgeous, she’s a virgin.”

Ice-water rushes through my veins.

I’m not a virgin. And my uncle has just sold me into sexual slavery.

No, no, no. This cannot be happening to me.

“That isn’t what I agreed to.” My voice is shaking.

He shrugs. “Your uncle made a deal, and you will honor it.”

Tears burn in my eyes, and my throat threatens to swell closed. “You’re vile. How can you ask this of me?”

“I’m vile?” he scoffs. “How do you like that, Feodyr? A Toporov just called me vile.”

Feodyr, the big man who held the door open for me, barks out a harsh laugh. “I don’t think you could sink much lower. Sir.”

I’ve just mouthed off to a living nightmare. In a daze of fear and sorrow, I brace myself for him to hit me.

He does something much worse. He plays some more of the recording. My uncle, babbling, his voice pitched high with fear. “For ten percent of my take, you could have Helenka, too. Thirteen years old. She’s beautiful.”

I suck in my breath, horrified.

Sergei spits his contempt at me. “Your family. Your blood. Your uncle thinks I want to fuck children. Is that what you people do, Willow?”

“No. Oh, God, no.” It comes out in a whisper.

Just when I think my uncle couldn’t sink any lower… I know that he’s a pig who only sees women as sexual objects. I know that he only values boys – even though he thinks Yuri isn’t hard enough, and he’s trying to beat that into his son, toughen him up, no matter how much my aunt weeps and pleads. My uncle is a monster. He’s the reason that Yuri is hand-shy – like a dog. Yuri flinches now when anyone raises their hand too quickly.

But Helenka. He’s offering to sell her.

And I realize something terrible.

Helenka is a beautiful little girl. And her father’s already made the first offer. The idea’s in his head now. If Sergei doesn’t want her, then someone else will. She’ll be lucky if the worst that happens is being married off to a brutal, abusive, much older husband, like my mother was married to my father. Like my aunt was married to Vilyat.

As my uncle’s power slips away, he’ll be looking for objects of value to trade or sell. And there will be Helenka.

Right then, I make a decision. I will do whatever it takes to survive this. I will let them do anything they want to me. I will live to go home, and I will tell my aunt what her husband was going to do to their daughter, and we’ll all go on the run together.

She’d run away with me to save her daughter, wouldn’t she? Or is she too beaten down?

I realize something else.

If she won’t come with me, I’m taking the kids and going on my own. Before this life, this world of ours, chews them up and spits them out. It’s too late for me, but they’re still good. Still pure. I can save them.

I have a backup plan. A hideaway, a secret between me and my late mother. She researched it carefully. It’s in Columbus, Ohio, a city where none of our family operates, so remote that nobody would think to look for us there, but big enough to hide and disappear. She swapped out some of her jewelry with fakes and sold the real jewelry without my father’s knowledge, in case she or I ever needed to bolt, and the money bought the little apartment. It’s been sitting empty all these years. It’s a desperate last measure, but it’s there.

I glance at Sergei. Is there any way I could get Sergei to reject me and send me back home? Maybe I’d have time to grab Helenka and Yuri before Sergei sank his claws into them?

I’ve got to get those kids the hell out of there while I still can.

“Sorry to tell you, you’ve been had. I’m not a virgin,” I say, my cheeks flushing.

“Good.”

“Good?” My voice rises in a squeak.

“Virgins are boring.”

I’m struggling not to hyperventilate as we glide down the road. What the hell has just happened to me? This can’t be. It’s the twenty-first century. I’m a college graduate. I’m an American citizen. People aren’t traded like commodities.

But the laws that protect everyone else aren’t there for me. I come from a family of shadowy people who make their fortunes outside the boundaries of civilized society. They sell drugs and weapons without serial numbers. It’s a brutal business and there are bound to be casualties.

Rivals greedy for territory and money. People who won’t pay protection.

Me.

Sergei turns to me and cups my chin in his hand and turns my head to look at him, and lightning bolts of sensation jolt my body. His touch is firm and commanding, a little rough.

“Here are the rules,” he says, looking right into my eyes. His gaze holds me prisoner.

“You address me as sir. You do not speak until spoken to. You do as you are told, immediately, and every time that you fail to obey, you will be punished. I decide when I want to take you, and how I want to take you. You are here for my pleasure, and I will take my pleasure any way I see fit. For instance, inflicting pain on my enemies gives me pleasure, and you are most certainly my enemy. Do you understand, Willow?”

I feel as if I’ve been hurled into a swimming pool of ice water. “Yes. Sir,” I add quickly. I almost forget to say sir, and I see the warning flash in his eyes. I want to scream. I’m not your enemy! I’m not, I’m not! I hate my uncle as much as you do!

I stay silent.

“Or,” he added, “I can tell my driver to pull over and let you out right here. Last chance.”

There is a hint of menace behind the words, and my insides go liquid with terror at the thought of what would happen if I demanded to be set free.

He’d kick me out and make me walk home. By the time I got back, he’d have snatched up Yuri or Helenka, or both of them. I am sure that he wouldn’t molest them – I saw the genuine disgust in his gaze at the mention of it, and for that matter if he’d wanted them, he could have had them – but he’d crush their spirits until the light leaked from their souls.

And furthermore, who am I to say I’m too good to be punished? I’m complicit in all of this. I let my family spend their blood money to drape me in designer clothes, send me to etiquette school and boarding school and an exclusive women’s college, and now it’s time for me to pay.

It’s not your fault, a voice in my head protests. By the time you knew the true cost of those clothes, you were halfway through college. And you couldn’t leave Helenka and Yuri behind. You stayed for them, not for the fancy life.

Tell that to everyone who was ever hurt by a Toporov, I think grimly.

I close my eyes and shudder. I open them and surrender my fate to the man who is beaming hatred and contempt at me from his stone-cold gaze. He will not be kind to me. He will not be merciful.

“I will do what my uncle promised, sir,” I say, my voice stiff and formal.