Prologue
“I love you, Blaire,” Charlie says softly against my mouth. “Now close your eyes, baby, and think of something nice.”
I struggle to shake my head, refusing to close my eyes. I’m too frightened of the operation. I’m just not ready to die. For as long as I can, I battle the foggy anesthesia burning cold in my veins. I lie here on the hospital bed gazing, searching the depth in Charlie’s eyes. They’re such a piercing shade of blue, yet so dark and haunted like mine.
My paradise.
I need him more than I’ve ever needed anyone. The tenderness I seek from him is no longer foreign to me. It has become me. I am innocent with Charlie, an oxymoron to what I really am: wicked, corrupt, impure, and peccable. Most of all, peccable: capable of sinning. But who gives a fuck? Charlie doesn’t. He loves me. He told me so.
His full lips seal over mine in a holy kiss of adoration, creating an orb of power around us. Turning up my chin, I try to kiss him back, though I’m fading. Fading... My eyes grow heavy, and I blink. Blink. Blink. But Charlie’s handsome face turns fuzzy and white, disappearing into the distance as I vanish with a breathless, goodbye.
My subconscious takes me to a place in my dreams that makes me happy; the moment Charlie gave me my bracelet. It’s humid in his house, just as I remember. I’m wearing the clothes he bought me. We’re minutes from leaving to go out for dinner—but he makes me sit on the couch in the living room. He crouches at my feet, and I frown, wondering what he’s doing. His eyes are glowing in raw emotion, a million words of want hanging on his lips.
“I’d like to give you a lot more than just a bracelet, Blaire,” he says, his Latino voice so deep and raspy, echoing through the heavenly haze of my mind. “Anything you want, I want to give you.”
My stomach erupts with flutters, as I know what it meant now, why he was treading carefully. He loved me—no, he loves me. He wanted to tell me, and he wanted me to choose him over my master, who is now dead.
Maksim...Maksim...
Even in an induced slumber, at the mere thought of him, adrenaline attacks my system, coursing through my body in waves of anger. I want to cry with madness, scream, and hurt people. Hurt him. I fucking hate him for what he did to me—and for what he did to my brother, James. I hate that I could have stopped his abuse, yet I didn’t. I hate that I could have stayed with Charlie when he begged me to, yet I left.
My rage and bitter regret morph in my dream, charging with energy, making the world around me tremor. I can’t see anything, though I feel my body being thrown from side to side. I hear the roaring sound of an engine and smell the titanium stench of gas.
Am I in a car?
“Stop him! Shoot him!” men shout one after the other, voices reverberating in my ears, and my heart rate soars. I recognize them, but I can’t pinpoint how.
Bang, clatter! Bang, clatter!
I flash to another moment. Maksim is taking James roughly on the metal framed bed in my cell, yanking on his hair as he pounds his naked body from behind. I watch with irrational horror, suspicious of what’s happening. Why am I seeing this?
“Don’t look, Blaire,” my brother says in smashes of breath, struggling against Maksim warning him to shut his mouth. “Cover your eyes! It’s okay!”
My eyes dart to ghostly movement in the corner of the cell. It’s a younger version of me. She’s curled up on the cold, concrete floor with her knees to her chest, hiding in dirty, long red hair. “It-it’s not okay,” she sobs in messy Russian, wishing to be anywhere else. My heart aches with agony for my brother; for her. I wish to be anywhere else, too, as I can’t see Maksim rape James anymore. I can’t let this happen anymore.
Whimpering, I slam my eyes shut. When I open them, I’m standing on Rumo’s driveway.
Guns fire through the night while men rush back and forth attacking each other, ducking and diving through the bullets. My head snaps in every direction, trying to figure out why I keep going from one moment to the next. That’s when I realize this is the evening I escaped Maksim’s attempt to kill me, when Charlie saved me. What does it mean?
From a distance, I spot Charlie’s powerful outline. He’s bent over Maksim on one knee, teeth clenched as he pounds at my master’s bloody face. He wants him dead, as I did—as I do.
Yes, I want him dead.
My hand weighs heavy with an object. I turn it up to see I’m holding a gun. It glimmers silver from the moonlight, fueling my desire to be free with Charlie.
“He has to die,” I croak, sudden tears pouring down my cheeks as a sense of cruel sadness comes over me. “He cannot live.”
“I cannot go to hell yet. I am not ready, My Little Pet.”
“Neither am I!” I shout back at Maksim, so fucking desperate to be free of him. I must keep my brother safe, and I just want one more day with Charlie. Please, just one more day. I want to kiss my lover. I want to feel his hands on my face and in my hair when he plays with it.
I won’t be able to do either if Maksim lives.
“I’ll do it, Blaire,” Charlie says, appearing at my side. I feel his warmth before I see him, pulling me in.
My head turns up and I look at his fallen angel face, blooming with novel affection. He is darkness blended with light. I think I could love him, I really think I could live with him, so I can’t let him kill Maksim. I can’t risk Maksim’s blood on his hands as I don’t know what I might do.
And I cannot risk hurting him. That would be the end of me.
I kneel at my master’s side, wobbling off balance when a dizzy spell comes over me. Charlie’s hands land on my shoulders and hold me steady, a physical promise to forever catch me should I fall. I lean down to level the gun at Maksim’s temple, lips quivering in anger as I whisper in his ear, “Hell is ready for you.”
BANG!