Her eyes are enormous blue pools of grief and fury. She sways where she stands, and my hand on her shoulder holds her up. I like that she can’t stand without my help. She needs me.

I win. I own her again.

But guilt poisons my relief. Willow is the only person in the world who can make me feel guilty. Before I met her, I couldn’t even have described what that emotion felt like.

“No,” she whispers desperately, to a cruel, uncaring universe.

I gesture at the car.

“Fun time’s over. Get the fuck in the car.”

She meets my gaze with a genuine disgust that burns into my soul. When she looks at me like that, it makes me loathe myself. Me, the man without a conscience. Bile rises in my throat, and I swallow it down.

Her voice trembles. “If we go back there, you’ll just lock them up and hurt them all over again. No. I’m going to the police and telling them that you kidnapped them. I’m done with your sick games.”

I swat aside her threats. “You against the billionaire? You against all the resources I have? The police would never be able to prove a thing, and they would never find a trace of them.”

She sucks in a gulping breath. She’s shaking all over.

Will she surrender to me? Have I stripped her of her last bit of free will?

Tears are streaming down her face, and her breath comes out in wordless sobs, each one jerking her slim body.

I realize that I don’t want to know who will win this fight. The cost of victory would be too high.

So I give a little.

I never, ever do that for anyone.

Only for my Willow.

She won’t be mine for long, but I want to enjoy what time I have with her, and if I push her too hard, if I break her, I’ll spend all our time together sick with self-disgust.

So I let her know the deal has changed. I tick off my conditions. “You will come back with me for thirty days. When you left, you restarted the clock. I will allow you to spend all the time you want with your family. You can see Lukas again too. In exchange, you will spend your nights with me, and you will treat me with respect in front of my men. At the end of the thirty days, I’m leaving the country forever. You will be free of me. You can keep the house. You can live there with your family if you want.”

She stares at me in shock. “Keep your house? What? Are you crazy?”

“Hello, have you met me? Of course I’m crazy. And yes. I will give you the house. And cash to live off. Beats working at a diner for the rest of your life, doesn’t it?”

“But I…” she shakes her head as if trying to dislodge my words. “I already told you I wouldn’t accept dirty money.”

“If I could prove to you that the money that purchased that house was clean, would you accept it then?” The house cost me twenty million dollars. She’d be a fool to turn it down.

“I would never believe you. And why do you want me in the first place? You could get all the beautiful women in the world. Women who are way prettier and actually want to be there with you.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Willow.”

She glares at me. “Is that actually your attempt at a compliment? That’s really the best you can do?”

She’s right. She deserves so much more. Unfortunately, what she deserves – decency, kindness, lavish praise – I can’t give her.

Instead, I give her the best gift I am capable of giving – a little bit of honesty.

“I’m working on some things,” I say in a low voice. “A final project. And I can’t think straight without you. I can’t concentrate without you there. You’ve gotten under my skin like nobody I’ve ever met before. I didn’t want it to happen, but it did. I’m distracted. I’m making mistakes. So for the sake of my end game, I need you with me until…until I’m finished.”

Tears spill down her cheeks. She glares at me. “And then what happens at the end of the thirty days? You’re magically cured of the disgusting disease that is me?”

I brush the tears from her cheek with my thumb, and she gives that shudder of helpless desire that makes me want to take her right there, on the nearest bench.

“Willow. You’re an addiction without a cure. But once I’ve accomplished what I need to, it doesn’t matter what happens to me. So if losing you means I end up totally fucked in the head, it’ll be fine. After I do what I need to.”

She shakes her head slowly. “If I affect you that way…why wouldn’t you try to keep me forever?” Then she sniffs hard and wipes away the tears with the back of her hand. “Not that I’m saying I want to stay. I’m just trying to understand this.”

“I won’t try to keep you, because I don’t deserve you. I could never make you happy. I’ve never had a normal relationship in my life. I don’t have normal friends, I have street soldiers. I don’t have normal relationships, I have sex with gold-diggers or whores, and then I give them money to go away.”

And I haven’t given a lot of thought to what will happen once I’ve destroyed the last men who were responsible for my younger brother’s death. I haven’t planned for a life beyond that. I’m afraid to think of life beyond that.

I will still have a business to run, but will I be able to motivate myself to get up in the morning, once the last man on my list is dead? Maybe I’ll let myself spin out of control, and give the business to my men. God knows they’ve earned it.

“You could have tried to make me happy. Back before you said and did such terrible things to me.” Her voice is small. She’s ashamed of hinting, even in a subtle, roundabout way, that she wants to stay with me.

I nod. “I know. But you know what I am, Willow.”

Now anger pushes aside her sorrow. That’s better. I like Willow angry. I like the fight, the resistance. “Yes, I do know what you are. You paraded me around in front of your men half naked. You let them look at me like that. You insulted me again and again, while everyone watched.”

I taste metal in my mouth and swallow, but the bad taste won’t go away. “Yes. It was a means to an end. To hurt your uncle and weaken him further. I won’t apologize for it, but it will not happen again when you come home with me.”

Come home with me. The words taste bittersweet. Come home with me, stay with me…

The car is idling right next to us, and there’s nobody standing near us. The old rage is rising up inside me. When I let her reach those soft, yearning places that never existed inside me before I met her…it makes me panic. It makes me lash out at her.

I’ve given her too much already. She can’t steal any more of my soul.

My voice goes harsh. From zero to asshole in no time flat, that’s me.

“And now we’re done. You have five seconds to say yes or no. If you don’t give me the answer I want, I will throw you in that car, and take you back to my house, and things will go back to the way they were before. And I’ll have no compunction at all about using your family to hurt you. You already know that.”

She glares at me. I’m not giving her any choice, and she’s furious, and helpless.

And fuck me if it doesn’t make my dick hard.

I really need professional help.

“Five, four, three…” I count fast.

“Yes!” she snaps at me.

I open the door of the car, and she throws herself in, looking out of the opposite window, avoiding my gaze.

I slide in next to her and slam the door shut, swallowing her up in my trap.

She sits stiffly, pressed up against the door, as far away from me as she can get. It doesn’t matter. For now, I’ll let her have that illusion of freedom, because I know the truth. If I wanted to, I could have her right here in the car, and she’d come so hard she cried.

The car takes us to a small airport, where a private plane is waiting for us.

“Where is my family?” she demands as we walk towards it.

“They already left, on a separate plane. We’ll meet them back there.”

“They’d better be back there, and they’d better be unharmed.” Her threats have no more strength then a puff of air, but she’s brave and foolish and desperate.

The look she gives me could scorch a lesser man. But as we climb aboard the plane, I am calm and at peace for the first time since she left me.

I have my Willow back.

* * *

It’s evening, and we’re back at my house on the coast. Like every decision of mine, the purchase of this home was a strategic one.

I was moving in on Vilyat, so I wanted to be relatively close to him, but not too close. The house was a couple of hours from his. And I needed a house that would also serve as a fortress. This house had no close neighbors and was easily defensible. Security cameras everywhere, and impossible to sneak up on.

I take them on the tour when we arrive. I want to show Willow, without words, that things will be different this time around.

As we walk through the house, she and Anastasia and the kids huddle together, a tight, angry unit, shutting me out. Anastasia has her hands on her kids’ shoulders, as if that could keep them safe if I should choose to snatch them away from her.

The contrast between Willow and Anastasia is a sharp one. Anastasia is a sultry goddess who glides through life with sensual grace. She’s not even trying; she’s just got those curves and that Marilyn Monroe roll to her hips. Willow is small and slender and quiet, with wary eyes. She’s the girl who stands at the back of the room, doing her best to blend in to the wallpaper. She’s pretty in that friend’s-younger-sister way.

Inside, though…inside she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever come across. She’s sweet and strong. She still lets herself love – fearlessly, passionately. She puts everyone else’s needs before her own; I wish she wouldn’t do that. I wish she’d love herself as much as she loves her family, and every little wounded bird she finds.

She’s braver than anyone I know. No matter how terrified she is, she’ll fight like a tigress for everyone but herself. Like Lukas – she fought for him, knowing it would cost her terribly. I know that when she was working at diner and watching every penny, she’d buy meals and hand them out to the homeless on her way back to her apartment.

And I know she cares about me. Loves me, even, or at least thinks she does. I can’t put a name to the way that I feel about her, because it would make it too real.

The first place I take them is the workshop I’ve set up for Yuri, where he can build robots and model cars. I know he loves to tinker.

His eyes light up when he sees the shelves of robot kits and model toy kits, the work table, the tools.

“This is really just for me? It’s all mine?” he cries.

His sister glares and shoves him. “Have you forgotten what he did to us?” Helenka snaps at him. “His men just put their guns in our faces and made us get in his car. You remember how he treated us when we were here before? Every time we asked to see Willow or Mom, he lied and said they were busy. He’s a liar. He’s a bully. He’s a kidnapper. We’re his prisoners.”

Yuri’s face falls. He’s like a balloon that’s been pricked, his happiness leaking out.

“Dad never let me do this kind of stuff,” he says glumly, casting a longing glance at all the wonderful toys I’ve bought for him. “He said it was for peasants.”

Anastasia bites her lip and stares at the floor. She’s still furious with me; understandable. My men did kidnap her and her kids at gunpoint. But I don’t give a fuck. I would do it all over again, and worse things, to get Willow back.

Willow winces at Yuri’s dismay and pats Helenka on the arm. “Hey. I’m not saying that we forgive Sergei, but that’s a separate issue. Please let Yuri enjoy this. Don’t make him feel bad. It’s incredibly cool, and Yuri has real talent. He could be an engineer someday. He could design cars, or…or space robots.”

Now Yuri beams. I know how he feels. Willow is like the sun, and when she beams her light at you, it can warm the coldest heart.

Next, I take them into a gymnasium. Helenka loves gymnastics and self-defense classes. There’s all kinds of climbing equipment and mats. There are also punching bags and hand wraps for boxing, and various pads and helmets for self-defense training.

Jasha is in there, leaning against the wall. Nobody is better at hand-to-hand combat than him. Not even me, and I’m pretty fucking lethal.

“Jasha will train you while you’re here,” I tell Helenka.

“Can I play in here?” Yuri begs.

“Nope. It’s mine.” Helenka’s still sullen and resentful. Then again, what thirteen-year-old American girl isn’t? She has no idea what a glorious life she leads.

“If I can play in here, you can make laser death-ray robots with me,” he says with a winning smile.

Helenka gives me a cold sideways glance. “Okay. I guess we could use them to burn Sergei like a bug.”

I roll my eyes. “You can continue your Krav Maga lessons, since those are your favorite,” I tell her.

She meets my gaze fearlessly. She’s like a miniature Willow. “You’re making a mistake teaching me how to fight back. When I get good enough, I’m going to kick your ass for what you’ve done to us.”

Willow chokes back a laugh behind her hand.

I look at Anastasia. She has a quiet smile of pride on her face. She’s a different woman from the stumbling, mumbling drug addict I saw just a couple of months ago.

“You can join your children in self-defense classes,” I say to her. “I’ve got a laptop set up for you as well, so you can continue taking your computer classes without interruption.”

“You’ll really let us go at the end of thirty days?” Fear and hope mingle in her soft voice.

I don’t do hand-holding. “I’m not going to repeat myself, Anastasia.”

Hurt and anger flash across her face, and Willow shoots me an angry look.

Anastasia glances at her niece. “And you won’t hurt Willow?”

I’m not going to promise that – because I am going to hurt her, often, but Willow will like it. No, she’ll love it. Of course, Anastasia doesn’t need to know our little secrets.

“Willow will be fine.”

Jasha walks up.

“We will begin our lesson now. We’ll work out until dinner.” He looks at Helenka. “One rule. You will speak to Sergei with respect.”

Anastasia moves in front of her children.

“One other rule,” she says. “If you hurt my kids, even accidentally, I swear to God I will tear your throat out with my teeth.” The feral gleam in her eyes says she means it. She would die for them. Vilyat nearly extinguished her inner fire, but it’s back now, a roaring bonfire, and I don’t think she’ll ever lose it again.

Jasha gives her a bored look. “Lesson number one,” he says to her. “Don’t be an idiot. Never tell your enemy what you plan on doing to them.”

Helenka has been standing behind him. She suddenly lashes out with a whirling kick that is so fast I barely see it coming, catching Jasha in the back of the knee. He staggers and almost falls.

“Lesson number two, watch how you talk to my mother,” she snaps. “Lesson number three, don’t underestimate me.”

A thirteen-year-old girl who can’t weigh more than ninety pounds did that to him.

Willow starts laughing. Yuri joins her. Anastasia is laughing, and so am I. I laugh and laugh, until tears come to my eyes and I’m gasping for breath. I realize I haven’t laughed like that, a genuine howl of laughter, in…possibly ever.

Jasha glares at them. His face is flushed with humiliation.

“Let’s start with some laps around the mats,” he snaps. “All of you. Then pushups until you puke.”

“I don’t have a jogging bra!” Anastasia protests.

He rakes her with a look of contempt. “Sucks for you, princess,” he growls. “When a mugger is chasing you, are you going to stop and ask him to wait while you put on a jogging bra? No? Then start running.”

“I need to go make some calls,” I say. It’s the last thing in the world I want to do. Every cell in my body craves Willow. I want to smell her, taste her, bury myself deep in her tight, warm sheath. That’s why I’m forcing myself to leave the room. To prove to myself that I still can.

That’s okay. She has no idea what’s coming.

She ran away from me. She disobeyed me.

Disobedience requires retribution.