Reap

As Savin spat out his answer, it dawned on me what he had said. Brandon … Brandon was a … a Jakhua trafficker? My hands reached up to my burning cheeks and Ilya took an arm in his grip to steady me.

I met his eyes. “I’m not feeling so good. I’m burning up.”

He frowned. “Did he get you with the needle?”

I shook my head, knowing I’d have felt it, when … the mojito he’d bought me …

“He bought me a drink. I think he drugged it.”

Panic began to paralyze me, when Ilya pushed, “How much, Ms. Tolstaia? How much did you drink?”

“Just a couple of sips. I barely took any of it,” I replied, and watched as my guards’ tense shoulders relaxed. I inhaled again hoping that the cold air would cool me down.

“Can we just go home? To the Hamptons,” I pleaded.

Savin, the harsher, more dangerous of my two guards, stood in front of me, blocking my path. “Promise me you won’t do that again. You won’t go anywhere without us.” His voice brooked no shit. He wasn’t really asking me not to do it again, he was straight up telling me.

“I don’t get a choice, do I? Once you tell Papa, I’ll be ordered back here to Brooklyn. When you tell him I went to the Georgian enemy in the basement, too.”

Ilya stepped forward, his face now less stern. “Talia. Let’s go back to the Hamptons. Your father has too much to concern him without us mentioning this. Any of it.”

I closed my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

I heard Savin say something to Ilya about the syringe Brandon had tried to inject me with. I heard them talking in low whispers, then I heard them scoop it off the ground.

As I pictured the mass of people tonight in the club—men with women, women with women, men with men—my heart felt like it physically cracked down the center. I could see their happy faces as they danced carefree. I wanted someone to dance with. Someone to look at me the way Luka looked at Kisa, the way she always looked at him. Like they were the reason their worlds turned.

I pictured me alone and washing Zaal. I could see my hand running down his rugged face, I could feel him lean in, his breath drifting past my face. My heart kicked into a sprint.

“Ms. Tolstaia?” Ilya called. I quickly blinked away the vision.

“I’m ready to go,” I said abruptly, giving up any fight lingering within me. I set off down the dank alley, walking ahead of Ilya and Savin, feeling the heat of their bodies behind me.

Stopping dead, my arms crossed over my chest, trying to block out both the cold snap in the air and the humiliation I felt.

I turned to my guards. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I won’t pull anything like this on you again. I shouldn’t have put your lives in danger like that. I … I couldn’t live with myself if something ever happened to you both because of me.”

Nothing was said in return to my apology, but I could feel the tension leave the three of us as we approached the bulletproof black Lincoln my byki used. A thought suddenly occurred to me, and I turned to ask, “How did you find me? How did you know where to come looking?”

Ilya and Savin kept their neutral expressions, and I knew why they weren’t explaining it to me.

Without anger, I said, “You’ve got a tracker on me, haven’t you?” They stood, not meeting my eyes, instead focusing on nothing over my head and I glanced down. My purse. There must be a GPS in my purse.

I couldn’t muster the will to even be annoyed.

I moved toward the Lincoln, and Savin brushed past me. He opened the back door of the car and I silently slid inside.

Both of my guards slipped in next to me, shielding me in the center of the backseat. Both of them were in full protection mode, fixing their attention out of the windows, checking for any more potential threats.

I laid my head back against the heated leather seat and closed my eyes. Then my chest constricted as my thoughts drifted back to Zaal. But this time I didn’t fight my want of him. I embraced it. I’d tried to get away from him tonight. From my obsession, from my inexplicable draw to the forbidden slave. It hadn’t worked. In fact, it only served to remind me of the life I was in regardless. One of danger, violence and death. There was no point in fighting who I was, the life I belonged to.

I would never be normal.

Therefore I would no longer crave normal.

And because if that, I knew when I arrived back in my Hamptons home tonight I’d be going to see Zaal.

I had to touch him again.

There was no choice.

I had to be close.