Chapter 21: Chapter 21

I gently turn the glass of vodka, watching the clear liquid swirl in the lights of my office.

“Drazen.”

My gaze shifts, my attention suddenly pulling from the drink in my hand to Milos, standing in the doorway.

His brow furrows. “Everything okay?”

“Yes.”

No.

Maybe.

I don’t know anymore.

I’m a man of plans. A man of bullet points on a list that are followed by bullet holes. And I thought I had this all figured out.

I thought I’d found the woman who betrayed me. The Trojan Horse who let the enemy inside to slaughter my family. I thought she was finally in my clutches, and I would finally mete out my vengeance.

Get my pound of flesh.

But then those plans changed when I realized I needed her to get to the Iron Table so I could exact a higher revenge. But it’s not the change in plans that has me glaring into my drink in the middle of the night when I should be asleep.

It’s the change in intentions.

I no longer wish to carve out a pound of vengeance from Annika’s flesh. When I look at her, even think of her, I’m no longer dreaming of revenge at all.

But I am thinking about listening to her scream. And beg. And writhe.

And moan.

My resolve with her is…weakening. All of me is weak with her, in a way it’s never been before. I never lusted after Annika. Not when she was my eighteen-year-old bride walking down the aisle. Not before. Not after.

I spent our wedding night alone, sulking into a bottomless glass of vodka.

But the Annika I captured in New York and brought here is another Annika. One I do desire. One, I’ll even grant, whose company I enjoy. Perhaps the crash changed her. Perhaps amnesia really did rewire her.

Or reset her.

Because there’s only one day I remember when I actually enjoyed being around her. One single time, when I was thirteen and she was ten, and we spent half a day playing Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 in her father’s pool house. The day we met, where she spent hours while we were gaming together telling me how nice her invisible friend was.

She was weird, and kind. And I enjoyed her company that day…and that day only.

Until now.

I rip my attention back to Milos. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a problem.”

I frown. “Go on.”

“Security breach.”

Shit.

I stand abruptly, crossing the room to my desk. I wake up my laptop, already open to the cameras in every corner of my house. There’s only one I look at.

Annika’s room.

When I see her sleeping peacefully, I glance back at Milos.

“What sort of breach.”

He frowns, nodding his chin at the laptop, which is facing away from him. “What did you just look at?”

“Nothing,” I growl. “What’s the security⁠—”

“Drazen…” he mutters quietly.

Only Milos can talk to me like this. We’ve known each other since we were kids going on raids together during the wars. We were a sniper team at one point, perched up in the ruins of some building with one of us on the rifle, the other on the binoculars. His father worked for mine for years until the night of the death and blood on this very island.

I glare back at him. “It’s nothing.”

“I say security breach, and your first concern is her?”

“She’s important to our plans, Milos.”

“Well, this concerns her,” he says grimly.

I glance back at the cameras, then back at Milos.

“When I say breach, I don’t mean someone got in,” he grunts. “Someone got out.”

My brow furrows. “Who?”

“Your wife,” he mutters dryly.

Annika stirs as I look down at her sleeping form. She’s only in a thin nightgown with a sheet over her, the warm Mediterranean air coming in through the open balcony doors.

Part of me thinks she looks so soft and innocent.

Another part of me wants to wake her with my cock down her throat and her hair in my fist. With every inch of my dick buried in her tight little cunt, making her scream into her pillow. That’s the part of me that wants to bruise her. Mark her. Ruin her.

Not because of any sort of revenge anymore. But because that’s the messed-up way my desires work. That’s my fucking “love language”: violence and monstrous brutality.

And the reason I feel those things when I look at her is that I know I’m not the only one with those types of urges and screwed-up wiring.

She’s the same.

But that’s not why I’m in her bedroom right now, watching her sleep. So instead of letting my eyes wander over the bare shoulder, imagining gagging her with a pair of her panties before I work my dick into her tight little ass, I let my gaze slip down to my feet.

Then I crouch down and touch the rug.

It’s dirty, and a little wet.

Shit.

For a second I almost wake her: not for dark needs, for answers. My mind goes over everything Milos has just told me. Shown me.

Two hours ago, one of my men was across the bridge on Elba, in a little coastal bar in a town two miles away. It was his night off, and he’s freely admitted he’d had four or five beers. But that doesn’t change what he saw, and snapped a grainy, blurry picture of with his phone.

Annika.

She was keeping to the shadows, down by the shore near the local fisherman’s pier, apparently.

“I swear on my mother’s grave, Mr. Krylov,” my man told me not ten minutes ago downstairs, his hands fidgeting nervously as I glared at him. “It was her.”

The picture he took is…pretty bad. But it’s damning. Red hair. A furtive but determined look on her face. Same height, same build.

Same Annika.

My eyes drag from the wet spots on the rug to the woman asleep in the bed.

It wouldn’t be the first time she’d done this. Sleepwalked, that is. I’ve seen the bewildering footage of her behind the wheel of a stolen Lamborghini at two o’clock in the morning, before Dimitri nuked the police’s server. I’ve also listened in on her virtual sessions with Dr. Jesnick, also courtesy of Dimitri , who sent them with proof of him never having opened the files at all.

Because he’s detail-oriented like that.

Annika—Taylor—has spoken to her therapist at length about her unexplained nighttime activities. Going through her taxes, messing around in her kitchen, even going to work, all without a single memory of it when she wakes up.

But this one is more than slightly baffling. Getting off my island without being seen is hard enough. Getting back on—while technically asleep—is insane.

My eyes sweep over her sleeping form—at the soft, serene expression on her face. Like she didn’t just somehow escape and return, leaving no trace.

Who the fuck are you, Annika Brancovich.

For the first time since she got here, I have her door locked when I leave.

Two of my men fall into step behind me as I walk out the front door of the house. But I wave them off as I head out into the dark, toward the bridge. I’m carrying a sidearm, and besides, I’m confident that I am the most dangerous thing on this island.

At the bridge, my men snap to attention. My enemies—most people, for that matter—think of me as ruthless and fearsome and cruel. Because, to them, that’s what I am. But I treat my own people with respect and loyalty. A lot of these men have worked for me my entire adult life. Several of them worked for my father, or their fathers did.

Milos approaches, a cigarette between his lips. He lights it deftly with a Zippo, inhaling deeply.

“Anything useful?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing, boss. The men on duty tonight are sharp, too. No one slipped up or missed anything. Cameras, infrared sensors, night-vision…nothing. My guess is, she came and went via the shoreline.”

“And getting across the strait?”

Milos tilts his head meditatively, inhaling smoke. “It would have been low tide a few hours ago. But that still involves a swim. Current is stronger when the tide is going in or out, too. So, not an easy swim, either.”

I nod pensively, walking to the bridge and looking down at the black water below. Milos joins me, his face stoic.

“Thanks for checking so thoroughly,” I growl quietly.

He nods.

“I know you don’t…you know.”

Milos’ father was the mortally wounded guard who blew up the bridge the night of the attack fifteen years ago. Needless to say, I know my friend doesn’t enjoy spending any time on this bridge.

“It’s fine,” he grunts, peering out at the darkness.

I eye him curiously for a moment. “Speak.”

“Nothing to speak about, boss.”

“Drop the ‘boss’ shit and talk to me as my friend.”

He glances at me, his jaw tight. “Freely?”

“Yes.”

His eyes narrow. “I think it’s fucking insanity that she’s here, Drazen,” he growls. “I think after what she fucking did, the fact that you’ve got her living in your home like a guest is insulting. I think there are a million different ways you could be flaying her alive instead of fucking her⁠—”

“That’s enough.”

“Your family’s and my father’s blood is on her hands!” he hisses viciously. “And you’re using her like your own personal whore⁠—”

Milos’ eyes bulge and his face goes purple as my hand snaps out to tighten around his throat.

“I said that’s enough,” I hiss darkly.

Instantly, my hand drops from his windpipe. Milos clears his throat and looks away.

“Apologies, I overstepped,” he grunts.

I exhale. “I… I shouldn’t have put hands on you.”

“You’re the boss,” my friend says dryly, smirking as he rubs his voice box.

I gesture with my chin at his cigarette. He nods, passing it to me. “Just like old times, huh?”

“Just need a sniper rifle and some of that shitty UN peacekeeper coffee.”

He grimaces. “Swear to fuck, that stuff was literally shit.”

“Eh,” I shrug. “That’s why we cut it with vodka, if I remember right.”

“I’m surprised we remember anything at all from those days,” he sighs, shaking his head. “Surprised we lived through those days.”

“But we did,” I murmur, taking a puff of the cigarette before handing it back. I clap my friend on the shoulder. “We did, and look at us now.”

Milos nods solemnly, looking out over the dark waves. “Permission to speak…well, freely, but not as freely as just now?”

I nod.

“You really believe the amnesia thing?”

I look away. “I do, actually.”

“Without you fucking choking me again, can we agree that what happened before⁠—”

“Happened fifteen years ago,” I grunt. “Before her memory deleted itself.”

“Do you think that excuses it?”

It’s a good question, and something I’ve been contemplating ever since I found her again.

I still don’t have an answer.

“I don’t know if it’s because of the amnesia or not. But she’s changed. She’s…different than the girl I remember from the wedding.”

“You really believe that people can change like that?” Milos grunts. “Become something different?”

I nod as my eyes drift back to the rolling black waves.

“I do.”

I have to believe that change is possible. That people can evolve past what they were into something new.

I have to.

Or else I’m truly damned.