Jaded

by Anya Bast

  “You really shouldn’t be so predictable, Lilya.”

  She closed her eyes, shuddering at the sound of Ivan’s voice behind her. It was as if the last six-plus years had disappeared. Now here she was, confused and hurting—prey to Ivan all over again. Taking deep breaths, she fisted her hands until they hurt, trying to gain control.

  She wasn’t that woman anymore.

  She wasn’t vulnerable, or hurting.

  She was strong enough to face this.

  She was.

  And she had a life to fight for now. A good life, one filled with love, laughter, and happiness.

  Opening her eyes, she spied the knife she and Alek had used to cut up a melon for dessert the night before. They’d never got around to washing it . . . or eating the melon for that matter. She dashed to the side, grabbed the knife, and held it between herself and Ivan and his thugs. She still had the knife tucked into her bodice too. Every morning since the break-in at Byron’s she’d made it a part of her wardrobe. That made two weapons she possessed.

  “Get out of here, Ivan. Right now.” Her voice came out sounding ten times stronger than she felt.

  “Look at Lilya with the knife.” Ivan seemed more fascinated than frightened. He took a step toward her. “You’ve changed.”

  She waved the knife. “If you think I won’t use this, think again.”

  Ivan motioned at one of the goons with a finger. “Let’s test that out, shall we?”

  The thug moved without hesitation. Either he was really stupid, really under Ivan’s control, or confident that the woman wielding the knife wouldn’t actually use it.

  If it was the latter, he was wrong.

  Her heart pounding and adrenaline rushing through her ears like the ocean, she slammed the knife deep into the man’s upper chest as soon as he got near enough. He fell back against the counter, screaming in pain, and then collapsed to the floor, whimpering and staring in alarm at the protruding handle of the knife.

  One goon down, two to go. She grabbed for the knife in her bodice, but the handle was pushed too far down for her to grasp. Edging her way around the counter, she searched for something else to use to defend herself.

  Too late.

  The second goon was on her. His hands closed around her shoulders and she pushed at him with all her strength—it was like fighting a boulder. She twisted and fought him, screaming as loud as she could. She managed to turn in the man’s grasp, reaching for anything she could grab and pulling it off the counter. Hurling a cutting board, she smacked the thug in the forehead, but all he did was grunt and hold on tighter.

  Hands closing around her waist, the thug hefted her into the air and away from all possible projectiles. Now she faced Ivan. Fear turned to rage in her blood. Her hair had come down and she knew her eyes were wild. She reached toward him, grasping and scratching, wanting to draw blood. All Ivan did was step back. The thug tightened his grip on her.

  “What do you want with me?”

  His eyes glittered and he retained his cold, hard little smile, but said nothing.

  “What do you want with me?” She screamed it at him this time. “You’ve already done your damage, just leave me alone!”

  His smile faded. “Apparently I didn’t do damage enough.” He walked a little closer to her, just out of reach of her fingernails. The thug still had her around the waist. “You are mine, Lilya. You always have been, ever since the first day I glimpsed you peddling flowers on that street corner. No matter what you do, or who you’re with . . . you’re mine. And when you stray too far from the path I want to see you on, well, then it’s time to set you back on it. You never knew I’ve been in the background, guiding your life these past six years, did you?”

  Her body went rigid with a new flush of rage and fear. What did that mean? Did that mean he hadn’t just dismissed her, forgotten about her as she’d always presumed? It sounded as if he’d been watching her from afar all these years and now she’d done something he didn’t approve of . . . going to Byron’s house, coming back here to the town house instead of the Temple of Dreams.

  Ivan must know she’d developed feelings for Byron and Alek, and he didn’t like it.

  “Come on, then. Time to go.” He walked to the back door and opened it.

  She screamed and fought anew, but the goon had little trouble pushing her toward the exit. Outside she could see a fine carriage led by four matched black horses in the alley, the door open and waiting for her to be pushed in.

  Ivan was so confident in this city, he wasn’t even going to bother drugging her or knocking her out. He didn’t care that her neighbors saw her being forced into a carriage, kicking and screaming. Kidnapped.

  Behind her the man she’d stabbed yanked the knife from beneath his shoulder and threw it with a clatter to the floor. Then he rose, following them, with a look that promised her pain.

  He needed to get in line if he wanted to her hurt her. Apparently Ivan was first.

  The door to her town house slammed behind them.

  Twenty-seven

  Alek threw open the door to the house in Ulstrat. “Byron!” he yelled. The call echoed through the empty home and he knew immediately Byron wasn’t there. The enormous building felt like a frigid shell.

  “Joshui damn it all,” he muttered, heading through the foyer and into the library. The fire in the hearth was long cold and the glasses they’d been drinking from several days before still rested on a table.

  He’d traveled to Middentown only to find Byron had recently left. Their mutual friends had said Byron was upset and hadn’t told them where he was headed next.

  Alek turned in a slow circle in the middle of the room. He’d figured Byron would have returned home, but there was no evidence that he’d so much as stopped here since leaving the first time. Byron could be anywhere in Rylisk by now. The stupid bastard. Alek didn’t want to have to chase him all over the country.

  He checked the house for some clue as to where Byron had traveled. Entering Byron’s bedroom, he stopped short.

  The room was a total disaster.

  He stepped forward, nudging Byron’s favorite vase with his shoe, now lying shattered on the floor. The pillow looked like it had been cut to ribbons and someone had thrown everything to the ground with the objective of destroying all they could.

  He frowned as he took it all in. Byron in a fit of rage?

  No. This was nothing like him at all.

  His mind flitted back to the break-in. Someone meant them harm. Moving quickly, he checked the rooms where he and Lilya had stayed. No damage.

  Frowning, he reentered Byron’s bedroom, his shoes crunching on broken pottery. Judging by the looks of this room, the only room attacked in such a way—he’d say it was Byron who bore the brunt of this stranger’s ill will. This seemed really personal.

  He had no idea where to find Byron, but to get to Byron all one had to do was threaten Lilya.

  Sweet Joshui.

  Alek turned on his heel. He had to get back to Milzyr right now.

  Byron headed up the steps to the door of Lilya’s house and knocked. No one answered. She wasn’t home? That was odd. It was so early in the morning. Maybe she’d gone somewhere with Alek . . . that is, if she hadn’t rejected him.

  He’d arrived in Middentown and had stayed for two days before realizing that he was making a mistake—maybe the biggest mistake of his life.

  He’d been sitting there in a group of three happy couples and they’d been teasing him about finding a wife. Marta had told him he could have any woman he wanted and it had struck him—he would never want any woman but Lilya.

  Not ever.

  If he didn’t take the risk of telling Lilya how he felt, he would end up alone until the day he died. Alek had been right; he was a fool. Lilya was all that mattered.

  That evening he’d taken the first transport he could board to Milzyr, traveled all night, and gone straight to the Temple of Dreams to tell Lilya how he felt about her. If she rejected him,
it would wound him deeply, but he couldn’t live without knowing. He couldn’t live with the regret of never having told her.

  But she hadn’t been at the Temple of Dreams, which had perplexed him at first. Then he realized what must have happened. She must have said yes to Alek and they’d both left for the town house. That filled him with elation, but also worried him.

  What if she only had feelings for Alek and not for him?

  He peered into the front window. The drapes were open and the coverings were off the furniture. That meant Lilya had taken up residence here for certain. But where was she?

  Remembering the back door, he headed around the side of the building and tried the knob. It was open. “Lilya?” he called, entering the kitchen. “Alek?” He stopped short, seeing everything pulled off the counters and hurled to the floor. Signs of a struggle.

  A knife. Blood.

  Heart pounding, he bolted down the hallway and into the living room. “Lilya! Alek!” Nothing. Only silence met him. He ran up the stairs and checked the bedrooms. Everything appeared in order, but no one was home.

  Something moved in the half-open closet, making him go on guard. He inched his way over slowly and eased the door open. A black-and-white cat strolled out, meowing up at him. He stared down at the cat, frowning for a moment, then picked it up. The cat purred when he petted its head and then jumped out of his arms and ran for the kitchen.

  Byron followed, watching the cat pace in front of the counter, purring even louder. This cat was hungry. How long had Lilya been gone? Locating some food for the cat, he filled up a bowl and set it on the floor along with a cup filled with water.

  Idly, he stroked the cat’s back as it wolfed down food like it hadn’t eaten in days. He stared at the knife and the dried smear of dark brown blood on the floor. “What happened here?” he asked the cat, wishing it could tell him. “Where did your mistress go?”

  He had a feeling he knew.

  Thinking back to the break-in at his house, the door left open like whoever had done it had wanted them to know he’d been there. Remembering the cologne Lilya had smelled that night, and the trip to the marketplace when she’d felt someone watching her. It seemed impossible after so many years, but could it be?

  “Ivan.” The word came out a low, animalistic growl.

  He was the only one he could think of who would do something like this.

  He knew where to find Ivan. Everyone knew where to find the most notorious crime lord of Milzyr since Ivan was so confident in his power he never bothered to hide it. He had the current law enforcement paid off, just as he’d paid off the Imperial Guard before them.

  Yet Byron knew more than most people.

  Ever since he’d learned that Ivan was Ivan Lazarson, he’d been gathering information on the man in preparation to punish him for what he’d done to Lilya. Thanks to a couple of contacts in Milzyr, Byron knew the addresses of all Ivan’s residences, his regular haunts, his business associates, even the women he slept with.

  He was also in possession of much personal information about the man. Ivan hadn’t invited a woman to live with him since Lilya. It was a fact Byron had regarded as odd. Ivan had seemed to commit to her in his twisted way, so much that he’d never obligated himself to another woman that way ever again. Unbeknownst to Lilya or Alek, Byron had made a study out of the man for the last three weeks and had been plotting just how he would take revenge on Lilya’s behalf.

  In fact, he’d already started.

  Those plans would have to be abandoned now. He couldn’t wait for the slow wheels of financial ruin he’d put in motion to work. If Ivan had Lilya, Byron would deal with the crime lord the old-fashioned way.

  “Lilya!” Someone yelled it from the front door, a fist pounding on the frame. The voice was muffled, but familiar. “Lilya!”

  Byron bolted down the hallway to the front door. He knew that voice all right. He yanked the front door open to find Alek on the steps.

  “You’re here?” Alek looked confused for a moment, then plunged past him into the house. “Never mind. You obviously haven’t been home, have you? Did you see the mess in your bedroom ?”

  Byron frowned. “What mess?”

  “Someone broke into your house again. This time they completely tore apart your bedroom. It almost seemed—”

  “Personal?” Byron’s whole body seemed to feel a shade darker. So it was Ivan who’d broken in that night and left the door open. Of course. He’d probably been watching them from afar the whole time Lilya had been in Ulstrat. Ivan had probably been watching Lilya from afar for a long time now.

  There was a reason he’d never committed to another woman—he was still in love with Lilya in some insane way.

  Alek nodded and looked around. “Where’s Lilya?”

  “I think Ivan has her.” He ground out the words as if they hurt.

  Alek blanched. “What?”

  “I’ll fill you in on the details on the way. We need to go right now. Let’s pray that we’re not already too late. When’s the last time you saw Lilya here?”

  “Two days ago.”

  Fear clenched its icy fist in his stomach. “Let’s go.”

  He never touched her. That was the only fortunate part of her captivity. It was almost as though she disgusted him. Instead his thugs touched her, but not in the way she most feared.

  At least, not yet.

  Dressed in a gown almost too fine to wear, she sat in a genteel sitting room. The garment was of dark blue silk and damask and she had on a pair of slippers that were so soft it was like going barefoot. She rested there endlessly drinking tea and listening to the grandfather clock in the hallway ticking off the moments of her imprisonment.

  For the last two days it had been this way. She had been given a beautifully decorated room, clothes that seemed tailored to fit her body—and, indeed, she was beginning to suspect they were—the best food, the finest tea, and the run of the house.

  Of course, she was not permitted to leave the house or walk the grounds and she had a shadow—several of them at all times.

  Her prison might not seem like a prison, but it was one all the same.

  Back in the kitchen, she’d anticipated a different sort of treatment. She’d expected a cell, beatings, and worse than beatings. None of that had occurred . . . yet. It was almost as if Ivan was watching her, studying her, deciding what to do to her. But why he was taking her measure this way perplexed her. Why did he care this much about her after so many years? She’d thought he’d just forgotten about her, had thrown her to the wolves as punishment for her imagined transgression like she was so much trash and then moved on.

  After all, she’d moved on. Slowly. Painfully.

  But, clearly, Ivan had not. Something about her still fascinated him. It was almost as if Ivan considered her his property and, as his property, she’d done something to displease him and was awaiting her punishment. Again. Dressing her up like a pretty doll and making her wait for her punishment without knowing when it was going to happen, that was Ivan’s special brand of torture.

  The swallow of tea in her throat went down hard. She’d come back from such punishment once, but she wasn’t sure she could do it twice.

  At least she had a knife tucked into her bodice that screamed she would never have to. It was a comforting pressure against her skin.

  They hadn’t found it because even the thugs were being very circumspect with her. She was allowed to bathe and change her clothes in private, so they’d never located the thin stiletto she kept tucked down the front of her dress at all times. It was her way out of here, but she needed to use it carefully. If she drew it in the presence of too many of the thugs, she might wound or kill one or more of them, but then they would just take it away from her and she would be weaponless.

  The careful way she was being handled unnerved her. If Ivan had immediately started treating her like trash, at least she wouldn’t be so confused. As it was, she had no idea what was coming; she only knew it
was going to be bad.

  A storm was brewing on the horizon.

  This morning he sat across from her, calmly reading a book while his minions passed through the room now and again, perhaps doing his evil bidding. This was one of the very few times she’d even seen him since she’d been abducted two days ago.

  She took a sip of her tea and sat back, studying him. “So, Ivan, what is it you intend? Do you just want me to be a decoration for your parlor for the next twenty years? You want me to sit here and drink tea while you completely ignore me and force your goons to fetch and carry for me?”

  Ivan said nothing to her for a moment, then he put his book aside and looked up at her. “I intend to do whatever I wish with you.”

  She knew her eyes were flashing. Her blood heated with anger. “You cannot treat me as though I’m property.”

  “Really? I can’t? I have lots of money and muscle that says I can.”

  “Why do you even care about me, Ivan?”

  Now his eyes flashed. “I care because I loved you once.”

  “Much to my misfortune. There are few women who can survive your brand of love, Ivan.”

  Red spots of color appeared on his cheeks and anger made his eyes bright. She was aware she was pushing him and that might turn out badly for her, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I don’t understand why you can’t just leave me alone and let me live the life I’m lucky to have after what you did to me.”

  If there hadn’t been five thugs in the house, she would have drawn her knife and stabbed him right then. She stared at him, her chest heaving and the blood rushing through her ears in her rage.

  Ivan stood, threw the book down to the chair, and walked slowly across the room to her. Murder lit his eyes. She recognized it because she’d seen it before. She stared at him as he came toward her with not even a trace of fear in her body. At this point, she was beyond fear. She’d had more than enough of this man’s presence in this world. Now all she wanted was him out of it.