Page 1 of Ruthless Sin
PROLOGUE
NICO
MOSCOW. THREE YEARS AGO.
My wrists are zip-tied to the chair.
Concrete beneath my boots, rough and freezing through the leather. Above me, a single bulb sways on a frayed wire, throwing shadows that don’t hold still. Every breath grinds my ribs. The wet shirt clings to my chest, soaked from three knife wounds. The fourth cut sits lower, four inches beneath my left ribcage. Hot. Deep. That one is going to kill me if I don’t move.
Six feet across from me, another chair. A woman.
Yelena.
Her hands zip-tied to the armrests. Hair loose. Blood at her temple from where the guard hit her on the way in. Her chin is up.
Breathing.
Still breathing.
Still alive. Keep her there.
The door opens and Alexei Morozov walks in like he owns the air in the room. Cigarette between two fingers. Suit jacket gone, sleeves rolled to his elbows, no hurry in any part of him. He crosses toward her without looking at me.
“Last chance,dorogaya.” Darling. “Tell me which family sent him. Tell me who else knows.”
She doesn’t look at him.
She looks at me.
“No one sent him,” she says. Steady as a wall. “He came alone.”
“Liar.”
He backhands her.
Her head snaps left. Blood at the corner of her mouth now, spreading into what was already there.
I pull against the restraints until the chair scrapes the floor and my shoulders tear and the cuts along my chest open wider and I hear myself make a sound I don’t recognize.
Move. Do something. Anything.
I can’t.
Alexei turns to me.
“Canadian.” He smiles, and his eyes don’t. “You’re very quiet. Tell me. What did she promise you? Money? Routes? Or did you fuck her first and then make the deal?”
I don’t answer.
His smile drops.
“No?”
He walks to Yelena’s chair. Puts the cigarette out on the armrest, six inches from her hand.
She doesn’t flinch.
Christ. She’s not flinching.
