Page 7 of Ruthless Bond

My wolf doesn’t care what I can and cannot have. My wolf recognized her the instant she walked through the door, when her scent reached me from fifteen feet away and hit my nervous system like a grenade. Every instinct I have was rewired in a single breath. Bond. Claim. Protect.

I open my eyes and look at the chair where she sat. I can see the slight impression she left in the leather. I can smell where her hand rested on the arm. My fingers itch to touch the spot. I don’t.

I think about the meeting instead. She’s smart. That was obvious within thirty seconds. She didn’t flinch at the number I quoted, not really. She processed it, ran calculations behind those dark eyes, and came back with practical questions instead of panic. She has her father’s composure. She also has his instinct for self-preservation: she took the deal because refusing wasn’t an option, but I could see her reframing it in real time. She’s not a woman who accepts captivity. She’s a woman who walks into the cage and starts looking for the structural flaws.

And she will find them.

I just put a woman trained in financial analysis inside my company. A woman whose father spent years watching us, tracking us, keeping records I haven’t been able to find. A woman who came to this meeting looking for answers and left with a job she didn’t want and a debt she doesn’t deserve and enough motivation to tear my operation apart from the inside if she decides that’s what justice looks like.

I should be alarmed. I should be making contingency plans. Instead I’m sitting here breathing in the ghost of her scent and thinking about how her pupils dilated when I shook her hand. She felt it too. Not like I do. But the edge of it.

I need to be careful.

I stand and walk to the window. The city stretches out below me, steel and glass and the gray plate of the lake. I’ve stood at this window a thousand times, looking down at the territory I hold, the empire I helped build. Right now I can’t focus on any of it. All I can think about is how she said when do I start with her chin slightly lifted, like she was daring me to believe she was compliant.

My phone vibrates. I check it.

Viktor again. This time it’s not a text. He’s calling.

I let it ring three times before I answer.

“Dominic.” My father’s voice carries the authority of a man who led this pack for over a century, compressed into a register that’s become rougher with age. He sounds like gravel over granite. “The Marchelli girl.”

“Handled.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ve offered her a position in the company. She’ll work the debt. I’ll keep her close until I know what Marco left behind.”

Silence. I can hear him breathing. The sound is slower than it used to be. At his age, even the small things start to change. Breaths come deeper. Joints take longer to warm. The wolf inside him is still formidable, still dangerous, but it lives inside a body that’s beginning to admit time exists.

“That’s generous of you,” he says. “Considering.”

He mutters something in Russian, too soft for a human to catch. I catch every syllable. He only falls back into the old language when he’s angry enough to forget which century we’re living in.

“Considering what?”

“Considering what her father was doing before he died.”

I keep my voice level. “Marco was doing his job.”

“Marco was keeping records. You know that. I know that. The only question is whether his daughter knows it too, and if she does, what she aims to do with them.”

“That’s what I intend to find out.”

Another silence. Then: “Be careful with this one, Dominic. She has his eyes.”

He hangs up before I can ask what he means by that. Whether he means she has Marco’s perception, his ability to see what others miss. Or whether he means she has the look of someone who will follow a thread until it unravels everything.

I set the phone on the desk and stand still, breathing, centering myself. The wolf is still there, still locked on, still repeating that single word in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine.

Mate.

I need to bring her into this building and keep her within arm’s reach without touching her. I need to let her work my books without letting her see too deep. I need to find out what Marco hid before she does. And I need to do all of this while my wolf is howling at me to close the distance between us and put my mouth on the place where her neck meets her shoulder and bite down until she carries my scent for the rest of her life.

Monday.

She starts Monday.