Chapter 3

Three

R uby

He leads me to his office, where, from the darkness that spills in through the thrown drapes covering his windows, I can see it is night. The dog lays, alert, on a massive dog bed beside the lit fireplace. I'm not sure the breed, but the hair is short and mostly black. He possesses a regalness that is terrifying. There are patches of brown in the sleek black, and his eyes seem to see everything.

I force my gaze back to the windows. To the darkness that yawns over a rolling land of white.

I miss the sun.

I haven't seen the sun in what feels like a lifetime. I haven't felt the warmth of the rays against my pale, freckle-speckled skin. In fact, it's been so long since I've felt the soothing warmth, even my freckles look paler. Faded. Lifeless.

Like my eyes.

I hate him.

Mama always said it was wrong to hate. But I hate him for doing this to me.

He guides me to the chair that sits on the other side of his desk before he rounds the gleaming beast to lower his body into his own chair. It's an ostentatious chair, really: wingback, black leather.

He leans back, those dark eyes studying me. Appraising me.

I wonder, could I seduce him into loosening the binds of my prison enough that I might escape him?

As soon as the thought enters my mind, I deflate. He's so pretty, so darkly magnetic, I'm confident he is no innocent to the wiles of women as they try their hand at seduction. And I'm no wily woman. My cunning extends to the hidden corners of the library in my small town, where I've worked since I was a teen, and intended to work until the day I died. My craft was exclusive to sitting alone, hunched over the pages of a treasured book, my only charm the nimble work of my slender fingers as I rebound old works.

I've mostly kept to myself, but I liked it that way.

I wouldn't know what to do with a man, most certainly not a man such as him .

I haven't even had a boyfriend, though I'd been flirting with the thought of returning Mile's playful conversation after church—before Mama got sick. When she got sick, it happened fast, and it happened hard. One day, she was her normal self. The next…

And then I stood over her coffin, my father's arm wrapped around my shoulders, the heavy weight a comfort I knew wouldn't stay. He'd promised to return more often, vowed I would always be taken care of, before he again left for his work. It's not like I could blame him. Life went on, even in death.

I could never have known that the last time I saw him at Mama's funeral would be the very last I would ever see him. Maybe I would have hugged him harder. Maybe I would have begged him to stay.

Now they're both gone.

Either way, I hadn't had the will to flirt with Mile's after Mama.

And then—then, one night as I entered the home I'd always shared with Mama after a night working in the library, everything changed. A man moved behind me, his fabric-covered hand sliding over my mouth—and I'd fallen into an unwilling sleep.

I'd woken up here. With him .

No. I feel my shoulders slump, hopeless. I don't have the experience or the will to begin the dangerous game that would be seducing a man like the man who sits before me now.

In trickery, I am foolishly naive. In danger, I am shamefully harmless. In seduction, I am harrowingly innocent.

He would eat me alive and toss away my broken, used carcass.

My heart gives a quick jolt as he pushes forward, his hands steepling on his desk. "Are you aware you have a brother?"

I blink. Three quick blinks. "I'm sorry?"

"In fact, you have multiple brothers, that I am aware of. Although, like your father, my brother has killed all but one."

Something icky and sticky swells in my throat. I do my best to swallow it down. "Y—you're mistaken."

"No. I'm not."

"My father was loyal to my mother," I stammer. "T—they were married."

Even if he'd never allowed her to take his name, they were married.

His eyes travel over the length of me slowly, pausing at the trembling knot of my hands in my lap. He pulls his bottom lip into his mouth and sits back in his chair again. I'm not fool enough to think the lazy way he lounges doesn't mean he isn't ready to strike. I have a feeling this man is always coiled to strike, like a cobra. Deadly.

"Marriage means nothing to a man like Ivan Popov."

"Marriage means everyth—" I stop, hope flooding my chest like a beach in high tide. My hands grip the arms of my chair, and I lean forward. "My father's name is Ivan Petrov. You have the wrong man." My laugh is high, a little wild, and a lot unhinged. I can't control the rattling of my bones; I'm shaking with revived adrenaline. All this time, he's had me because he thought I was the daughter of Ivan Popov. "You have—" I can't stop laughing. "The wrong girl."

That must mean Daddy is alive.

My heart soars. Hope and love and a new will to live mounts inside me.

Daddy is alive.

"No," his harsh voice, with his thick accent, cuts through my joy like a blade. "I don't have the wrong girl, Ruby Belle."

My laugh dies a soft, breathless death. "You said his name was Ivan Popov."

He cocks his head curiously. "If he married your mother, why don't you have his last name?"

"My mother kept her last name, for safety. His work was dangerous. I—I was given her last name."

"And what is it you think he did for work, my little Ruby Belle?"

I've yet to tell him anything, even under threat of torture. Then, when he'd told me my father had been killed—I'd simply not spoken because there'd not been a point. Now, now I know he is asking about the wrong man. I don't know an Ivan Popov. My father is Ivan Petrov.

I start speaking, the words rushing from between my lips to fall between us. "My father owns a shipping company. He delivers goods all around the world, but he also delivers to countries that are dangerous, some war torn. It was dangerous for us to be associated with him, so he took precautions to keep us safe. We—I don't see him often. He works a lot."

"A shipping company?" The man raises an amused brow. "That's what he told you?"

"Yes, he delivers goods?—"

"Ivan Popov specialized in the trade and transport of human beings."

His words crash into me like an icy wave. I'm jarred, as though his words were a physical punch, knocking the very breath from my lungs.

It takes a moment, but I gather enough control to muster a weak, "I don't know who Ivan Popov is."

"He was your father." I shake my head, but the man continues, "Ivan Petrov was an alias. A shit one, at that."

I'm still shaking my head. "No."

The man leans forward. He flips open a laptop, tapping keys. Then he spins the laptop to face me and—I. Can't. Breathe.

My father's face stares back at me, looking colder than I've ever seen it. The man presses a key and the picture changes. The shot is candid, and although it's taken at a distance, I can clearly see my father where he stands, his hand on his hips, as he stares into a sea can full of?—

"Oh my God." I touch my fingertips to my lips as though I might be able to keep the bile in.

I'm a fool to think such a thing.

I've clearly been raised a fool.

I'm just—a— fool .

The vomit lands on the hardwood with a sickening splat. My mind races. Images of the man I'd grown up loving, adoring, looking up to—they soar through my mind like fireflies, winking in and out, flashing with that image of the bodies in the sea can—and the way he'd stood over them with that hard look on the face that was so familiar and yet entirely unrecognizable.

Memories land on the lash of a whip. Daddy holding me close, kissing my hair. Cotton candy and the scent of salted butter on popped corn. Daddy watching as I screamed to the sky on a colorful ride. The scent of hot sand and a salty sea, stretched out on my belly on the beach of the private villa Daddy had splurged on. I'd been pretending to be asleep, but behind the shaded lenses that covered my eyes, I watched as he spun her around, bare feet in the sand, and a kiss between lifelong lovers. The memories connect like a whip again and again, splitting my skin, bleeding me of the love I've always carried for a man I thought I knew…

"Oh, God," I sob. I don't realize I've stood from my chair until my knees hit the hard floor. My vision blurs, sick rolls in my belly, my sobs turn to a wail. Despair feasts on my soft, exposed, stripped raw, soul. "Nononono. Noooo."

Something strong wraps around me. Arms. His arms.

I fight.

My limbs fly.

My soul bleeds.

Everything hurts.

"Stop." His command falls on deaf ears. I'm beyond caring what happens to me now.

My mind can't cope with the horrors I've learned. The truths I've uncovered.

He barks something in a language I don't understand. I know it's Russian. I don't understand it, but it's familiar. Too familiar.

My head whips from side to side.

The office door opens. A man enters.

I buck in the arms of my captor. He grunts but doesn't release me.

I scream. It's ear-splitting.

My head hurts.

My heart pounds.

There's a pinch and then there's just…

Darkness.