The smell of salt and rotting wood was the first thing to hit me.
I blinked against the harsh glare of a single swinging bulb, my head throbbing in time with the light. I was tied to a heavy wooden chair, my wrists raw from the rough hemp rope. My emerald dress—the one Dimitri had looked at with such hunger—was a tattered rag.
"Ah, she's awake," a voice crooned.
Marco Romano stepped into the light. He looked different than he had at the gala. The polished veneer was gone, replaced by a frantic, jagged energy. He held a straight razor in one hand, thumbing the blade.
"You're a dead man, Marco," I whispered, my voice sounding like it had been dragged over gravel. "Dimitri will burn this pier to the ground to get to me."
Marco laughed, but it wasn't the oily chuckle from before. It was a jagged, broken sound. He leaned down, the cold steel of the razor grazing my cheek.
"That's exactly what I'm counting on, Maya. Dimitri thinks he's coming here to be a hero. He thinks he can save the girl this time. But he's walking into an execution. For both of you."
He paced around me, his eyes unfocused. "Everyone thinks he's the victim. The great Ice Pakhan, mourning his lost Sofia. But do you want to know a secret, *milaya*? Sofia was mine first."
I froze. "What?"
"We were engaged," Marco hissed, his face twisting in a mask of pure agony. "A strategic alliance. But she loved him. She chose a Volkov over a Romano. He stole her heart, and then he let her die because he was too busy counting his money to watch her back. He stole my life that day. So today? Today I take his. And I'll take yours just to make sure he watches every second of it."
He didn't just want me dead. He wanted to recreate the trauma that had broken Dimitri ten years ago.
"He's here," a guard shouted from the warehouse door.
Marco's eyes lit up with a terrifying fire. "Take her to the edge of the pier. Let him see his prize before I take it away."
The guards dragged me, chair and all, out onto the salt-slicked wood of Pier 42. The wind whipped my hair into my face. The Hudson River churned below us, black and hungry.
A lone set of headlights cut through the fog at the far end of the pier.
The SUV stopped. The door opened. Dimitri stepped out.
Even from fifty yards away, I could feel the cold, lethal aura radiating off him. He wasn't wearing the tuxedo tonight. He was in tactical black, a rifle slung over his shoulder, looking like the God of War himself.
"Dimitri, no! It's a trap!" I screamed, but the wind swallowed my voice.
Marco stepped out beside me, his hand gripping my hair, pulling my head back to expose my throat to the razor. "Drop the weapons, Volkov! Or she bleeds out right here, just like Sofia!"
Dimitri stopped. I saw his hand tighten on the rifle. The standoff felt like an eternity. He looked at me—truly looked at me—and for the first time, I saw the man behind the Pakhan. He wasn't thinking about his empire. He was thinking about me.
He unslung the rifle and dropped it onto the wood. Then he pulled two handguns from his belt and dropped those too. He raised his hands, walking forward slowly.
"Let her go, Marco," Dimitri's voice echoed over the water, deep and unshakable. "This is between us. She has nothing to do with the past."
"She is the past!" Marco roared. "She's the chance you don't get to have! Men! End him!"
Four Romano soldiers stepped from behind the shipping containers, their barrels leveling at Dimitri's chest.
*Crack-zip.*
The first Romano's head snapped back before he could pull the trigger. Then another.
"Now!" a voice roared from the shadows. Yuri.
The pier erupted into a symphony of violence. Muzzle flashes lit up the fog like lightning. Dimitri dove for cover behind a crate, grabbing a hidden backup weapon from his boot in one fluid motion.
"Kill her!" Marco screamed, panicking as his men began to fall.
He lunged at me with the razor.
Adrenaline is a strange thing. It makes the world slow down. I felt the chair tip as I threw my weight to the side. The wood hit the pier with a jarring thud, snapping the aged, brittle legs of the chair. My hands were still tied, but the weight was gone.
As Marco leaned over me, I pulled my knees to my chest and kicked out with both feet, catching him square in the chest. He tumbled backward, the razor flying from his hand and skittering across the wood.
I rolled, my fingers frantically searching the debris of the broken chair. I found a jagged shard of wood. I sawed at the hemp ropes, the splinters digging into my skin, but I didn't care.
Chaos reigned around me. Fire had broken out in a stack of pallets, the orange glow reflecting off the shipping containers. I saw Dimitri moving through the smoke like a wraith, his suppressed pistol spitting death at every Romano who stood in his path.
"Maya!" he shouted.
I felt the ropes give way. I scrambled to my feet, but a hand caught my ankle. Marco. He was bleeding from a graze on his shoulder, his face a distorted mask of madness.
"If I can't have her, no one can!" he shrieked, lunging for a discarded submachine gun on the ground.
I dove for him, my weight slamming into his back, but he was stronger. He tossed me off like a ragdoll. He leveled the gun at my chest, his finger tightening on the trigger.
A shadow loomed over him.
Dimitri didn't shoot. He tackled Marco with the force of a freight train, the two of them crashing into a heavy steel container. The sound of bone hitting metal echoed over the gunfire.
Dimitri stood over him, his face covered in soot and blood, looking like the monster he had always promised he could be. He reached down, grabbing Marco by the throat and lifting him off the ground.
"You touched her," Dimitri rasped, his voice a promise of extinction. "You took her from my home."
"Kill me," Marco wheezed, a bloody grin on his face. "Do it. Be the monster she thinks you are."
Dimitri's eyes flickered to me. I was standing ten feet away, trembling, covered in salt and blood.
"Dimitri, look out!" I screamed.
From the darkness of a shipping container, the scarred captain from the cellar emerged, his rifle aimed directly at Dimitri's back.
"Dimitri!"
Everything happened at once. I didn't think about the contract. I didn't think about the fear. I lunged for the discarded razor on the ground.