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AS I STEPPED OFF THE back of his bike, I knew I should have been charmed.
This was what he was doing all this for, wasn’t he? To charm me? To show me that he wanted me, that he was capable of giving me everything I needed from him? He’d whisked me away from the safehouse into the sunshine of the countryside, his motorcycle whipping along the side of the Danube River as the sun beamed down on both of us. I’d had no choice but to hang on to him, even though I wanted nothing more than to pull back and hide.
I knew that, in another life, I might have been taken in by everything he was showing me. He called me beautiful, he took care of me, he looked out for my father. He was handsome, in some sort of way, with that shaven head and his beard, even if he was a good ten years older than me. In another life, maybe I would have been attracted to his hardness, his dangerous attitude, and I would have been able to forget about everything else that surrounded him.
He was trying to show me the life he thought I wanted, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I needed no part of this. I didn’t want him to romance me, because there was no way I would ever let myself fall for him.
There was someone else in my heart right now, someone who took up more space than anyone else. It would have infuriated Nikita if I had even breathed his name, so I had done my best to keep it to myself, but with every beat of my heart, I could feel him. Andreas.
I missed him so badly it felt like there was a part of me carved out and left behind, a section of me still back in New York, still lying in his bed, in his arms. I had no idea if he could even stand to think of me after the way I had run and left him behind, but even if he couldn’t look me in the eye anymore, I still loved him. Loved him in a way that I had never loved anyone before in my life, loved him in a way that made everything else just vanish entirely. I wished he was here with me, that the two of us had run together so that we could be alone with one another. It was what we deserved, after everything we had been through, and yet...
“Where are we?” I asked Nikita, trying to bring myself back into the here and now. He smiled at me, almost warmly.
“This is Golubac Castle,” he explained, gesturing to the magnificent, crumbling structure before us. “Normally, it’s open to the public, but today it’s just for us.”
Alone with him? I wasn’t sure I liked that idea, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Short of hopping back on that bike and tearing out of there alone, I had no way to get out of this, and he must have known that. The look on his face told me everything I needed to know. He held his hand out to me, and I took it, seeing no other option but to go along with him.
“Let’s take a look inside, shall we?” he murmured. This was his attempt at romance, and maybe it would have worked on someone else. I could see a million women who would have swooned at something like this, a whole castle just for the two of us, but my heart was already full with someone else.
“Yeah, sure,” I replied, trying to keep a smile on my face as we headed up the stone steps to the beautiful old building.
It had been built in the fourteenth century, Nikita explained to me, and had served as a stronghold for the people who had ruled over this part of the country; it still had this nobility to it, even after all those years, the stone walls holding strong as though they would stand for eternity and a day. Even though Nikita was right there with me, I did my best to enjoy this adventure, telling myself that it might be a while until I got a chance to do something like this again.
We spiraled our way up the stairs and to the top of the fort, which looked out over the river and across the countryside below. It was a stunning view, and I wished that Andreas had been there to enjoy it with me. I could almost feel his arms wrapping around my waist, his head on my shoulder as he admired it along with me. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to lose myself to that vision, but I knew it wouldn’t last long.
And, sure enough, Nikita began to speak, shattering what was left of my fantasy entirely.
“This place is beautiful, isn’t it?” he remarked, and I nodded.
“It’s lovely.”
“All the more beautiful for having you here, too,” he remarked, and he put a hand on my waist. I fought the urge to pull away from him. Being alone with him here, I knew that I had to play along, at least a little longer. I didn’t know what he would do to me if I didn’t react the way he wanted me to right now, and I didn’t much like the thought of finding out.
“Thanks,” I replied, awkwardly. Could he tell how uncomfortable I was? He must have been able to, right? I doubted he cared. He knew that he had me exactly where he wanted me, and I was sure he was going to push to get exactly what he wanted.
“You know, people used to rule from this very spot,” he continued, gesturing to the stone around us.
“They would look over everything from the safety of this fort and know that it belonged to them,” Nikita explained to me. “And they would be sure they would never lose it. Don’t you wish you could know what that feels like?”
I made a non-committal noise. I had no idea what he expected me to say to that, not really. I wanted to get out of here, but I knew he wasn’t going to let me until he was sure that he had gotten his point through to me.
“I know what it feels like,” he murmured, and he shifted a bit closer to me. I fought the urge to recoil. I hated that we were alone here right now. He seemed to have me right where he wanted me. If I could have pushed him away, I would have, but I didn’t have a choice. For the safety of myself and my father, I had to let him think I was okay with this.
“But I want someone to share it with, Nadia,” he continued, reaching out to touch my hand. My fingers hung limply in his, not providing any encouragement. I didn’t want to give him an inch.
“I want a bride.”
His words hung in the air between us, and I tried not to let the panic take control of me. He was going to force me to accept this, and I wasn’t sure I could go through with it. I knew that Mauro had told me to go along with anything he asked, but this...
“I’m sure that this comes as a shock to you,” he went on. “But your beauty has entranced me from the day we met, Nadia. I can’t imagine sharing all of this with anyone other than you, I hope you understand that.”
He caught my face in his hand and brought it around so that I had no choice but to look at him. His fingers were firm on my skin, and it was clear he was telling me I was meant to be paying attention to him right now.
“I know that you’ll be the perfect wife for me, Nadia,” he told me. “I want to show you everything that you can have if you stay with me. Do you know how good life could be, if you just agree to what I’m asking?”
It was like he was striking a business deal, not making a proposal. I eyed him for a long moment. I wasn’t sure how to respond. My gut was telling me to wrench myself away from him, fling myself over the edge of the fort if that’s what it took, and flee as far as I could from this man, but I had to stay put. I dragged my eyes from his, praying that he wasn’t going to ask me to make a decision right now.
“And I know my life would be a lot easier if you agreed,” he continued, his voice taking on that edge that told me that I should look out for myself.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“Well, my anger at the people who’ve wronged me back in America might not feel as... pressing if I had the support of a woman like you,” he told me. I stared at him.
“I don’t know what you—”
“Take someone like Andreas, for example,” he replied, waving his hand. “After everything he’s done, you’d expect me to take him out.”
My heart skipped a beat inside my chest. I hated hearing him even talk about Andreas, but I knew this was a power-play. He was trying to get me to agree to anything he put out there by scaring me shitless. I kept my face as neutral as I could, praying that I wasn’t giving anything away before I was ready.
“But if I had someone like you to soothe me, I might feel differently,” he explained. “And I might be willing to forget he ever wronged me in the first place. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do,” I murmured. He was holding Andreas’ life over my head, making me responsible for anything that happened to him. My gut reaction was to do whatever it took to protect the man I loved – but would he want me to go through with whatever he was suggesting? Would he really want me to marry this man, just to keep him safe?
“And I hope that you’ll see how important it is to me,” he went on. “And perhaps that could have some... influence on your decision.”
He was blackmailing me. Blackmailing me with the life of Andreas because he knew he could. My father’s life was in his hands, too, but they had formed some sort of truce where nothing could happen to my dad as long as he was here. Andreas, though? Nikita had no reason to treat him with the same respect. He and Andreas were rivals, not just in business, but now over me – and he was going to use that to twist the knife and get me to go along with what he was suggesting.
Marriage, though. Something as huge as that... I didn’t know that I could handle it. A whole life with this man? I mean, yes, he might not live a whole lot of it, given his line of work, but still – there was so much I would have to go through, so much I would have to endure. I could still feel the grip of his hands on my face, the sick sensation that his touch stirred in me. Could I go through with something more than that? I wasn’t sure I could. I wasn’t sure that I could even entertain the idea of it.
“You see what I’m saying?” he asked, and I nodded.
“I do.”
“I like to hear you say those words,” he murmured, and that smile licked up his lips again. A smile, like he was a predator who had just spotted unattended prey at loose in the woods. I shivered. It wasn’t cold up there on the fort, but he seemed to bring with him this air of freezing ice, like he was solidifying everything to snow around him.
“I... this is all so much,” I told him quickly. I wanted to make out like I was flustered by a proposal as huge as that, but I had no idea how he would take it. He wasn’t a man who was used to being told no, and I needed to frame this in just the right way to convince him I was so stunned by the romance of this gesture that I needed time to think.
“I know,” he murmured. “But when you know, you know. And I know about you, Nadia. I’m sure about you.”
I chewed on my lip. How was I meant to get out of this? He was standing there in front of me, basically telling me that he would kill Andreas if I didn’t give him what he wanted, and I needed to come up with an answer or he was going to take the last thing that I was hanging on to from me.
“This could all be ours,” he told me, sweeping his hand out over the scenery in front of us. “We could rule together. You, by my side...”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” I blurted out, finally. It was the closest I could come to telling him that he was fucking crazy if he thought I was going to go along with his scheme for an instant – the closest I could come without being stranded out here after he drove off in a fury, that was. I had to be tactical. My mind was spinning, trying to come up with some way that I could shut this all down.
A frown crossed his face for a moment, but he didn’t let my discomfort throw him.
“Well, I’m sure I can give you some time to think about it,” he reasoned. “Say... twenty-four hours?”
I winced. Not anywhere close to enough, but if that was all that he was going to give me, I would have to hope that I could make it work. I nodded.
“Thank you,” I breathed. It wasn’t long, but it was better than nothing, and I would take anything I could get right now.
“You could be my Danube, Nadia,” Nikita told me, as he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close. The smell of his skin filled my nostrils, and I fought the urge to pull back and shove him away.
“Running through everything that I do,” he murmured. “Just think about it. You and me, against the world. Doesn’t that sound perfect?”
I didn’t reply. Because I knew that no answer I gave would be convincing enough for him – and I didn’t want to risk more than I already had in making sure I got out of here in one piece.
