Page 82 of Captured Obsession

“I’ll bring you Dmitri Volkov …ifyou bring me The Wolf’s head. I suspect you know how to do that. Tell him I’m open to his negotiations since he stupidly believes that. Tell him everything you’ve seen here tonight, and have him here within the week. Surely, you know how to take out the head of a family.”

I don’t let my surprise show on my face. Considering I was willing to die to get here, I find myself moreshocked to discover I have something I want to live for. Luca has clearly read the situation for what it is: that I’ll die for Sienna. That he’ll give me what I want in exchange for the head of The Wolf. I do doubt, however, he’ll bring Dmitri to me unprotected. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone to all this effort to keep him away from me in the first place.

I struggle to imagine what my half-brother might be like in person, and whether I’ll be inclined to kill him. Not because I care that he killed our father, but because he got out. I’m curious about the person who shares the same blood as that ruthless man to see how the seed of a monster sprouts when it isn’t nurtured by that same monster. But it now feels less important to meet him as I focus on what my purpose has become—protecting Sienna. But if I can take my chance to meet him only once, I will.

“That is your role as the messenger, is it not?” Luca quips. The hound behind him lowers his gun. “Draw out The Wolf and make him bleed. Do we have an agreement?”

I glance down at Sienna, who looks like she’s stopped breathing. She stares up at me, terrified, and my gaze softens. For her, I would do anything, which makes me more the fool.

She’s become my weakness, but also my purpose.

“Yes,” I reply grudgingly. I have no loyalties to anyone but her.

Sienna takes a deep breath, and it’s as if it’s filledmy own lungs. My decision is final. I will be her shield, even though I was the asshole who brought her into this mess in the first place. Yet I wouldn’t change any of it because it led me to her.

Sienna tugs on my hand. “We’re getting out of here while everyone cools their heads.” She’s mad, and I find it strange how she’s half my weight but easily drags me through the group of people. The men move out of her way without question, as if she’s the one to be feared.

“Oh and,Udav? My wife wants visitation rights to ensure her friend’s safety. I’m assuming my courtesy will allow such hospitality,” Luca calls out.

Fucking asshole. Now he’s using this situation to make him look good in front of his wife.

“Anudavthrough and through,” I hear him say to the hound closest to him, and I can’t help but wish we would have been able to fully unleash on each other. Because I think a fight with the famed Diablo would very much be worth dying for.

But as I look at the furious woman in front of me as she leads me through the crowded club, I don’t know if I’ll live to test that theory.

34

SIENNA

“You sure you know what you’re doing there?” I ask as Nikolai searches through the butler’s kitchen. When we returned, Nikolai ordered both Agata and Andrei to retire for the evening. He spoke only briefly with Andrei, updating him about what he’d seen at the fight club but leaving out his agreement with Luca. A knot forms in my lower stomach. Does that mean something will happen to Andrei? I know he technically works for The Wolf, but he’s always been kind to me.

However, it does nothing to deter my fury over what transpired tonight. I was so angry, I couldn’t speak on the drive back to the apartment because I knew I’d spew nothing but venom.

Do all these men just fight each other? Nikolai might mock the world I come from, but at least inbusiness the men are more civil—at least from what I’ve seen. At the bare minimum, they pretend to tolerate one another.

All my fears became reality when I heard the gunshot as I was walking up those stairs, and my heart spilled onto the floor, panicked that Nikolai had been shot.

I’d gone numb in that moment, and I’m so furious that for those few seconds, I actually thought the worst. And I’m angry athimfor letting me believe that. For so abruptly having to face the fact that this man has slithered so deeply into my heart that I can’t think past the idea of something happening to him.

My mind suddenly conjures up the interaction with my friends that took place just before I found Nikolai and Luca fighting.

“There’s no bomb,” the masked man, who I’d learned is referred to as a hound, had said, almost sounding a little disappointed as he checked my necklace.

“Of course there isn’t. I’ve been trying to tell you Nikolai has been protecting me. I know it doesn’t make sense, but you have to trust me,”I’d said, irritated that they hadn’t listened. My friends had seemed shocked and uncertain as to what to say. But whatcouldthey say?

I already looked like I’d gone off the deep end, and maybe I have. All I know is it’s my responsibility to protect him in the same way he’s been protecting me.

They hadn’t tried to stop me as I’d left the roomand stormed in the direction Luca and Nikolai had gone.

That’s when I’d heard the gunshot. That’s when I’d thought the worst. And that pain had suffocated me the same way it had when I’d peered into my mother’s casket. The moment I’d realized someone’s spark and life could be taken with no concern of those left behind.

Nikolai is part of a dangerous world, and I have to accept that. But having to go through life without him has become … inconceivable. I’m obsessed with my captor.

I watch him going through the motions of making a sandwich, a million questions roaming around in my head as I do.How do I get closer to him? How do I protect him?One thing I don’t question is that Nikolai wants me just as much as I do him.

He finishes the mundane task, and says, “Yes, I know how to make a sandwich.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m just surprised to see you being so … domestic. Since when are you so acquainted with a kitchen? I thought Agata did everything for you.”