NICOLEI woke to the smell of damp concrete and rust. My head throbbed, and a thick, metallic taste coated my tongue. I was in a small, windowless room, dimly lit by a single bare bulb overhead. The floor was rough, the walls scarred, and the cold was deep enough to penetrate the expensive velvet of my gown.

I was tied to a wooden chair. Thick, rough ropes bit into my wrists and ankles. The heavy, beautiful Volkonsky heirloom—the diamond and sapphire necklace—was gone.

Two of the men who had grabbed me were in the room. My first thought, irrational and desperate, was not I am going to die, but Kirill will be furious that I failed my only job.

To think I'd get kidnapped on my first night out with him was beyond terrible luck.

“Is she awake?” I heard a third voice and two extra footsteps walked in.

“Yes, Boss,” the other two stood straight and answered who I now knew was the Boss. I must really have the worst luck.

I mustered the courage to speak up. “You do know that this is a waste of both our time, right?” I had to sound confident.

“What?” The boss looked irritated.

“I have no value as a hostage. I'm not as important to Kirill as you think,” I wasn't lying about that part.

A phone was placed on a crate in front of me. The boss leaned down impatiently and gagged my mouth. I guess he was tired of hearing my nonsense.

“Your fiancé is on the line, little bird. Don’t waste his time.”

My stomach churned. This was it.

The man hit the speaker button. The silence on the line was profound, amplifying the heavy pounding of my heart.

A moment later, Kirill’s voice filled the small, dirty room. It was not the voice of a man worried about his missing fiancée; it was the voice of a man interrupted while doing something more worthwhile. It was utterly devoid of emotion.

“Ivan Volkonsky,” he stated simply.

He spoke in rapid, aggressive Russian, then switched to flawless English.

“We are with your lovely fiancée. The one who was wearing your mother’s necklace.”

Kirill was silent for a beat. Then came the question that sliced through my last thread of hope. I knew I wasn't that valuable to him but this was…

“And the whole point of this?” Kirill sighed, the sound radiating utter exasperation.

The kidnapper’s face tightened with shock and irritation. He hadn't expected such nonchalance. He quickly listed their demands: financial concessions, territory changes, something large and complicated that involved shipping routes.

"If you want your precious wife safe and sound, then you should agree. We wait for your word.”

Again, the silence stretched and I practically held my breath, waiting for Ivan to respond.

Calmly and detached, he gave a simple answer. “No.”

The kidnappers stared at the phone. My own heart seemed to stop.

“What?” the leader snarled.

“No,” Kirill repeated. “I have no desire to make a trade with alley thugs like you. Besides, why would I offer so much to save her?”

I didn't know the word to use to describe the state of shock I was in right now. I had expected that he wouldn't care much but this wasn't that he didn't care much, he didn't care at all.

“The gag,” the leader commanded, his fury now focused on me.

A rough hand ripped the cloth from my mouth. The sudden release felt blinding. My throat was dry, but I knew I had to speak. I had to remind him of the contract, of the shame of publicly abandoning his bride.

“Ivan—” I started, my voice weak and hesitant.

The gasp of irritation from the phone was instant and loud. “How did you get yourself kidnapped? You haven’t even been in Russia for up to three weeks,” he nagged, the sound of his disappointment sharper than any knife.

Tears welled in my eyes, but I fought them back. This was my last chance to plead my case.

“This is far from my fault,” I whined, my voice cracking under the emotional weight. I wouldn't have been kidnapped if I wasn't engaged to him, so this was indeed his fault.

“I even told them that I didn't have value as a hostage, but they still wouldn't let me go!”

The kidnapper snatched the phone. “Did you hear that, Kirill? She is pleading with you. You have twenty minutes to agree to the demands, or we will have our way with her, and then we will kill her. We will send you proof of the degradation first.”

The leader ran a coarse, heavy hand along my thigh, an invasive, terrifying threat that made my skin crawl. “DON'T!” I screamed, twisting violently against the ropes. “Don’t lay a single finger on me!”

The leader grinned into the phone, satisfied by my display of terror. “Did you hear your little Omega scream, Kirill? Your time is ticking.”

Maybe now, he'd actually do something. As much as I hated the thought of that bastard touching me, it would surely prompt Ivan to take this more seriously.

“I don’t really care what you do to her. Feel free to do as you please.”

Click.

The line went dead and the silence that followed was suffocating.

My hope—the foolish, pathetic, deluded hope I had harbored since he placed his hand on my back to cover Pavel’s scent—snapped completely. It wasn't just that he didn't value me; it was that he had abandoned me. He had actively given permission for them to hurt me.

My vision tunneled and the walls of the dirty room seemed to close in on me, suffocating me. The memory of neglect, the cold indifference of my father, the sneering cruelty of my stepmother—it all rushed back, amplified a thousand times by the chilling finality of Kirill’s voice.

He left me.

A dizzying wave of fear and profound hopelessness washed over me. I gasped, struggling to breathe as my body began to shake violently, my muscles locking up as the full force of the panic attack overtook me.

My jaw seized. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, and I couldn't scream. The leader of the kidnappers, enraged by Kirill's refusal and seeking an immediate outlet for his humiliation, turned on me.

“Damn it!” He hit me on the face snapping my head to the side and filling my mouth with the salty taste of blood. Before I could process the pain, he delivered a vicious kick to the side of the chair.

The chair splintered and went flying backward with a crash, sending me sprawling onto the cold, dusty floor, the ropes digging into my flesh. The impact jarred my already failing senses.

The room began to spin. Black spots bloomed in my vision, but through the fading light, I saw a sudden, chaotic flash of movement at the door. Shadows. Gunfire. Screams that weren't mine.

And then, above the violence, a figure emerged—tall, dark, and utterly dominant.

“Kirill,” my lips barely moved as I lost consciousness.