Vicious Promise by M. James
Sofia
The moment that Luca walks out of the room, I sink down onto the couch, struggling not to burst into tears.
For all my bravado, I’m terrified. Everything that’s happened tonight—the drugging, the kidnapping, waking up in the hotel room only to be stuck in a closet during a shootout, fainting only to wake up in another strange room…and then being told that I have to marry this strange man?
It’s too much. It overwhelms me, and I press one hand over my mouth, trying desperately to breathe, not to cry, but I can’t help it. Too much has happened, too much has changed, and I feel the tears start to drip down my cheeks.
A moment later my face is buried in my hands, my shoulders shaking with deep, wracking sobs that threaten to send me over the edge into hysteria.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I hear a faint beep, like a smoke alarm, and look up to see a red light blinking next to the front door. A moment later, there’s another, farther off.
Fuck.
He set the alarms, just like he said I would. I’m trapped in this luxurious fortress of a penthouse, with a man who might as well be my jailer. A man who claims I have to marry him—or else.
I don’t know what the ‘or else’ might be, but nothing I’ve seen or heard tonight makes me think that it would be anything good. I definitely don’t think that it would include going back to my old apartment or my old life. And the thought of that terrifies me.
Why would you do this to me, papa?I stifle another sob, the voice in my head that of a sad, frightened twelve year old girl. I feel as if I’m losing him all over again, because the man I knew, the one who spun me in circles and smelled like vanilla tobacco, the one who brought me books and listened to me play the violin even before I was any good at it, wouldn’t have done this to me. He wouldn’t have forced me into a marriage with a man I don’t even know, a man in line to run the same organization that caused his death, that threatened my mother and all but certainly drove her to an early grave.
He would have, if it were the only way to keep you safe,I hear the small voice in my head whisper, but I don’t want to believe that. I don’t want to believe that there’s no other choice. Before tonight, I didn’t even know that the Bratva existed. I didn’t know any of this—and I can’t believe that all this time, this shadowy fate has just been waiting for me. That I’ve been living out a plan for a life that was never going to exist.
I want to stop crying, to be the strong and resilient woman that I know my father would want me to be, but I can’t. I feel betrayed, helpless, completely at a loss as to what to do—and above all, exhausted beyond what my battered body can handle. And so, with tears still streaming down my face, I collapse onto the couch, curling into a ball as I close my eyes tightly.
Maybe when I wake up, this will all have been a terrible dream.
* * *
It’s almostdawn when a hand on my shoulder wakes me up. I see a sliver of the faintly-greying sky outside of the floor-to ceiling window in Luca’s living room, and then I sit up with a start, adrenaline flooding my body as I realize with a sinking pit in my stomach that none of it was a dream. I’m still in Luca Romano’s penthouse. Everything that happened last night was real.
“Sofia.”
I turn sharply at the sound of Ana’s voice. She’s sitting next to me on the couch, her hands in her lap. Her face looks drawn, tired and pale, and I realize that she was the one who woke me up.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, startled. “How did you--?”
Ana smiles tiredly. “Luca called me.”
“Luca—how did he know—”
“Sofia, Luca knows everything and everyone in this city.” Ana reaches out, patting my hand gently. “Come on. There’s got to be a way to make some coffee, if we can find the kitchen.”
I follow her as if in a daze, looking around for any sign of Luca. But he doesn’t appear as we make our way into the spacious kitchen, and I let myself relax just a fraction, taking in my surroundings at last without his suffocating presence.
The kitchen is as large as half our apartment, and sparkling clean, as if no one ever actually uses it. He probably doesn’t, I think grimly. He probably goes out for every meal, or has a private chef. No one with this kind of money cooks their own food.
The entire room is as luxurious and elegant as the bedroom that I woke up in last night, after Luca took me out of the hotel room. The counters are all sleek black granite, the floor polished white marbled tile, and the appliances are gleaming steel, shined to a high polish. The cabinets are hardwood, banded with iron, and the island is dark hardwood with a gleaming black granite top as well. I’m seeing a theme here.
It only takes a second to glimpse the ridiculously complex and expensive-looking coffeemaker, next to an espresso machine that looks equally expensive and unused. Ana makes a face as she pokes at them, peering at the dials. “I don’t know how to use any of this,” she admits. “Can’t the man just have a fucking Keurig?”
“No,” I say tiredly, sinking into a chair. “He’s richer than God, apparently.” After another few minutes of watching Ana try to figure out the coffeemaker, I sigh. “Ana, please. I don’t even want coffee. I just want to go home.”
To my shock, I see Ana’s eyes fill with tears as she turns to face me.
“You can’t,” she whispers, and I feel the pit in my stomach turn to ice.
I stand up, almost knocking the chair over in my haste. “Luca keeps saying that!” I exclaim, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. “Why are you saying it too? Did he tell you to say that? Does he have something on you, to make you say that to me?”
“No!” Ana shakes her head, chewing on her lower lip as she dashes away the tears. “Sofia, please listen to me. Just—sit down, okay?”
I don’t want to sit down. I want to run out of this apartment, run all the way back to my own safe, warm bedroom, and pull the covers over my head. I want to go back to when I was a child, when I could disappear into my books and my violin and the safe, secure knowledge that my parents loved me, that they would always come home, that I had my whole life stretching out in front of me to be anyone that I wanted.
It was all a lie, I think, and I feel tears clog my throat again. I was never safe.
“Sofia, Luca isn’t lying to you.”
“How do you know?” I try not to yell, but I can hear my voice rising again, choked and panicked. “You’ve only known me for a few years, Ana! You don’t know anything about my family, or this promise Luca is claiming our parents made—”
“No,” Ana says calmly. She steps forward, gripping the back of one of the chairs. Her tearful blue gaze fixes on mine, and I can see in that moment that she’s just as frightened as I am—for me, or for herself, I can’t tell. “I don’t know anything about that, you’re right. He could be lying about all of that. But what he isn’t lying about is the danger that you’re in from the Bratva.”
I feel like I’m going to be sick. Last night, I’d thought that maybe Luca was exaggerating, that he was trying to frighten me into agreeing to the marriage. But now my best friend, the only person I trust in the world, is saying that it’s true. That I’m still in danger.
“I’m sorry,” Ana whispers. “I shouldn’t have taken you to that club last night. Maybe if they’d never seen you—”
I stare at her, still not quite able to believe it. Slowly, I sink back down into the chair across from her, trying to breathe. “Luca said it didn’t matter if I’d gone to the club or not. They’d have come for me eventually.” I look up at Ana, struggling to hold back tears. “They killed my father. It was the Bratva. I never knew that until last night, and now to find out this way—”
The tears start again, hot and overwhelming, and I bury my face in my hands.
“I’m so sorry, Sofia.” I feel Ana’s hand on my back, rubbing gently as she comes to stand next to me. She strokes my hair as I sob, making soft soothing noises. “Just get it out. It’s okay to cry.”
“I don’t want to cry,” I whisper, sitting back up slowly. “I want to get out of here. I want this to be over.”
“I know.” Ana sits down again, scooting the chair forward so that she can reach for my hands, holding them in hers as she looks at me. “I lost my father when I was a child too,” she says quietly. “I was eight. My mother left Russia after that and brought me here. But I learned very young to fear the Bratva. If they have plans for you, Sofia, you can’t escape them. The man who leads them, Viktor, is terrifying. His name is known all throughout Russia. They call him Ussuri, the bear. If he has set his sights on you for some reason, whatever that is, you should do whatever you can to escape him. Anything is better than ending up in the hands of the Bratva.”
“Even marrying Luca?” My voice cracks. I can feel my world narrowing, the walls closing in around me.
“If what he told me was true, then they took you in order to get to him. Because they knew that he would come for you. You were bait.”
You’ve always been bait. Mikhail’s voice fills my head, and I shudder. “I don’t understand. He doesn’t care about me. I don’t believe that he cares that much about an old promise, either—”
“I don’t know,” Ana admits. “But he called me, Sofia. He asked me to come here and ‘talk some sense into you’—his words, not mine. I don’t think he would do that if he doesn’t care. If he doesn’t have some reason to want you safe.”
“He cares about his territory,” I say bitterly, looking away. “His position. Somehow I threaten that, if the Russians have me.”
“If the Bratva take you, your fate will be worse than death,” Ana says bluntly. She squeezes my hands gently, and I turn to face her again. Her expression is more serious than I’ve ever seen it, and it sends a chill down my spine. “I would say that I don’t want to frighten you, Sofia, but I do. You’re safer then, because you should be frightened. If they get their hands on you again, once Viktor has used you to get to Luca and has taken the territory that he wants, he’ll sell you. If you’re still in good condition by then, and you’re lucky, he’ll sell you to someone rich and powerful. Someone who hopefully will treat you like any other valuable possession. If you fight enough to make him angry, and wind up damaged, or injured, or even just anger him to the point of wanting to punish you—”
“What?” My voice drops, so low that I can barely hear it. The look in Ana’s eyes makes me shiver, despite the warmth of the kitchen.
“I don’t really know. There’s stories, awful ones. Hunting parties, women sold to brothels, given to groups of his soldiers for sport. Worse things than that. Sofia—it doesn’t matter, because you cannot let them take you again. And if you try to leave here—”
“What?” I look at her sharply. “What do you know?”
“Ask Luca what happens if he can’t convince you to marry him,” she says simply. “Sofia, I know this isn’t what you wanted. And it hurts me to have to tell you this, because I love you. You’re my dearest friend, and all I want in the world is to tell you to refuse him, to run away, that I’ll take you back home and everything can go back to normal.”
She swallows hard, tears glittering in her eyes, and a long moment of silence stretches out between us. “But I can’t. You can’t. Nothing is going back to the way it was before.”
I stare at her for a long moment, not wanting to speak the next words on the tip of my tongue.
“What are you saying?”
Ana squeezes my hands tightly in hers.
“Sofia, you have to marry him.”
