MILAI THOUGHT YULIA WAS A bad maid, but that was before I had her as a nurse. She plumped the pillow beneath my head like she was beating a lump of dough and pulled a piece of my hair in the mix.With a resentful glance, I shied away fromher. “Thank you, but my pillow is fine.”She raised a brow before sliding a mischievous look away to mess with the tray of food at my bedside.“I’mnot hungry,” I said.She ignored me and made a show of adding sugar to my tea. As if I’d ever drink tea again.I’d stayed in bed for two days, and with each second that passed, I grew sicker of it. The only thing that kept me here was the knowledge someone in this house hated me so much they’d poisoned me. And then, my thoughts chanted I was an awful person for what happened to Adrik and that I deserved it.My mind was a terrible place.Yesterday, Kirill deemed me as good as new. Ronan, however, hadn’t shown his face since he carrie

MILATHE HOME SAT AS STILL as a grave while I stood beneath the staircase and stared at the elaborate woodwork that hid a door from sight—the one Albert and Viktor just vacated before leaving the house. I expected the entrance to be locked or require a special passcode like it would in any decent spy movie, but it opened right up to reveal cement stairs leading down to hell.Nerves shook in my hands as I hesitated at the threshold and listened for the tortured screams of damned souls, only to be welcomed by silence and a cold draft. A sane person wouldn’t go down there, but it seemed I was losing my grasp on rationality with the rest of the house.Closing the door behind me, I rubbed a hand over the goose bumps on my arm and headed down the stairs. When I reached the bottom, I pretended the room was any other unfinished basement with mortared stone walls and a dampness thickening the air, but the fallacy grew harder to accept each time I viewed a bloo

“It takes one to know one, doesn’t it?” My voice shook. Each step he took toward me, I mimicked in the opposite direction until I stood behind the couch, a simple piece of furniture the only divider between us.“Mm. We don’t know each other that well yet, but we will.” A shattered piece of porcelain crunched beneath his boot.“You act like it will be memorable for me,” I retorted, forced to the front of the couch when he stepped around it.“I’msure it’ll be different than your experiences with pampered college boys.”Frustration tunneled beneath my skin. That was the exact thought that led me into D’yavol’s arms, putting me in a position to be circling a couch to stay away fromhim.“Ivan isn’t a college boy.” There Madame Richie went again, throwing Ivan under the bus.His eyes narrowed dangerously as he braced his hands on the back of the couch. “Maybe not, but he is a pussy.”“You don’t even know him,” I accused.

RONANDARKNESS CAST THE ROOM IN shadow, though a golden sheen surrounded Mila’s sleeping form like a halo. The strange glow could be a trick of the light, but the night was a moonless one, meaning there wasn’t any fucking light. With a sense of annoyance, I realized I needed to get my vision checked.My gaze narrowed as it swept down her body—fromher cheek resting on a curtain of long blonde hair, to the shallow breaths escaping parted lips, to the rise and fall of her breasts, and the sliver of visible skin that trailed to her navel. The view was a painter’s wet dream; the girl too flawless to be real.I wanted to slap her.The thought was the only thing that explained the slight tremble in my hands. I slipped them in my pockets, unsure of the bizarre reaction considering my throat tightened in revulsion at the idea of actually following through with it. Though slapping some sense into Mila may benefit her. Maybe then she wouldn’t apologize to men who k

MILAJUST AS I REACHED THE kennel’s exit, the door opened to reveal a stern-faced Albert. I took a step back, hid my wrist in my coat sleeve, and forced an innocent expression. His suspicious gaze slid from mine to take in the roombehind me.“What are you doing in here?” he asked. “Digging an escape hole into the woods.”Albert was either used to my sarcasm or I was the most pathetic captive in town. He didn’t even consider the possibility I was trying to escape, his eyes narrowing on the only dog in the building.“What are you doing here? I thought you left to go kill people in Moscow.” My stomach tipped when I realized if Albert was here, Ronan probably was too. They’d left the house together. I wondered if they forgot the keys to the underworld and turned back for them.“So you wait to do the things you are not supposed to after we leave?”I frowned in thought. “Yeah. That sounds about right.” He grumbled something in Rus