All Chapters of The Ruthless Don and his Assassin Princess : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

CHAPTER FORTY-TWOCALISTAAs he promised, Yuri put me to work the moment we reached his warehouse…no explanation and no easing in, just a stack of crates and a jerk of his chin toward the loading dock."Those go on the truck," he said, already turning away. "All of them. Before midnight.""How many are all of them," I asked, staring at the stack in shock because they looked taller than I was."You'll find out," he said, and then he was gone, disappearing into the huge belly of the warehouse without another word.I worked because I didn't have a choice. The crates were quite heavier than they looked, and my arms burned within the first hour, with my back aching in ways I'd never felt before…not even during the worst of my days locked away in that room at the Donati estate. Sweat soaked through my shirt despite the cold night air coming off the water, and more than once I had to stop and brace myself against the truck's metal frame just to catch my breath.Nobody offered to help. The ot

CHAPTER FORTY-FOURCALISTAI didn't sleep much that night, lying awake on the narrow bed and thinking about Yuri's warning over and over in my head.‘Once you're in that world, there's no walking back out of it.’I thought about everything that had happened since the morning I crawled through that tunnel…The motel, the men downstairs who had been describing me, Mariana's shop, and the fear that had flashed across her face the moment Viktor walked through her door. There was the alley too, and the two men circling me, grinning and telling me that a dead version of me was apparently just as good as a live one.I had spent nearly two months running and hiding, going through the stress of changing my hair, changing my routes, and even changing the smallest details of my own face just to slip past the memory of strangers who were being paid to find me. And yet, none of it seemed to have worked. Someone had found Mariana's shop within weeks. Someone, somewhere, was still out there asking qu

CHAPTER FORTY-SIXRHEYESMarco found me still half dressed in the hallway outside Calista's room, staring at the two unconscious guards slumped against the wall like something out of a nightmare I couldn't wake myself out of."Both of them," Marco said, crouching beside the nearest one and pressing two fingers against his throat, checking his pulse with hands that weren't quite steady. "Alive, but barely responsive. This wasn't a fight, Don Rheyes. Someone drugged them.""Drugged them?" I said slowly and my voice sounded strange in my own ears."Something in their coffee, maybe," Marco said, nodding toward two abandoned mugs sitting on a small table near the window. "And this wasn't improvised. Whoever did this planned it, knew exactly when to strike, and knew exactly how much to use so they wouldn't die from it."I stared down at the two men again, while my mind raced through every possibility all at once, each one worse than the last. Someone had gotten past two trained guards, insi

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHTCALISTAI didn't hesitate despite how intimidating he sounded because my mind was already made up and I knew for certain that there was clearly no other option left for me."Tell me what you require and I'll swear it."A look of approval and surprise appeared on his face now, though he covered it very quickly and returned to his earlier cold and mysterious expression."Bring her forward," he said, nodding to one of the men standing near the wall.Two of them moved at once, flanking me on either side and guiding me toward the center of the room where a low wooden table had been placed, with nothing on it yet but an old, battered ledger that was bound in old leather and a single narrow blade resting beside it."This ledger holds the names of every person who has sworn loyalty to this organization," Mikhail said, rising from his chair and approaching the table himself, while his eyes never once left my face. "Every oath spoken by members of this organization for the p

CHAPTER FIFTYCALISTAMikhail finally accepted me on probation and not full trust, and he made sure I understood the difference from the very first morning."You swore the oath," he said a few days later, finding me in the narrow room I had been given, which was barely bigger than Mariana's storage closet with nothing but a bed, a small shelf and nothing else. "But I want you to understand that it only bought you a chance to prove yourself… It didn't buy you anything beyond that.""I understand, boss," I said humbly."For your sake, I really hope you do," he said with a small, dark chuckle. "You will soon find out what an oath is really worth around here, and your first lesson begins this morning. Get dressed...Someone will come for you in ten minutes."He was gone before I could ask anything further, and I dressed quickly in the plain clothes that were left folded on the shelf, while my hand still throbbed painfully from the cut across my palm which hadn't fully closed yet.The man w