The Bratva's Heir (Underworld Kings)

This is all to explain that I do have to watch my fucking back while I’m making my preparations to get out of here.

Preparations that intimately concern my little ptitsa Clare.

Clare fucking Nightingale, huh?

That’s very interesting, considering that when I leaned in close to her, when my mouth was inches from that delicate, warm, achingly vulnerable throat, I saw something I had never noticed before.

Clare’s fancy, expensive clothes are monogrammed.

Tiny silk monograms, tucked in the labels and sewn in thread the precise color of the clothing. Clare herself might not even know they’re there.

In fact, she almost certainly doesn’t know, because I assume she would be clever enough to use the same alias as in all her professional documents.

Her seamstress knows differently.

Clare Nightingale is actually Clare Somebody-else.

Clare “V”.

I have an inkling who that fucking “V” might be.

I call Yury from a contraband cell phone so the call can’t be tracked or recorded.

“What did you find?” I ask him.

“You’re not gonna like this, boss,” he says. “Or maybe you will…”

“Go on.”

“Nightingale is her mother’s maiden name. Your little rich girl is a whole lot more connected than she’s letting on.”

“Who is she?” I growl.

I’ve got no time for Yury’s teasing. Get to the fucking point.

“Clare Valencia. She’s the DA’s daughter.”

“I fucking knew it,” I breathe.

Valencia was part of the conspiracy to frame me, I fucking know he was. He sent his daughter here to try to pick my brain.

He thought she could earn my trust. Leech information out of me under the guise of “doctor-patient confidentiality.”

Well, he’s gonna pay the price for putting his little bird within my grasp.

“Get everything ready,” I tell Yury. “Friday is the day.”

Clare comes to visit me at 2:00 in the afternoon on Friday.

I’m curious to see how she’ll be attired after our last conversation.

When last we met, I told her she needed to be bent over, spread open, and fucked.

If that thought terrified her, disgusted her, then I’m guessing she’s going to come in here armored in the frumpiest getup from her closet.

Instead she strides into the room in a dress with a knee-high skirt slit up the back, sky-high heels, and her hair long, loose, and shining around her shoulders.

A deliberate taunt.

An invitation even…

My hands tighten involuntarily at the sight of her. The chains make a noise like a sigh.

Clare doesn’t notice that I’m overheated, my skin flushed from a double layer of clothing.

She likewise fails to see that while my hands still appear cuffed, I’m no longer tethered to the table.

In the seven minutes I was waiting for her, I made use of the clip stolen from her pen the other day. Mechanical locks are simple to pick—it’s only the electronic locks in the prison that pose an issue.

Or at least they did before today.

Clare sets down her briefcase opposite me.

I toss back her ridiculous form, completed. It slides across the table, flaring open like a fan.

The idea that I could ever be quantified by such basic questions is offensive to me.

Questions written by academics who don’t know the first fucking thing about what it means to be an actual killer—a man untethered from the bullshit bounds of conventional morality.

“What do you think you’ll learn from that?” I ask Clare, not bothering to hide my sneer.

“I don’t know if I’ll learn anything,” she replies, coolly. “I don’t even know if you answered honestly.”

“I don’t lie,” I snarl. “If I said I did something… I did it. If I say I will do something… you know I fucking mean it.”

“Really,” she says. “What did you tell Roxy Maguire you were going to do? Because according to witnesses, you said you were going to kill her.”

I narrow my eyes at Clare, the air between us dropping twenty degrees in temperature. It’s now 2:12, by my estimation.

“I’m sure you’re familiar with colloquial speech,” I growl.

“You two had a tumultuous relationship?” Clare says, picking up my form and pretending to peruse the responses.

She doesn’t want to look me in the eye. There’s an edge to her question.

Is she scared to walk over the thin ice of this topic? Or is it possible that my little bird is a tiny bit jealous?

Does she wonder how it felt when I put my hands all over Roxy’s body? If I ever seized her hair and yanked her close like I did to Clare?

“You want to know if I loved her?” I ask Clare.

“Did you?” Clare murmurs.

She knows she’s crossing a line—asking a question not as a doctor, but as herself.

“I’ve never loved a woman,” I say.

Now Clare’s eyes flit up, fixing on mine.

“Do you think you even could?” she asks.

2:14 now.

“I don’t know,” I growl. “What do you think a woman would have to do to captivate me? To please me? To satisfy me?”

“I thought you were the one who knew how to satisfy a woman,” she says. “Isn’t that what you told me the other day? You think that’s what women like? Brutes who threaten them?”