King's Ransom (Man on a Mission 2)

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Juliana watched in horror as Niko reversed the pistol in his hand and with savage force clubbed the man he was holding just behind the right ear. The man crumpled. Niko then pointed the gun at Juliana. “Tie him up. Do it!” he added harshly as she hesitated. He turned the pistol until it was aimed at the other man’s defenseless body. “Or I will kill him now.”

Her automatic instinct was to run, to escape however she could, but Juliana knew she couldn’t outrun a bullet. She also couldn’t let Niko shoot a man in cold blood. She glanced desperately around the room, and her gaze lit on the belt to one of her dresses thrown across the bed. She grabbed it, and although her senses were screaming at her not to get any closer to Niko than she already was, she made short work of tying the man’s hands. She didn’t dare tie them loosely—Niko was watching her closely, and the barrel of the pistol had shifted until it was pointing directly at her.

Then she stood up and met Niko’s eyes.

“You should never have returned to Zakhar,” he told her, breaking the silence that was fraught with danger. At first she was frozen by the threat confronting her, but then she retreated from him until she came up against the far wall. Niko followed her slowly, as if he knew she couldn’t escape, then stopped two feet away. “You should never have agreed to marry Andre,” he added, repressed anger in his voice. “Why did you? Was the humiliation of eleven years ago not enough to keep you away from him forever?”

Juliana didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. Her mind was working feverishly at the sudden revelation that Niko knew more than he should about what had happened eleven years ago, but whatever answer she gave could trigger violence. He was already primed to go off—his expression made that very clear.

Niko brought the gun up to caress her cheek with the barrel. “So beautiful,” he said with regret. “I wanted you, did you know that? But it was always Andre with you despite my best efforts. You never looked at another man while he was around.” His eyes narrowed until they were mere slits. “I plotted to have you anyway,” he continued, his rapacious designs on her obvious. “But you were never alone. You were always with Mara or one of your other friends. I was never able to figure out a way to abduct you without risk to me.”

“Andre would have killed you.” The breathless words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

His face contracted with anger and jealousy. “You are right. Even though he had not yet staked his own claim to you, he would have killed me if I touched you against your will.” His hand clenched on the gun as he spewed out the hatred that had been building up for years. “Andre, the perfect prince. How I despised that about him. So damned perfect. He never put a foot wrong. Like a god. Even my own father wished I could be more like him. And the citizens of Zakhar adored him—why? Why him, and not me? Because he was the Crown Prince, that is why. He had everything. Everything that should have been mine save for an accident of birth.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Juliana asked through stiff lips. “Aren’t you forgetting Zax?”

“My brother?” Niko asked dismissively. “No, I had my own plans for Zax.” He laughed softly, a sound of pure evil. “Whose gun do you think this is?” His smile told her he planned to kill her with one of Zax’s guns and let his brother take the blame for her death. Since they shared the royal residence that had been their father’s, Niko had access to everything that was Zax’s. It also meant he had access to plant evidence against his brother. “I had plans for both of them,” Niko continued. “But it was Andre I wanted to hurt most. And I made him pay. Oh yes, I made him pay in blood.”

She managed one word. “How?”

“I followed you that night. You never knew, did you? You were so obvious in your attraction to Andre, it was easy to guess what you would try to do before you left. So I watched and waited. And you did not disappoint me. You were easy to follow, Juliana. For once you were alone, and I almost took you that night. But then I realized letting you go to Andre was better for my long-range plan.” He laughed again. “You were so easy to manipulate after that. Almost as easy to manipulate as Andre’s father.” The barrel of the gun moved down her cheek, brushed her neck, then came to rest against one breast.

She suppressed a shiver of horror. “What did you do, Niko?”

“How do you think Andre’s father found out about the two of you?” he asked. “I told him, of course,” he said, answering his own question. “He was oblivious to the danger you represented until I brought it to his attention. But then he was determined to keep you apart. You were not of royal blood. You were not even of noble blood. And his obsession with the monarchy meant you were not good enough for his precious son.” Niko sneered. “Andre’s father was too obsessed to realize I had my own motives for keeping you away from Andre. He refused to believe it was you or no one where Andre was concerned, although I knew. He was pathetically easy to convince that Andre did not really love you—that you were merely a passing fancy—because he wanted to believe.”