Lap of Luxury (Love Don't Cost a Thing)

Navarro nods at Boris. “Kill her.”

I whimper, my eyes locked on Damir. There’s nothing he can do. I should have stayed on the yacht. The final girl wouldn’t have gone with Boris. She would have understood that betrayal wasn’t the way out.

I’m sorry, I mouth at Damir, because my throat is too tight to speak.

“Fuck sorry,” Damir spits. “Do you need me, princesa? Do you want me, dark as I am, cruel as I am, twisted as I am?”

I nod shakily, tears slipping down my face. There’s no one else for me in this world or the next. At least I won’t be going alone.

Damir leans toward me, as much as he can, his eyes luminous as he speaks two soft words. “Then live.”

The knife caresses my throat in a sharp, hot slice of pain. I wait for the brutal slash that will end my life. For the cascade of blood. The knife lifts, and I anticipate the stab between my shoulder blades instead.

But it doesn’t come.

Boris releases me, and turns and plunges the knife into Navarro’s chest. The older man gives a wheezing sort of shout and his eyes go comically wide, the whites showing all around. I stare in shock as he crumples to one knee, grasping the hilt of the knife.

What the hell?

I look at Damir, who’s smirking back at me, the two men holding him too shocked to react. Told you so, princesa, his eyes say. We’re not dying tonight.

Boris has drawn a gun and fires two precise shots into the skulls of the guards holding his boss. As soon as they slump to the ground, Damir lunges at a third man, and takes vicious delight in pounding him into a pulpy mess. The rest of Damir’s men burst into the room and take stock of who’s lying on the floor, dead.

Damir straightens, and wipes his bloodied knuckles on the curtains, grinning malevolently. “Hello, boys. Another beautiful evening in Monte Carlo.”

I look down at the jewels around my wrists, and feel the tiara slip a little on my head. These are what he wanted all along.

Boris looks quickly around. “Fuck. Where’s Navarro gone?”

The grin slips from Damir’s face. “Andreja, Domen, Alenko. Go and find him. Now.”

They run off, guns in their hands and eyes lit with determination. Boris follows them.

Damir and I are alone, and the room is filled with the sound of harsh breathing. My harsh breathing. Damir comes forward and takes my hand. I stare at his lips, red with blood. He lifts my wrist up to the light, admiring the gold and ruby bracelet like a barbarian soldier who has just sacked the treasures of Rome. The jewels sit heavily around my throat.

“Now that,” Damir says, smiling his cold smile, “was a jewel heist.”

The world turns red.

“You bastard,” I scream, shoving at his chest. “You planned this all along, for Boris to lie to me and Navarro to scare the living daylights out of me. And all for some jewels?”

Damir wraps himself around my body and forces my arms against my sides, trying to stop me from thrashing about. It doesn’t work. “Shh, shh,” he murmurs. “Not for some jewels. For revenge, princesa. Revenge. The world has been set a little more right tonight.”

“You and revenge. I fucking hate you!” Tonight’s shattered me and put me back together and then shattered me again, and now the pieces are spinning out of my control.

He chuckles, the sound warm and rich in my ear. “You little liar.” He tenderly kisses my throat, but I’m not fooled. Revenge is his lover, and I’m just a pawn in his game.

“You’ve used me enough. I’m not getting back on that yacht.”

“Yes, you are.” Damir pulls back and looks at me, the darkening blood on his face making him look monstrous. “I bring out the best in you, Bethany.”

“You bring out my worst,” I spit. My twisted lust, which is even now making my body melt against his in indecent ways. “I mean it. I hate you.”

Now that I know I’m going to live, I want to take back what I admitted earlier.

He takes my face between his two hands, his eyes looming so large in my vision it’s like I’m being hypnotized. “Look at all we’ve done. We’re living Bethany. This is living. I’ve never known anyone like you,” he tells me, his mouth whispering over mine. “My extraordinary girl.”

“I always thought I was pretty normal,” I say in a shaky voice. “What does it mean when a madman finds you extraordinary?”