Free Last Kiss (Hitman #3) by Jen Frederick, Jessica Clare

he finds a room and thrusts me into it. Once inside, he blocks the door with his weight and pulls his phone out to check it, the knife no longer at my throat.
    I don’t run. I simply wait. I’m not stupid and I want to live. It’s clear this man is doing something that he thinks will get him in trouble. He’s sweating so much that droplets are running down his forehead and I wrinkle my nose, instinctively trying to get away so none of his sweat touches my skin.
    He sees me flinch away and automatically locks an arm around my throat again. “
Nyet
,” he says, speaking slowly. “No. Bad girl.”
    I want to roll my eyes. I’m not a dog. Nor am I retarded like hethinks I am. My fear is dropping away to irritation as he begins to text something into his phone with one hand. I slide my gaze over and look at his screen, but it’s in Russian—Cyrillic. Shoot.
    “We wait for confirmation, and then we go.” He breathes on my neck, and his breath smells a bit like alcohol.
    “Is Vasily sick?” I ask since he’s not here. I wish he were. I like him better than the weasel.
    “Vasily will not be coming,” the weasel says, and my words make his hands tremble a bit more. Aha. Maybe it is Vasily he is afraid of.
    “Did the
Volk
get him? Is that like food poisoning?” I ask, repeating the strange word from earlier. It’s one of the sneaky things I do. When someone uses a word I don’t understand, I throw it back at them. Usually they will then take time to correct the “retard,” and I get my answer. It’s annoying but effective.
    He mutters something under his breath. “It is not food poisoning. Vasily is
volk
. Wolf.”
    Oh. Right.
Volk
is the word Vasily used when describing the painting. Madonna and
volk
. I think of his fierce features, the cold eyes, the piercing stare. It fits. Wolves are hunters, and I am certainly feeling like prey at the moment. I begin to wonder if Vasily even knows I’m in this hall. I thought he and the weasel were working together, but maybe they are rivals? I don’t know.
    All I know is that I don’t want to go with this man. I’m frightened of what will happen if I do. I think of Hudson, who kept me in a small, dark room for eighteen months, three days, and sixteen hours, simply because he wanted the Emperor to funnel money out of accounts for him. What will this man do with the Emperor? All Vasily wanted was to learn how to hack better than me.
    I wish he were here. I feel charged with nervous energy whenaround Vasily, but I don’t dislike him. Quite the opposite, really. I have a feeling that if I don’t leave this room soon, I’m not going to like what happens.
    Time to pull out the nuclear method.
    I jerk in the weasel’s arms. It causes the knife to scratch my throat, but I ignore it. Instead, I snap my head backward and straighten my limbs, making my body as stiff as I can. Then, I roll my eyes back in my head and begin to shake as I pretend to have a seizure.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    VASILY
    I lay silently where Aleksei believes I am unconscious from his drugging. Outside of the room, they are talking but their voices are too low for me to decipher the individual words.
    Somehow I knew Aleksei would betray me. I knew it yet it still saddened me because it was a loss, and my life has been full of losses.
    The door opens and then closes. I wait three more heartbeats and rise.
    A quick look at the main living room and the foyer reveals no one. The suite is empty, eerily silent. I open the door quietly and see the elevator is unmoving. The stairs then.
    Aleksei is sadly overconfident in his tactics and does not notice he is being followed. At the door of his new room, I pause to listen while Aleksei explains to Naomi why he is spiriting her away andto whom, but waiting is swept aside when I hear him begin to panic. I push open the door that I’ve surreptitiously unlocked while Aleksei is trying to reason with Naomi.
    Inside the room he is bent over a convulsing Naomi.
    “Idiot!”