Inked Athena (Litvinov Bratva Book 2)

The worst part about waking up beside a killer is wanting to stay there.

Sam’s arm is draped over my waist, his chest rising and falling against my back in a steady rhythm that makes me ache. He runs hot—a furnace of muscle and danger that should send me running. Instead, I find myself counting his breaths, memorizing the weight of him against me.

Stupid. So fucking stupid.

Last night, we talked about monsters in the dark. About fathers who break their children. About basements and woods and all the ways powerful men teach you not to trust. Sam actually listened. Actually shared. Actually made me feel… safe.

That’s how I know this is all a lie.

Because Samuil Litvinov doesn’t do safe. He does calculated. Strategic. He takes what he wants and eliminates what stands in his way. And right now, I’m just a liability—the girl who stole his server and ran straight to his enemies.

Because how could he believe me? How can I believe him? How can either of us believe anything ever again?

The fact that he hasn’t put a bullet in my head yet just means he still thinks I’m useful.

Or maybe he’s waiting to see if I’ll lead him to something bigger. To someone bigger. To all the secrets I don’t actually have.

His fingers twitch against my hip, and my traitor body responds. Heat pools low in my belly as I remember those same fingers bringing me to pieces in the bath yesterday. Remember the way he touched me after he thought I was asleep, like he couldn’t help himself.

Like he wanted me as much as I want him.

But want isn’t trust. And trust isn’t something either of us can afford right now.

I inhale slowly, trying to steady my racing pulse. Outside the cabin windows, dawn is breaking over the trees. Soon, he’ll wake up. Soon, we’ll have to face whatever comes next.

Soon, I’ll have to decide if I’m going to fight or surrender when he inevitably shows his true colors.

For now, though, I let myself have this moment. Let myself pretend that the warmth at my back is comfort rather than threat. That the man holding me is salvation rather than damnation.

Let myself imagine, just for a heartbeat, that we could be something other than what we are:

A mafia prince and his latest victim.

A captor and his prey.

A man who kills traitors and the woman who betrayed him.

Behind me, Sam stirs.

Time’s up.

“Nova…” His voice is raspy with sleep as his hand brushes along my shoulder.

I shiver, caught between fear and desire.

This is how it starts.

I force my eyes open. He looms over me, all six-foot-four of lethal grace. His usually pristine appearance has gone feral—beard untamed, dark hair falling in waves over his forehead.

The wildness suits him.

“Good. You’re awake.” Without warning, he scoops me into his arms like I weigh nothing.

If I thought it would make any difference, I’d fight. Since I know it won’t, I don’t bother.

“Where are we going?”

He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t have to. I can barely walk without his help.

As we pass through the cabin’s living room, I notice my duffel bag is gone and the furniture has all been pushed back into place.

“Where are we going?” I ask again. “And ‘somewhere safe’ isn’t an answer.”

He says he came to this cabin to keep me safe and take care of me, but all he’s done is muddle my head even more than it already was.

I thought I understood who he was. I thought he’d press a gun to my temple the first time he laid eyes on me again.

Instead, he’s making me bite back his name in the bathtub and carrying me off to unknown second locations.

I thought I knew Sam, but I’m not sure I know anything anymore.

“Somewhere dangerous then,” he deadpans.

If I didn’t think it would only hurt me more than it would him, I’d slap his chest. As it is, I hang uselessly in his arms as he carries me down the front steps and across the lawn.

He ducks through a break in the foliage, shielding me from the twigs and branches. When we come out on the other side, a hulking gray jeep with tires up to my waist is waiting for us.

He cradles me with one arm and opens the passenger door with the other, then tucks me inside.

“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

He reaches across me to buckle my seatbelt, his hand brushing across my chest. “Correct. Because telling you would actually make this dangerous.”

When he opens the door to get behind the wheel, I keep firing questions. “Is it dangerous because you can’t trust me? Or because I can’t trust you?”

He turns the key in the ignition and takes off down a dirt road. “Trust is apparently a rare commodity these days.”

If there was any doubt about whether he bought my story last night or not, it’s gone now.

He was probably on the fence, waiting for an explanation from me. Then the half-assed one I gave last night convinced him of my guilt.

I’m a spy. This is my last ride.

“Can I at least call Hope and Grams?”

“No.” His eyes stay fixed on the road. “You can’t call anyone.”

The walls of the Jeep press in, suffocating. “You said you were doing this to keep me safe, not to keep me prisoner. This isn’t a hostage situation.”

“It’ll become one if you can’t cooperate. You got yourself into this mess, and now⁠—”

“You think I asked for this?”

Samuil’s jaw tightens before he answers evenly. “I think you’re uniquely good at attracting the wrong kind of people. I do what needs to be done to protect you. Abduction included.”

“I’m not surprised,” I grumble. “It runs in the family.”

When he finally looks away from the road, his icy eyes locked on mine, I know I crossed a line. He sucks his cheeks in like he’s tasting something sour, and as much as I want to take it back, I don’t.

Samuil isn’t Ilya, but I’ve bartered away too much of my pride already. If I hand over any more, there will be nothing left of me. And I won’t do that. Not even for Samuil.

His grip tightens on the wheel until I swear I hear the leather creak. We spend the next half hour marinating in thick silence, the only sound the crunch of gravel under tires. When he finally turns off the single-lane road, a warehouse looms in the distance like a metal coffin.

“This is where we’re going to lay low? A warehouse in the middle of nowhere?”

It looks like a remote building where no one would hear me scream.

I begin rehearsing a better explanation—one that might spare me. I don’t want to die.

Sam raps his knuckle against the glass, pointing out the open field next to the warehouse. “We’re not staying here. It’s just for takeoff.”

“For taking off what?”

Sam slows to a stop in the gravel parking lot and puts the Jeep into park. “We need to get to an airport with international clearance. We’re going to Europe, and we have to get there quickly.”

“No.” I watch his face, searching for some sign that this is a sick joke, but he’s as steely and surly as ever. I shake my head. “Nope. No way. Not gonna happen.”

For all I know, Grams is living on the streets. Hope could be dead in a ditch somewhere. As much as I hate admitting Sam’s right about anything, he nailed it—I got everyone into this mess. I can’t abandon them now.

He gets out of the car, slamming his door behind him hard enough to make the whole vehicle shake. I dig my nails into the sides of my seat as if that could stop him from simply picking me up and carrying me wherever he wants. Like onto a plane, apparently, and off to Europe and wherever the hell else he wants to cart me.

I want to trust Sam—since the very beginning, my instinct has been to trust him—but I have a feeling that if I get on that plane, there’s a chance I’ll never make it back home.

When the door wrenches open, his eyes burn with molten heat. “Do I need to get a leash and harness to drag you into that helicopter? Because I will, if that’s what it takes to keep you alive.”

Is that what he wants? To save my life?

The weight in my chest is rising, rising… right into my throat. “It seems the best way for me to stay alive is to stay far away from you,” I spit at him.

I’m hoping it’ll piss him off enough that he’ll change his mind and walk away, leave me here to fend for myself.

Then again, the thought of watching him walk away threatens to unleash another wave of tears.

I have no idea what he wants to do to me or with me, yet I can’t bear the idea of letting him go. What kind of masochistic madness is this?

Finally, Sam gets actually angry. I see it as red creeps up his neck, as the vein in his forehead pulses. His mouth presses into a flat line. “You may be right about that, but it’s too late now. If you want to stay alive, you have to come with me.”

“Sure,” I snort. “Sounds like exactly what a kidnapper would say. I’m supposed to give up my freedom and trust you.”

“I gave you fucking freedom, and look how you repaid me for it!”

“I told you what happened⁠—”

“Just like I’m telling you what’s happening now,” he snarls, voice dropping to a register that makes my bones vibrate. “You don’t believe that I’m trying to protect you, so why should I believe you?”

He shouldn’t—that’s the problem. I betrayed him, and he doesn’t believe me, so I can’t believe him. It’s a nasty cycle of distrust that I can’t seem to break.

Before I can explain this, he hoists me out of the car and into his arms yet again.

“Are you going to carry me like this all the way to Europe?”

“No, I’m going to carry you to Myles,” he snaps. “Because I know you won’t fucking believe me. Maybe he’ll have a better shot.”

“Myles is here?”

Samuil doesn’t respond, just scoops one of the duffle bags off the ground and slings it over his other shoulder without slowing. Dust plumes behind his every step as we cross the parking lot towards the warehouse where Myles is waiting in the doorway, a cautious smile on his face.

“Hey there, Nova.”

Samuil deposits me on a wooden crate next to the door and then stomps off back towards the car, both hands raking through his hair in frustration.

I watch him go. “I don’t care what he says—I’m not getting on that plane. I need to stay here.”

I’m expecting him to give me the same “you don’t have a choice” line as Samuil, but Myles just sighs and drops down on the crate beside me. “As long as you’re in the country, Ilya can track you.”

“I’d like to point out that I escaped him. All on my own. No help from anyone. And he still hasn’t tracked me down.”

“He very nearly did,” Myles says, voice heavy. “His team is tearing the cabin apart as we speak.”

A chill races down my spine. “That’s why we left so quickly?”

“You missed him by fifteen minutes. If that. Samuil saved your life.”

Maybe it’s a good thing I wasn’t strong enough to fight Samuil. It could’ve gotten us both killed.

“Why does Ilya want me so badly?”

“Because he knows the best way to get to Samuil is through you. You’re his weak spot.”

I laugh out loud.

Myles does not. He isn’t even smiling anymore. “Sam is my best friend. He can be a dick and he’s colder than an ice rink in Siberia in February, but I love him anyway. Because he’s a good man. He’s a million times the man his brother could ever hope to be. If you think this escape is some ploy to kidnap you and make your life miserable, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

It wouldn’t be the first time. My track record lately is absolute shit.

“So what is it?” I ask, fearing I already know the answer.

“It’s the only way he knows to keep you alive.”

My head sags between my shoulder blades, and Myles reaches over to squeeze my knee. “You’ve survived a lot in the last few days—the last few months, really. You can survive this, too.”

I’m not sure anyone is strong enough to survive Samuil Litvinov. Not when he looks at you like you’re everything he wants and everything he can’t trust. Not when his touch sets your skin on fire even as his eyes freeze your blood. Not when he carries you like you’re precious cargo one minute and eyes you like a potential threat the next.

Least of all me, the girl who can’t decide if she wants to kiss him or knee him in the balls.

The girl who betrayed him and still can’t stop wanting him.

The girl who no longer has a choice.