VOWS OF VIOLENCE

CHAPTER THREE: THE DEAL

She didn't sleep.

She didn't expect to.

She spent the first hour testing the zip-ties methodically without panic working through

every technique she knew until her wrists were raw and she'd accepted that whoever had tied

them knew what they were doing.

She spent the second hour cataloguing the room. Every surface, every shadow, the way the air moved when the building's ventilation cycled,the distance from her chair to the window and the distance from her chair to the door.

She spent the third hour thinking about Elena Russo.

She always ended up there eventually. Wherever her mind was, whatever her hands were doing, it came back to Elena the daughter of Senator Marcus Russo, a twenty-three years old, dark hair, a laugh that had filled a restaurant without her seeming to know it. She'd been running from someone when Kiera took the contract but her father had hired the agency with a standard protective detail, elevated threat profile.

Kiera had done everything right. She'd checked every variable,planned every exit, stood in that restaurant bathroom while Elena fixed her lipstick and watched the door and run threat assessments in her head and thought: I have this,She's safe, She's mine to protect and she is safe.

And then the comms had gone dead.

And then the car hadn't come.

And then the men had arrived, and there had been six of them, and Kiera had fought until she was bleeding from both ears, and Elena.

She stopped the thought there.

She had got a very good way at stopping the thought there.

By the fourth hour she was sitting with her back straight and her wrists aching a while watching the city lighten from black to grey to the pale, dirty pink of a Chicago dawn, and she had come to the only conclusion available to her.

She had no choices but to the a man who wanted to keep her alive in a box of his choosing, and a man who wanted to keep her alive in a different kind of box entirely. The only variable she could control was which box had a better exit strategy.

The door opened at six forty-seven.

Dante walked in with a coffee tray, and Kiera's brain did several things at once: registered the

absurdity of a crime lord personally delivering breakfast, registered that he'd changed into a

fresh shirt still black, always black and registered, against every protest from the rational part of her mind, which he looked even worse in the daylight.

Worse meaning better.

She hated herself a little.

"Cut me loose," she said.

He set the tray on the table. Coffee, two cups, black and a plate of food she wasn't going to let herself look at because she hadn't eaten in seventeen hours and her self-control only extended so far.

He produced a small folding knife from his pocket and cut the zip-ties without comment.

Kiera's hands came free but she resisted the urge to shake them out and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing they'd bothered her and reached for the coffee instead.

He sat down across from her again.

"You didn't sleep," he said.

"Amazing observation." She wrapped both hands around the cup while the heat was extraordinary.Do you do this often? Kidnap women and offer them absurd marriage proposals while they're tied to chairs?”

"No." He drank his own coffee, "This is a unique situation."

"Right." She set the cup down; "Tell me how it works."

He leaned back. Crossed one leg over the other, Unhurried as though they had all the time in the world, even though she hadn't spent the night trying to break out of his penthouse.

"We marry legally," he said. "It goes on record Viktor has ears everywhere he'll hear within

days that you're under my name." He paused, "His obsession with you is partly professional and you killed two of his men. That demands response; But it's also personal his sister died in circumstances similar to Elena's, years ago. But he will not go after someone in my position directly but he'll find ways to come at you that force me to act.”

"So I'm bait." She said it again, flatter this time.

"You're a catalyst." His amber eyes held hers. "There is a difference."

"There really isn't." She looked down at her freed wrists red lines where the plastic had bitten."And what do you get out of this arrangement? Because Viktor being a problem isn't new you've been managing him for years and you didn't need me to force a confrontation."

The silence ran long enough that she looked up.

Something had shifted in his face. Not much the man had exceptional control of his

expression, she'd give him that but something around his eyes had changed, some careful neutrality had developed a hairline fracture.

"I told you last night," he said. "I chose you and I'd like the opportunity to make that mean

something."

She stared at him.

"That's not an answer."

"No," he agreed. "It's the truth but sometimes they're different things."

She stood up. Her legs were stiff from the night in the chair and she was furious about it while she was furious about it her body had weaknesses right now, any evidence of the night's indignities. She walked to the window then put her back to him and they looked at the city.

"The senator," she said. "What happened to him?"

"He buried his daughter he was grieved and he blamed your agency. The agency that backed a narrative because it was easier than the truth." A pause. "Your professional reputation was destroyed completely I must believe you know that."

"I know that," She pressed her fingers to the cold glass. "I was in the room when it happened and I had to watch them close her case." She swallowed, "I had to listen to them call it an operation error.”

"There are ways to change that narrative." His voice came from behind her he'd stood up, she could hear it in the direction of his voice, the subtle shift of his weight. "Your record could be restored with the evidence that sabotage my men's communication logs, Viktor's operational

files exists and It could be released to the right people.”

"After one year of playing your wife."

"Yes."

She turned around.

He was closer than she'd realized three feet, maybe less. The morning light hit him differently than the artificial light of the night before was softer, more human, catching the texture of the scar through his eyebrow and the faint shadows under his eyes that said he hadn't slept either.

She felt something she didn't want to feel.

"You said Viktor had orders to kill the bodyguard first." She kept her voice level. "How did you know that?”

"I had a source inside his operation."

"How long had you had that source?"

A beat.

That was enough.

"Long enough," he said.

Her eyes sharpened, "You knew before the mission."

He didn't look away. "Yes."

"You could have warned me."

"I warned Elena but she refused to cancel." The fracture in his expression widened, just slightly. "I tried other channels but I was too slow then his jaw tightened. "I made the call I had to make with the little time I had.”

Kiera took two steps toward him.

She watched his face track her movement, watched something in those amber eyes shift, and she did not care about any of it in that moment, the careful political calculation of what she was doing,the professional wisdom of keeping distance between herself and the man who held every card.

"She was my responsibility," she said. Her voice was very quiet, "She trusted me while I stood in front of her and told her she was safe." She stopped two feet from him and her hands were shaking but she hid them in fists. "And then you"

"Yes." The word came out rough this time, the control cracking at the edges. "But then I have live to with that every day since."

She hit him.

Not a professional strike nothing clean about it, just her fist against his chest, hard enough to

knock a lesser man back a step. He took it but still Stood there. She hit him again, the same spot, the grief, the fury and the six months of nothing finally finding something to push against.

"She's dead," Kiera said. "She's dead and I'm in an abandoned building and you're sitting in a

penthouse drinking."

"I know." He caught her wrists not to stop her just to hold. His hands were big, warm

and she was furious about that too. "I know I'm sorry."

"Don't." She tried to pull back.

He didn't let go. He pulled her in instead, both wrists held in one hand, and his other hand came up to the side of her face and she should have headbutted him, should have driven her knee up, should have done any number of things that six years of combat training made available to her.

She went still.

His thumb was at her jaw, his palm was against her cheek,his face was close enough that she

could see the exact amber-gold of his eyes and the way they were looking at her like she was

something he hadn't expected and wasn't sure he could afford.

"Marry me," he said. His voice was barely above a whisper,low and Rough. "One year. And I will spend every day of it making right what I broke.”

"That's not possible," she said. Her voice was thin.

"No." His thumb moved. Just once, across her cheekbone. "But I intend to try."

She didn't know who moved first.

She thought it was her then She thought it was the sleep deprivation and the grief of the six months holding everything together with wire and stubbornness,she thought his thumb moving across her face was the thing that finally made her snap.

She kissed him.

It wasn't soft and It wasn't a beginning but It is what it is a woman who'd been white-knuckling

her for six months finally letting go, letting it out somewhere, letting it be someone else's problem for thirty seconds.

He kissed her back.

His hand moved from her cheek to the back of her neck. His other hand still had her wrists, he

kissed her like he knew what she was doing, like he understood that this was grief dressed up as want and he kissed her anyway, which he was thorough about it.

She bit his lower lip.

He made a sound.

She pulled back.

Both of them were breathing too hard. His hair was slightly disordered she'd grabbed his

shirt at some point, she didn't remember doing it and his amber eyes were darker.

"One year," she said. Her voice was not steady.

"Yes." His was.

"And you never" She stopped and rethought.

"We figure out the terms," he agreed.

She stepped back. Fixed her shirt and got her face right.

"When?"

The ghost of something that might have been satisfaction crossed his face.

"The wedding is in an hour."

Her heart stopped. Then started again, faster.

"An hour."

"Father Michael is already here."

She stared at him. He looked back, perfectly calm, as though he hadn't just proposed marriage at gunpoint and been kissed by a woman who'd spent six months planning to destroy him.

"One hour," she repeated.

"One hour." He turned toward the door. "There are clothes in the second bedroom take

whatever fits."

He walked out.

Kiera stood in the centre of his penthouse with his kiss still warm on her mouth and her wrists

still pink from the zip-ties and the coffee going cold on the table.

She had just agreed to marry Dante Vane.

More terrifyingly: she had kissed him first.

And the worst part is the part she was absolutely never going to examine out loud was that she had meant it.