Dark Desire, Lauren Smith [reading well TXT] 📗

change for the better and not remaining stagnant in the past. The day the last of the Romanovs had been slain was the day the White Army had gone underground, to wait, to hope, to plan for a truly free Russia.

“Am I doing well, Father?” Dimitri asked.

“Very well. It’s time you meet the other boys. They will be like brothers to you.”

“How many will there be?”

“Three others. Four, including you.”

Dimitri kept pace with Sergei as they entered a long portrait gallery. “Why so few?”

“All of us in the White Army must keep one another safe. These other boys will be your world. The four of you will trust in each other. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Dimitri replied.

Someday Dimitri would know how dangerous this life could be, but not today. He was still young and innocent. Today it was still a game to him.

Sergei pulled the frame on one of the paintings to reveal a secret passageway. He’d spoken to the parents of the other three boys and sent for them this morning so that they could all meet each other. Sergei and his son walked through the darkness together until they reached another door.

Sergei opened the door, and he and Dimitri stepped into a sunny atrium. It was a sacred room in the palace, and the skylights far above let golden sunlight streak down through the room, illuminating the white marble floor and making the blue-and-red painted walls shimmer. It was a room full of books and cozy armchairs and a table. There were drinks and a few light foods prepared by the palace cook.

Three other boys were there, each around eight years of age, standing by the table, waiting respectfully for Sergei to address them.

“Dimitri, these are the sons of my closest and most trusted friends. Now they will be your friends, your confidants, your brothers in all but blood. This is Leo.” He pointed at a blond-haired boy with light-brown eyes who watched Dimitri with open curiosity. “And this is Maxim.” An intense black-haired, brown-eyed boy nodded in silent greeting. “And this is Nicholas.” The last boy, with dove-gray eyes and light-brown hair, grinned and waved at Dimitri. Nicholas was much like his mother, a charmer who befriended and enchanted all who knew her.

“This is my son, Dimitri,” Sergei said and then stepped back.

It was time to let his son forge his own fate with these boys. They were the future of the White Army. They would rise from the ashes and save Russia one day. They would protect the past and fight for a better world, and Sergei would make sure each boy had the training to survive and thrive.

Dimitri left his father’s side and moved into the room, a little shy at first, but then within moments he and the others were talking excitedly. The bond between the four boys was almost instantaneous, as it was supposed to be.

Sergei held back a smile. He wanted to laugh with joy at the sight, but this was a serious moment, and he did not want Dimitri to mistake his joy for something else. So he kept quiet and watched as the future unfolded.

1

Can’t breathe . . . can’t . . . need air . . .

Elena Allen bolted upright in the uncomfortable seat in the gate area of the Moscow airport. One hand clutched her chest. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like someone was beating her ribs from the inside. The fragments of the nightmare were still scattered in her thoughts as she fought to remember where she was. She was in an airport. She wasn’t chained up. She wasn’t in the dark. She caught her breath and glanced around her, instinctively searching for any threat before she finally calmed.

Several passengers nearby watched her with open concern. She managed a shaky smile before she glanced down at her lap where her cell phone rested. She had ten minutes before boarding her flight back to the United States. Then she could start to feel a bone-deep sense of relief at the thought of getting out of Moscow.

Flashes of the dream that had woken her still lurked in her mind. The nightmare of what she had recently endured for two months had burned her so deeply that the scars ran straight through her soul. If she had never gone to that club that night, then she never would have been kidnapped, raped, tortured, and starved by that sadistic rich Russian mobster, Vadym. She never would have endured the dark, evil things that had nearly killed her.

A cold numbness settled over her each time she was swamped by memories of what Vadym had done.

A gate attendant began to speak in Russian, and Elena collected her bag when she realized it was the call for boarding.

As she queued up with the other passengers, she felt a prickling on her scalp. Someone was watching her. She turned her head just enough to glance to her right and then her left, her movements economical, so slight that the people around her wouldn’t notice the fear she felt. She’d had this funny feeling on and off since she’d arrived at the airport, but whenever she looked, she could see no one showing any particular interest in the twenty-year-old American college student at the gate for the Los Angeles flight.

But that didn’t mean someone wasn’t watching her, and the thought of a hidden voyeur edged her toward panic. Maybe Vadym was holding to that promise he’d made, that he would kill her, and he was finally coming after her. She wasn’t the first woman he had captured, and she wouldn’t be the last, but according to him she had survived the longest. He hadn’t lost interest in her because of the fire in her eyes.

“Like emeralds burning me up. You won’t break so easily. I like that about you,” Vadym had growled. She had been chained to the wall in a secret hidden room in his office, suffocating slowly in the dark until he opened the door. That was the