CHAPTER ONE


SNOW was falling so hard and fast that she could barely see through the windshield.

Anna Rostoff parked her old car in the front courtyard of the palace, near the crumbling stone fountain, and pulled on the brake. Her hands shook as she peeled them from the steering wheel. She’d nearly driven off the road twice in the storm, but she had the groceries and, more importantly, the medicine for her baby’s fever.

Taking a deep breath, she hefted the bag with one arm and climbed out into the night.

Cold air stung her cheeks as she padded through soft snow and ascended sweeping steps to the gilded double doors of the two-hundred-year-old palace. They were conserving electricity in favor of paying for food and diapers, so the windows were dark. Only a bare thread of moonlight illuminated the dark Russian forest.

We’re going to make it, Anna thought. It was April, and spring still seemed like a forlorn dream, but they had candles and a shed full of wood. Once she found work as a translator she’d be able to make a new life with her four-month-old baby and her young sister. After months of hell, things were finally looking up.

She lifted her keys to the door.

Her eyes went wide as a chill descended her spine. The front door was open.

Barely able to breathe, she pushed into the grand foyer. In the shadows above, an ancient, unseen chandelier chimed discordantly as whirling flurries of snow came in from behind, whipped by a cold north wind.

“Natalie?” Anna’s voice echoed down the hall.

In response, she heard a muffled scream.

She dropped the groceries. Potatoes tumbled out across the floor as she ran down the hall. Gasping, she shoved open the door into the back apartment.

A figure stood near the ceramic tile fireplace, his broad-shouldered form silhouetted darkly in the candlelight.

Nikos!

For one split second Anna’s heart soared in spite of everything. Then she saw the empty crib.

“They took the baby, Anna,” Natalie cried, her eyes owlish with fear behind her glasses. Two grim bodyguards, ruddy and devilish in the crackling firelight, flanked her sister on either side. She tried to leap from the high-backed chair, but one of Nikos’s men restrained her. “They came in while I was dozing and snatched him from his crib. I heard him cry out and tried to stop them—”

Misha. Oh, God, her son. Where was he? Held by some vicious henchman in the dark forest? Already spirited out of Russia to God knew where? Anna trembled all over. Her baby. Her sweet baby. Sick with desperation and fear, she turned to face the monster she’d once loved.

Nikos’s expression was stark, almost savage. The man who’d laughed with her in New York and Las Vegas, drinking ouzo and singing in Greek, had disappeared. In his place was a man without mercy. Even in the dim light she could see that. Olive-skinned and black-haired, he was as handsome as ever, but something had changed.

The crooked nose he’d broken in a childhood fight had once been the only imperfection in classic good looks. Now his face had an edge of fury—of cruelty. He’d always been strong, but there were hard planes to his body that hadn’t been there before. His shoulders were somehow broader, his arms wider, as if he’d spent the last four months beating his opponents to a pulp in the boxing ring. His cheekbones were razor-sharp, his arms thick with muscle, his blue eyes limitless and cold. Looking into his eyes was like staring into a half-frozen sea.

Once she’d loved him desperately; now she hated him, this man who had betrayed her. This man who, with kisses and sweet words whispered against her skin at night, had convinced her to betray herself.

“Hello, Anna.” Nikos’s voice was deep, dangerous, tightly controlled.