The door to the Saints Salon was ajar. Val prodded it with the gun barrel until it swung further open. He peered around the door frame.
His breath froze in his lungs. Tamar hung from a rope by her arms in the corner of the room, her tangled hair falling like a dark curtain around her battered, beautiful face, a stark mask of pain and mute endurance. Still alive.
It wrenched something inside of him loose. Grief, rage, and terrified hope. He had been trying to brace himself against finding her dead. Trying and failing. But hope was more cruel than despair.
Three men were down on the ground. Four were on their feet, one of them Luksch. Val’s knife flew into the throat of the nearest man, and he spun, arms windmilling, glass crunching beneath his boots before he crashed to the ground.
Val dove, tucked, and rolled to dodge the bullets, but when he somersaulted back up into a crouch, still more bullets thudded into his chest, bam, bam, and flung him backward, like huge, punching fists. He slammed to the ground, wind knocked out, and rolled onto his knees without air, gasping for oxygen. He brought the gun up, took aim at—
Henry. Blue eyes and square jaw. Henry. Holding a gun on him. Val’s muscles locked for a fraction of a second—
Bam. His weapon spun uselessly out of his hand into space. It sailed in a high arc, bounced, skidded across the carpet.
Then, the numb, cold burn. The trickling heat of blood. Shot in the arm. Fucking shit. Henry had shot him. His friend.
“Valery.” Henry’s face looked distant, sad.
Val focused on the gun muzzle in the foreground. Henry’s face faded to a blur. “You?” he whispered.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” Henry said dully. “I wasn’t supposed to have to face off with you, buddy. There was no reason for it.” Henry’s eyes flicked past him, focusing on someone behind Val. His voice muted. “But I can’t change things now.”
“Why?” Val demanded, his voice hard.
“Money,” Henry said matter-of-factly. “A lot of it. Hegel told you. We would have been happy to share, but it just didn’t work out. Your dick prevailed, man. But no woman is worth millions.”
Val’s eyes flicked up to Tamar’s bright gaze. It blazed down, unquenched. An instant injection of passion, of power, straight into his muscle fibers, his nerves, his mind.
So beautiful. So precious. Her intelligence, her courage, the steely endurance beneath the smooth, seductive curves of her tortured body.
Tears slid down her cheeks. She rubbed them angrily against her stretched arms. So tough around her secret core of tenderness.
Worth millions. Worth anything, everything. His life, his soul, his heart. But Henry would never understand that.
Not this Henry who he had really never known at all.
“…would have helped you save Imre,” Henry was saying.
“Imre is dead,” Val informed him. “I am here for her now.”
Henry shook his head. “You can’t save everybody, Val. I’m sorry. I was hoping you would stay the hell away from here, but you just had to poke your nose in. It’s just business. My friendship for you was real.”
Val glanced pointedly at Henry’s gun. “Do not talk of friendship and hold a gun to my head.”
Henry’s mouth tightened to a colorless line. “It’s just business,” he repeated, his voice hard. “Good-bye, Val.”
Val stared up at Tamar, locking eyes with her. He had never feared death before and did not fear it now. What he felt was piercing grief for the life he had thought he might live with her. An improbable fantasy, destined to end with a bullet to the brain, but even so. That fleeting fantasy, that brief hope had been the sweetest, finest thing he had ever known. Even so, he was grateful.
He braced himself. Waited for it, his eyes fixed on Tamar’s.
“No,” said Georg suddenly. Glass crunched under his feet as he started walking toward them.
Henry glanced at the other man, alarmed. “What?”
“Don’t shoot,” Georg said slowly. He gazed at Val, an expression of discovery on his face. “Not quite yet. I want him to watch first.”
Henry frowned. “Watch what? Do you mean…oh, no. For God’s sake, you can’t be serious. Now?”
“Yes. It’s perfect.” Georg’s eyes were gleaming with wild excitement. “He’s the perfect audience. It will be the sexual experience of a lifetime. Here, bring him closer so he can see everything. Hold him. He watches. Kill him when I come. Exactly when I come.”
Henry’s mouth twisted in distaste. He gestured with his chin for to the other black-clad man to approach. “Hold your gun to his head,” he ordered the man curtly. “If he moves, blow his brains out.”
The man held his gun up to Val’s temple. Henry stepped behind him and wrenched Val’s wounded arm back, then the other one, hyper-extending the mangled, wounded shoulder. Torquing them into a tense, shaking hammerlock of pure pain.
Val’s lungs jerked, in hard, shuddering gasps. Blood ran down, dripping off his fingertips. The wound in his shoulder had torn open again. He felt the warmth, the sting. Hot liquid, spreading.
Henry dragged him toward the corner where Tamar was hanging. The man with the gun to Val’s head accompanied them, step for step.
He was a couple of meters from her now. Henry behind him, the gunman to the side, and Tamar before him, staring down, eyes blazing.
“This is your life, from now on,” Val said to his former friend. “Pandering to that crazy sadist’s whims. Kneeling to kiss his stinking ass for your money. Enjoy it, Henry. You deserve it.”
“Do not fuck with me,” Henry hissed. “I did not choose this.”
“Yes, you did,” Val said. “You bought it. And you will pay for it.”
But all thoughts of Henry vanished from his head as Georg started toward Tamar, massaging his crotch.
As if she needed more of a fucking challenge. As if things were still a bit too tame around here, too easy. Now Val had to show up and put himself in mortal danger.
Damn him for complicating things. She would rather have died with her feelings hurt, hating his guts, thinking him a backstabbing traitor, than be forced to watch him die trying to save her. Much rather.
How many more pieces of her heart were going to be torn out of her chest and stomped to death before her eyes? There was no end to it.
At least Novak was down. Maybe Rachel had gotten her miracle. Then again, maybe not. András had her, and András loved to hurt just for hurting’s sake. And Georg was walking toward her, Tam, his face a tight mask of lust. Her body recoiled. Her ordeal had only just begun.
Imagine. The man was turned on by a woman hanging from a hook, a woman with a broken arm. She shook with a mix of tears and hysterical laughter. What was it about her and sadistic madmen? Why were they so attracted to her? She must have been a bad girl in a past life to deserve this insanity. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly.
When András came back with Rachel, bullets would start to sing again with her baby right in the middle of it. Val was immobilized, a gun to his head. She was hanging up like a cow in a meat locker—helpless.
Except for one thing. She rolled the tongue studs in her mouth as Georg touched her breasts, eyes shiny and rolling with hot excitement. His hands were stickily damp as they clamped over her breasts and squeezed. He groped at her crotch. Gripped it painfully hard.
She marshaled her self-control to put a look of heavy-lidded longing on her face. “Kiss me,” she whispered. “Please. You saved