A Silent Reckoning: Sinner's Empire by Nikita Slater (world best books to read .TXT) 📕

of the rougher neighborhoods in the city, should have felt creepy, but Tasha never found it so. She had been borrowing it for months now, having negotiated a trifling payment with Jordan, the owner, and secured the key and alarm code. She thought maybe he had a thing for her. Though she didn’t return his affections, she did feel safe in his gym, hidden from the world.

Tasha sat up straight and brought her arms over her head in a long body stretch. She twisted her legs in an ‘S’ sit and felt something bump her shoe. Curiously, she glanced over her shoulder. She had tapped the white box with her foot. It was the unopened delivery that’d been sent to the travel agency earlier in the day.

Deciding now was as good a time as any to go over the promotional material, she reached for the box. She moved her legs into a wide ‘vee’ sit and untied the ribbon holding the box closed. It was fancier than the boxes the usual posters came in. She pushed herself forward, forcing her legs further apart in the stretch.

She flipped the lid off the box and looked down.

“No!” she gasped and pulled her legs in, recoiling.

A wave of dizziness and nausea swept over her. She brought her hands up to her eyes and bowed her head. “No, no, no, no,” she repeated in a horrified moan.

This wasn’t happening!

Maybe she imagined it.

Tasha dropped her hands and reached forward, desperate to prove she was wrong. Shaking fingers lifted a single white lily from the box. Only one man had ever given her flowers. And it had always been white lilies. He’d insisted they had reminded him of his prima ballerina, his little Russian dancer. Graceful, lovely and pure.

Tasha felt suddenly cold in the overheated room.

Then she felt him.

Watching.

Stalking.

She felt like throwing up and actually brought a hand up to cover her throat.

“David,” she whispered brokenly, tears splashing onto her cheeks.

Every instinct in Tasha screamed at her to drop the flower and run from the gym. To flee the danger that had found her, but she knew it was too late. David had finally come for her.

As if to prove her correct, footsteps, so quiet they were almost inaudible approached her from a darkened corner of the gym. She stared in horror as the specter of a man stopped several feet from her crouched form. He wore expensive black pants with a white collared shirt, buttoned most of the way, but stopping just below his throat. Casual but well dressed.

He was not a massive man in proportions, but his presence was so overwhelming he always seemed bigger. He was much taller than Natasha’s 5’1”. His body was solid with muscles corded beneath his skin, making his lithe strength subtle but deadly. He looked like a killer. He was a killer.

“Natasha.”

She closed her eyes against the deep, accented tones. She hadn’t heard that name since she’d started running. Her name on his lips was chilling and seductive at the same time. He had never been as accomplished at hiding his accent as her.

“Natasha,” he demanded again, much closer this time.

Her eyes flew open and she realized he was standing over her now. She moved to back away from him, away from the deadly intent now clearly visible in the lines bracketing his mouth and the dull acceptance of his eyes. He reached for her, gripping her by the back of the head, catching the strands of hair that had escaped her knot and tugging sharply.

Natasha gasped.

“Stand up,” he said in his quiet, deadly voice.

She allowed him to drag her to her feet by the hair. She used the pain to remind herself of why he’d come. She was so close to him she was able to take in his scent, masculine and seductive. His face was several inches above hers, his eyes devouring her features. He continued to hold her loosely by the back of the head, his other hand hung with fist clenched. As though he had to stop himself from grabbing her. Or hitting her.

His only betrayal of emotion.

Heat radiated from him, warming her skin where they nearly touched. Fury combined with lust assaulted her senses. His black eyes roved over her, taking in every nuance. He looked like a man who had been starved and she was the meal denied him.

Her body screamed at her to run, but a small part also responded to the magnetic pull of the man that held her life in his hands. She ached for him to kiss her. She felt like laughing at the bitter humor of the situation. What kind of woman wanted the man that was about to murder her to kiss her senseless?

The kind of women that knew what it felt like to be made love to by this man.

“Two years, Natasha.” Anger strained the low tones of his voice.

She nodded mutely. It had been two years since they had last seen each other. Since the day she had run from him in fear for her life. Since the day she had watched him execute another man as he begged for his life and then walk away as though it meant nothing to him. The day she had discovered that, rather than having an affair, as she had suspected, her husband had been killing people.

A contract killer.

“You look the same, my wife. Perhaps more beautiful than I remembered.”

Tasha shifted on her feet very subtly, suspecting that he would detect any tension in her body. She lifted her chin and looked coldly into his flat, black eyes. “You look older, husband.”

A slight lifting at the corner of David’s mouth was all the acknowledgment her insult produced. He did look older. The lines in his face had deepened, chiseling his sharp features in granite. His dark mahogany hair now had strands of grey that hadn’t been there before. He had never been a handsome man, but there had always been a magnetic quality that had drawn her