MILA

The mask is shattered, and the woman beneath is bleeding.

I thought I could outwit the devil, that I could dance on the edge of his blade without getting cut, but Aleksandr Morozov has proven that he controls the very ground I walk on. My secrets are no longer my own; they are weapons he holds against my throat, forcing me into a corner where the only way out is a confession that will destroy me.

I am walking a razor's edge between the mission I swore to complete and the man who has consumed my soul. His silence is louder than his threats, and his gaze strips me bare, demanding the one thing I cannot give him: the truth.

I am drowning in his darkness, terrified not by his violence, but by the undeniable fact that even as he destroys me, I never want him to stop.

ALEKSANDR

The game has reached its end. I have watched her spin her web of lies, admired the desperate beauty of her defiance, but my patience for the charade is gone. Mila Orlova is a ghost, a fiction, and I am finished playing with shadows.

I have the power to break her completely, to force the real woman into the light, and I will use every cruel tool at my disposal to do it.

She believes she still has a choice, that she can bargain with her loyalty, but she is mistaken. I have already claimed her. Now, I will dismantle her world piece by piece until she has nowhere left to run but to me. The betrayal she hides will not save her; it will be the chain that binds her to me forever.

I will have her total surrender, or I will have nothing at all.

This is the third book in the Vipers in Velvet Series. Reading order: Viper, Venom, Vow.