The House Always Wins

He took her off the street for money that was never stolen. She stayed for a reason he does not deserve. Lottie Novak was kidnapped on a Thursday, flown across a continent, and locked in a room with a telescope. That last part she finds funny. Nobody else does. Yevgeny Baranov is fifty-five, immaculate, and certain her dead father robbed him. He is willing to wait until the money appears. He does not know that his prisoner is an astronomer with a notebook, a photographic memory, and a talent for mapping any room she is left alone in. Within three weeks she could walk out the front door. Then she finds the second manifest — and the name on it belongs to Yevgeny's son. She can leave with her life. Or she can stay, and teach the most dangerous man on the Black Sea who has actually been robbing him blind.