I can’t sleep.
I pad out into the main room, drawn to the glass like a moth. The view steals what’s left of my breath. I stand at the edge of the world. My palm finds the window. Cold. Solid. Real. Behind me, the air changes.
I see him in the glass. Mikhail. Standing in the doorway with his shoulder against the frame, arms crossed. He changed his shirt. The sleeves are rolled up, showing forearms corded with muscle and ink. A watch glints. His hands are in his pockets, but I know what they can do. Pull triggers. Break bones. Lift me from the floor.
Our eyes meet in the reflection.
I wait for him to speak. To tell me the rules. The price of my rescue. The price he'll eventually ask. Men like him always collect.
But he says nothing.
He just watches me with those arctic eyes. And for a second—barely a breath—I see something unguarded. It passes. Stone returns.
He stalks closer, his eyes tracking my reaction, “Relax,” he says. I wasn’t even aware I had tensed. “Sleep, in the morning we’ll talk.”
“Talk about what? How you kidnapped me?
"Let’s talk about making a deal.”
Chapter three
Mikhail
Coffee is the only thing that tastes right this morning. Black. Bitter. I hold the mug in both hands and stare at the Russian newspaper spread across the marble kitchen island. The words blur. Fucking blur. Because I am not thinking about NATO sanctions or oil prices.
I am thinking about the girl asleep three doors down.
She thinks I don’t hear her. The rustle of sheets, the pad of bare feet on hardwood. The stop-start of her breath as she stands in the hallway, deciding whether to flee or fight. I hear it all. Nothing moves in my home without me noticing.
She enters. Shoulders tight. Eyes sweeping the corners. She’s looking for exits, for cameras, for the catch. I like that she's smart enough to understand that there is always a catch.
“Sit,” I say. I don’t look up from the paper. “Eat.”
There is a spread on the counter. Bircher muesli. Eggs. Fruit. A carafe of juice she won’t touch because juice is for people who trust the sugar in their lives. I know this because I learned hunger the same way she did—you start by rejecting anything that seems too easy.
She sits. She doesn’t eat. She watches me like she expects betrayal, and my jaw tightens. I want to tell her that she is safe. But I am not in the business of lying to prey.
“Why am I here?” she asks.
Her voice is rough. Sleep and yesterday’s violence. Dante’s backhand left a bruise on her cheekbone that blooms purple today. I should have put the bullet in his skull instead of his kneecap. The mistake gnaws at me.
“Because you are a danger to yourself,” I say, “and by extension, to me.”
“So send me away again.”
I set the mug down. It hits the counter too hard.
“I did.” The words come out sharp. Razor blades wrapped in silk. “You found a drug dealer in under a week. I am curious what you would find next. A cartel? A cult? Perhaps a nice organ-harvesting ring in Southie?”
Her chin juts out. The gesture hits me somewhere low in the gut. She has a fucking chin on her, this girl. Made for taking hits.
“I was doing fine.”
“You were on the floor with a man’s belt undone.”
She flinches. Not much. A twitch around the eyes. But I catch it, and I hate that I catch it, and I hate more that I want to smooth it away with my thumb.
Silence stretches between us. The harbor is visible through the east windows, gray water chopping against the hulls of yachts I never use. Boston spreads out below, crooked streets and buried history, a city built by people who survived. She is built the same way. She'd die fighting before begging.
