Her gaze burned through me, unwavering but fractured around the edges. Her jaw was tight, her chest rising like she’d been holding her breath since the moment he spoke. This wasn’t the look of a girl playing games.
She stared like tears were seconds away. Like she hated every second of this dinner but hated me more for seeing the truth in her eyes. And still, even now, she watched me like she needed my hands, my mouth, my everything—to burn this shame off her skin.
I held her gaze, my jaw ticking, heart hammering. Furious didn’t begin to cover it.
She didn’t tell me. And I hadn’t asked. I’d been too busy using her like a toy, dragging every moan and tear out of her throat because it turned me on. And she let me. Hell—she gave it to me. Her mouth. Her inexperience. Her fuckingfirst.
Had I known what she was giving me—what it meant—would it have changed anything? Would I have stopped myself before it happened?
No. Because I’ve never claimed to be a good man. I’ve never pretended to be the kind of person who does the right thing when desire’s pulling at my spine like a trigger.
But now that I knew—now that the truth pressed into my skin like a burn—that she’d never done that before, not with anyone... and she gave it to me so easily? So recklessly?
Like it was nothing.
No. Like it was everything.
The realization wrapped a fist around my throat. My body responded before my mind could catch up—arousal, anger, shame. My hands clenched under the table.
She disappeared after dinner without a word. Slipped away like a shadow. Up the stairs. Light caught her nape—pale, naked, fragile—right before the dark swallowed her.
Pakhan poured another drink and slapped my shoulder like I was his favorite son. “Maksym. You really saved me a headache with that judge. Kyiv owes you.”
I nodded, but the words stuck in my throat. I couldn’t trust myself to speak without snapping.
She was untouched. And I’d already stained that.
—Kira—
Islammed the door behind me and turned the lock with shaking fingers. The echo of laughter and clinking glassesfrom the dining hall still rang in my ears, but it felt like it belonged to another world. One I wanted no part of.
I didn’t bother with lights. Just stumbled through the dark, peeled off my shoes, and collapsed onto the mattress. The sheets did nothing to soothe the sting beneath my skin.
Tears burned in my eyes before I could stop them. Not the soft kind—the hot, angry kind. The kind that scorched.
Fuck him.
Fuck all of them.
Felix. That smug, sleazy bastard with his gel-slicked hair and that fox-faced smirk. The son of “the biggest businessman in Moscow,” as my father liked to brag. As if that title meant anything except criminal royalty.
And now he was trying to sell me to him.
I’d known Felix was coming days before he arrived. The moment my father mentioned his name, something cold had settled in my gut. So I did what I always did when fear started circling—I looked for proof.
I looked him up.
Not in Russian. Never in Russian. That would’ve been pointless.
I searched in English. German. French. Anything foreign enough thathe—the so-called businessman—couldn’t erase.
It didn’t take long.
There weren’t many articles—only two that hadn’t been scrubbed yet—but they were enough.
His father wasn’t just a “businessman.” He was a predator with money and lawyers. Women had come forward years ago. Quietly. Carefully. One article mentioned a model hospitalized with broken ribs and a shattered jaw, her face so swollen she was barely recognizable. Another talked about a former girlfriend who vanished after filing a complaint—her statement retracteddays later, her social media wiped clean, her name never mentioned again.
There had been no charges. No consequences. Only a suffocating silence that followed every whisper of what he had done.
