Because at least Patrick's violence is straightforward. Expected. Something I can prepare for.
But Lev? Lev is unpredictable. Dangerous in ways I don't understand. And somehow, impossibly, that makes him more terrifying and more fascinating in equal measure.
I fall asleep listening for his footsteps, wondering if he's thinking about me the way I can't stop thinking about him.
Wondering what he'll do tomorrow when he looks at me, and we both know what happened tonight.
Wondering if that flash of darkness he's hunting for is already surfacing.
And terrified that I want him to find it.
Chapter six
Lev
I know she wakes at 6:04 AM because I've watched her do it seventeen mornings in a row.
Not approximate. Exact. 6:04 on the dot, like her body has an internal clock calibrated to the second.
I could tell you she takes four breaths before opening her eyes. Stares at the ceiling for twelve seconds before moving. That her T4 and T5 vertebrae crack when she stretches, and she winces slightly, even though the sound is too quiet for anyone else to hear.
I’m that fucking gone, and I can’t even find it in myself to be terrified of that.
Black coffee, two sugars. Drinks it standing at the kitchen window, looking at the gardens like she's mapping escape routes she'll never use. She hums something classical—Tchaikovsky, I finally identified it—when she thinks no one's listening. The sound does something to my chest I don't want to examine.
At this point, everything she does has some sort of effect on me.
I should look into it before I find myself going mad.
When she's nervous, her hand goes to the back of her neck. When she's lying, she touches her collarbone. When she's scared, she presses her thumb into her palm hard enough to leave crescents in her skin.
Forty-two steps from her room to the kitchen. I counted. Forty-two opportunities to intercept her, corner her, press her against any of six different walls and find out if she'd scream or moan or both.
I've mapped every possibility. Played out every scenario in my head until I know them better than my own security protocols.
This is insane.
I know it's insane.
I don't fucking care.
Because I want to know everything. Want to catalog every breath and heartbeat until I can predict her movements before she makes them. Want to own her so completely she forgets she ever existed as something separate from me.
And then I want to break her open like a geode and see what's inside. Pull out every secret, every fear, every dark thought she's too scared to acknowledge. If she shatters in the process? Good. I'll put her back together the way I want her.
Mine. Remade. Perfect.
"Boss."
Mikhail's voice cuts through fantasies I shouldn't be having during a business discussion.
I sharply look up from my laptop—where I've been watching Valerie dust the library for twenty-three minutes instead of reviewing the Italian contracts that are the entire fucking point of this meeting.
"What?" I growl.
His eyes narrow. He's been with me fifteen years. Long enough to read the signs. "I said the Italians want to renegotiate terms. Claiming market conditions have shifted since the agreement."
"Fuck their market conditions." I close the laptop before he can see the security feed on the screen. "The terms stand. They pay what they agreed to pay, or they can explain to their boss why they lost the best weapons pipeline on the East Coast."
