Chapter 1 - Anja
I shove the key into the lock so hard the metal seems to bite my fingers. The door to Fadir’s apartment swings open with a soft whoosh of cold air, and I’m already screaming before my boots hit the marble floor.
“You absolute bastard! I saw the messages, Fadir. Don’t you dare lie to me this time!”
The words rip out of me raw, echoing off the high ceilings, and I can feel my anger rising. His place always feels too big for one person with its two stories of glass and steel perched on the twenty-eighth floor, with the city lights glittering like spilled diamonds through the wall of windows.
Black leather couches curve around a glass coffee table that probably cost more than my first car. A half-empty bottle of Macallan sits beside two crystal tumblers, one with a faint lipstick print on the rim. Even from this distance, I know it’s not my shade.
The air smells like his cologne, a mix of sandalwood and something sharper, like the unsettled air after a storm, and underneath it, the faint metallic tang that’s always clung to him. The one I used to tell myself is just from the gym and his workout.
But now I know different.
He’s standing in the open concept kitchen, shirtsleeves rolled up, and his dark hair still perfect even at nine at night. Fadir Klem looks every inch the successful businessman I thought he was, and how lucky I am to have gotten involved with him six months ago. His sharp jaw, always clean-shaven.
My eyes are drawn to his expensive watch glinting under the pendant lights, then to his easy smile that used to make my knees weak.
Now?Now it just makes my stomach twist.
“Anja,” he says, voice smooth as the whiskey he’s pouring. “Baby, slow down. You’re spiraling again.”
“Spiraling?” I laugh, but my voice cracks midway through the word.. I slam the door behind me hard enough that the abstract painting on the wall rattles. “I saw the texts from ‘Elena.’ The hotel receipt in your jacket pocket. The one from last Thursday when you said you had a late supplier meeting. Is she the supplier, Fadir? Or just another pretty distraction while I am busy losing everything?”
I'm fuming, and begin pacing between the leather sectional and the window overlooking the city. My mind is spinning, and I willnotfall for his lies anymore. I can't allow myself to do that.
Fadir sets the bottle down with a soft clink. Slowly, he crosses the room, like I’m a startled horse he doesn’t want to spook. His hand reaches for my arm, and I jerk back so fast my heel catches on the edge of the ridiculous white shag rug.
“You’re seeing ghosts,” he murmurs, using his condescending tone when he thinks I’m being dramatic. “Elena’s a client. You know how these deals work. Late nights, schmoozing. You’re exhausted from the job hunt. Come here.”
“Don’t touch me. I’m not your damn puppet anymore.” I slap his hand away.
“Nothing you can say will make me believe you!”
His eyes narrow, just a fraction. The smile stays, but it doesn’t reach them anymore. The smirk on his lips now causesme to shiver. Something evil is within him, and I'm about to live through its wrath.
“Anja. You’re overreacting. Again...” he takes a step closer to me. “Remember last month? You thought I was hiding money because of that bank alert. Turned out to be the car payment I made for you. I’m the one who’s been here. Who took you in when your landlord changed the locks.”
The words land like a slap I didn’t see coming. Not just because he’s right about that, but because I know without him, I'm alone. The memory slams into me so hard I have to grip the back of the couch to stay upright. I am still Anja Kuzmin, bright-eyed marketing assistant at a boutique agency downtown. I’d clawed my way out from having nothing back home except a beat-up, decade-old Honda Civic and a marketing degree I paid for with two jobs and sheer spite.
Then the layoffs hit. “Restructuring,” they called it. Translation... the boss’s nephew needed my desk. One pink slip, two weeks’ severance, and suddenly the eviction notice is taped to my door like a scarlet letter. I slept on a friend’s couch for four nights before the guilt ate me alive.
Fadir showed up with takeout and that smile, offering the spare key to his place.“Just until you’re back on your feet, baby. No pressure,” he said.
I should’ve seen the trap then. The way he paid my phone bill without asking. The way my clothes migrated from his guest room to his closet. The way he started answering my texts before I could even read them.
But I am drowning, and he is the only hand reaching out. Now that hand feels like a cuff.
“I’m not going back home,” I whisper, voice cracking despite myself. The words taste like ash. I can already pictureit. The dusty main street, the same old gossip at the diner, whispering about Viktor Kuzmin’s latest screw-up.
How my father gambled away the rent money, how men dressed in expensive suits came at three a.m. and smashed the living-room table while I hid in the closet at fifteen. How my mom left when I was nine, with nothing but a note that saidI can’t do this anymore.
Everyone back home knows I ran at eighteen rather than let Dad marry me off to some creep to settle his debts. They will see me crawling back, tail between my legs, with proof that the big-city dreams are just another Kuzmin failure.
Fadir steps closer. His cologne wraps around me like smoke.
“You don’t have to go anywhere,” he growls. “This is your home now. Your things stay. You stay. I’m not letting you throw us away over some paranoid fantasy.”
The threat is quiet, and it sinks its claws into my ribs.
