Just moments ago, I was thebelle of the ball, so to speak, with a handsome, yet dangerous man on my arm, and now I've been reminded this is all for show. Twisting my lips, I closed my eyes and rested my head in the window to my right.
I'm transported back to the charity event, but in my fantasy I'm there because Alexey Sokolov wants me there. I am his date. We are in love...What? Wait!
My eyes snap open.
Shaking my head, I need to get rid of that notion. Any given day, aside from being a bartering tool in this mess of the Bratva revenge, Alexey wouldn't glance at me a second time.
Back at the penthouse, the quiet feels louder after the noise of the gala. Alexey keys in the code, and the elevator opens directly into the foyer. I kick off the heels the momentwe’re inside, sighing in relief as my bare feet meet the cool oak hardwood.
The gas fireplace flickers to life automatically, casting soft orange light across the black leather sectional and the marble island.
I should go straight to the guest suite. Shower off the makeup, crawl into bed, and let the exhaustion pull me under. Instead, I find myself pacing the living room, my black silk gown whispering around my legs with every turn.
I can’t stop replaying the night.
The way heads turned when we entered the ballroom, and the whispers following us like a current. The steady warmth of Alexey’s hand through the thin fabric of my dress, protective, but never possessive, and never lingering too long, but always there when the cameras flashed.
The quiet way he moved through the crowd, nodding to the right people, steering conversations with minimal effort. That calm, methodical presence that made even the most powerful men in the room measure their words around him.
It felt… safe.
The realization hits me like a slap.
Safe.
With a Bratva enforcer who is known, or rumored, for making people disappear, and pulled me out of a warehouse at gunpoint?
The same world I’ve spent years painting as monstrous, with violent men I have always wanted to avoid at all costs.
Alexey is part of that world.
Yet tonight, standing beside him amid all those powerful people, I felt steadier than I have in months, if not years. Seeing him tonight being so attentive, even if only for show, allowed me to see him as just a man.
I stop pacing near the windows and press my forehead against the cool glass. The city sprawls below, lights twinkling like distant stars. My reflection stares back. Elegant, composed, but a stranger in borrowed diamonds.
“This is supposed to be revenge,” I whisper to the empty room, furious at myself. “Not whatever dangerous heaviness is stirring in my chest.”
It’s just gratitude, I tell myself.
For the roof over my head. For the chance to hurt Fadir in a way that actually lands. For the first real breath of control I’ve had since my dream marketing job evaporated and the eviction notice taped itself to my old door.
Nothing more.
The age gap, the danger, and the careful line he drew the morning after the deal. It all screams that any warmth I feel is misplaced. A trick of survival. Stockholm-adjacent nonsense after being yanked from one cage into another.
Yet when I finally drag myself to the guest suite, peel off the black gown, and slip between the crisp white sheets, sleep doesn’t come easily. My mind keeps circling back to the ballroom. To the steady gaze, Alexey turned on me when Fadir was watching. To the quiet competence that makes him nothing like the chaotic manipulation I escaped.
Dreams pull me under eventually, tangled and restless. The small town I grew up in flickers through them first. The dusty main street, the shame of my father’s gambling issuessplashed across every gossiping tongue, and the terror of strange men pounding on the door, yelling for my dad and damaging anything in their path.
The fear of being dragged back there, trapped in the same cycle of poverty and bad decisions, with everyone knowing I failed at the big-city dreams I’d bragged about when I left all those years ago.
Then the images shift.
The crowded ballroom reappears. Alexey’s brown eyes connected with mine across the sea of elegant guests, calm and steady, anchoring me when the weight of stares threatened to pull me under. His hand at the small of my back, warm and sure through the silk. The way he never once made me feel like a possession.
I wake sometime after three, heart pounding, sheets twisted around my legs. The penthouse is silent except for the faint hum of the city far below. Across the hall, Alexey is probably sleeping in his own suite, doors closed, and boundaries firmly in place.
I press my face into the pillow and tell myself again that the vibrating in my chest is nothing. Just adrenaline. Just gratitude. Just the aftershock of seeing Fadir in person for the first time in a week.
