The silence hits me first, then the smell. It smells like her—roses, salt, and that faint hint of the outdoors. It’s everywhere now.It’s in the sheets, it’s in the heavy curtains, it’s even on my own damn skin. I walk to the window and look down at the grounds.
There she is.
She’s walking back from the pond, her head down, her shoulders set in that defiant line I’m starting to hate as much as I crave. She’s still wearing those damn leggings. My heart starts thudding against my ribs again, heavy and slow, a drumbeat of pure, unadulterated want.
I want to go down there, throw her over my shoulder, and drag her back up here. I want to hear her yell at me, to hear her call me a monster, and then I want to see that anger turn into the same desperate heat I’m feeling. I want to find out every secret she’s hiding in her head, even if I have to pull them out of her with my teeth.
She looks up then, as if she can feel my eyes on her. Her blue eyes find mine at the window, and for a second, the distance between us vanishes.
We stay like that—locked in a stare-down that feels like a physical collision. No words, no movement. Just her staring at me like I’m the man who stole her life, and me staring at her like she’s the only thing in the world I want to destroy and protect at the same time. She doesn’t look away first. She holds my gaze until she reaches the stone steps of the porch, then she disappears inside.
I turn away from the window and let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. I look at my hands; they’re shaking. Just a tremor, but it’s there.
"Goddammit," I mutter, the word a rough rasp in the empty room.
I head for the bathroom. I need a shower, and it needs to be ice-cold. I strip off my clothes, my movements jerky and pissed off. I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror. I look like a man on the edge of a breakdown. My eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep, my jaw is set so tight it aches, and I’ve got a bruise forming on my shoulder where I hit the doorframe the other day when she was with her father. I look like the madman everyone expects me to be.
I step into the shower and turn the handle all the way to the right. The water is freezing, hitting my back like needles, but it doesn't help. As soon as I close my eyes, I’m back by the pond. I’m feeling the heat of her skin. I’m feeling the way she whimpered—that tiny, broken sound—when I put my hand on her neck. I can feel the wetness that I’m pretty sure was dampening her leggings, the proof that she was just as affected as I was.
She’s under my skin. I can’t wash her off, and I can’t ignore her.
This is fucking insane.
Boris wants the docks. Vladimir wants the empire. Artyom wants a legacy. I don't give a shit about any of it. Not today.
I want the girl.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IRINA
My legs are still vibrating, but I’ve long realized it’s not from the three-mile run I had this morning. It’s the way Mikhail looked at me, like he was deciding whether to kiss me or break me. Honestly, I’m not sure which would have been worse.
I hear a sudden ping. And I freeze. It’s the burner phone.
It’s the burner phone and that means… news!!
I grab it without a second thought and then, I’m moving through the east wing, trying to keep my breathing steady, but every security camera I pass feels like an evil eye tracking my every movement down to the sweat on my skin.
This house has walls and ears. And right now, the only thing I can hear is the frantic rhythm of my own heart.
I’m dead if I get caught.
I have to be quick, I think as I reach into the hidden pocket of my leggings. The burner phone is a hard, rectangular weight against my hip. It feels like a piece of radioactive charcoal.
Ineed a place where the cameras can't follow.
I quickly brainstorm and head to the conservatory, a glass-walled maze of ferns and orchids that smells like damp earth and expensive rot. I find a corner hidden by a massive, waxy-leafed monstera. I stop, pressing my back against the cool glass, and wait. One second. Two. Ten.
I hope the cameras don’t work around here.
I pull the phone out. My thumbs are clumsy, shaking as I punch in the code. The screen flickers to life, the blue light reflecting in the glass behind me.
One new message. No sender. No subject.
Grime cafe. 11:00 PM tomorrow.
I swallow hard, the sound loud in the quiet room. My stomach does a slow, nauseating roll. It’s him. It has to be. After ten years of chasing whispers and staring at blurred photos, I finally have a time and a place. The person my father tried to bury under a mountain of lies and legal paperwork is actually within reach.
