Page 31 of Fractured Ties

Not a smirk.

No, a real smile.

“Not afraid, either,” he said.

Maya couldn’t drag her gaze away, but she knew the other two men were probably just as flabbergasted by the scene as she was.

Without saying another thing, Kolya stood, and tucked the dog into his arm as he turned to face the others waiting on him. “I’ll call you tomorrow, yes? Make sure this is … done here.”

Konstantin glanced down at the pup. “What are you—”

“Mind your own.”

Kolya headed for the Hummer with the pup still firmly tucked into his arm, although the dog had stopped wiggling and was now quiet. Even as Kolya climbed inside the driver’s side of the Hummer, and set the pup down on the armrest between them, the dog didn’t make a peep.

He started the vehicle and pulled away. Maya didn’t even think to watch her past grow distant. She was too busy staring at the dog.

It really was small.

“It’s probably hungry,” she said.

Kolya didn’t look away from the road. “It’s a he. I saw what was between his legs.”

“Oh. Well, then, he’ll need a name.”

“He has one.”

As though Kolya had picked it the moment he’d laid eyes on the dog. Like there was nothing else for him to say about it.

“What is it, then?” Maya asked.

“Sumerki.”

Maya blinked.

She peered back out the window at the sky. Black ink dotted by light stars. A yellow moon hung high.

“Nightfall,” she said.

Kolya nodded. “Good things seem to happen to me at that time. It fits, yes?”

4.

THE STREETS of Wicker Park were quiet and dark, only lit by the lamps on the sidewalk. Maya wasn’t surprised—this part of the city was a relatively decent area and safer than a lot of others. Chicago’s crime rate was through the roof, but here, people could walk their dogs at night and not feel like they should probably carry a weapon with them while they did it.

Then again …

Maya glanced at the man driving the vehicle and second-guessed that theory of hers. She wondered how safe someone might feel if they realized the man they lived near was a killer, vor—a genuine, real criminal—and probably a hell of a lot more.

With his eyes firmly on the road in front of them, Kolya seemed somewhat innocuous. Harmless, even, if someone discounted his size and the tattoos coloring up his hands. Like this, a person was only getting a shadowed view of his features, and not a full-on glance at the things Maya had seen earlier—his coldness and calm; his indifference and his flashing bouts of rage.

She’d seen other things, too.

Things that said he wasn’t all that he appeared.

And Maya didn’t know what to do with it.

“Why are you staring?” Kolya asked quietly.