Page 195 of Mile High Ruin

The street below is mostly empty. A few cars pass beneath the lights. Someone walks a dog near the corner. For a moment, I think there’s a man standing across the road, watching the building.

My hand stops over my belly. I lean closer to the glass.

A bus passes, and when it clears, there’s nobody there.

I exhale and let the curtain fall partly closed.

This is what my life has become. Looking for Vadim in every shadow while praying I never actually find him.

I should want nothing to do with him. I should remember Camille whenever I think of his hands on me, his mouth against mine, the way he used to rest his palm over my stomach when we slept even before there was anything there to feel.

Instead, my fingers spread protectively over the child he doesn’t know exists.

That’s the worst part.

I escaped the monster.

And somehow, I still fell in love with him.

31

VADIM

For the first time in three nights, Sloane is back at the apartment.

I know because the light in the bedroom came on twenty minutes ago, and because one of the men watching the hospital called as soon as she left Ethan’s floor and got into the cab that brought her here.

Most nights she stays beside her brother until morning.

When she does come back, it’s usually for an hour or two at most, long enough to shower, change clothes, and sleep until whatever sense of responsibility she has toward herself loses another argument to the need to return to him.

I have known her routine for nearly a month. I shouldn’t be standing across the street watching the window. My men already know when she leaves the hospital, when she returns, which pharmacy she uses, which café she occasionally stops at when somebody convinces her to eat, and how long she usually remains inside this apartment before going back.

There’s nothing I’m going to learn by being here myself.

I come anyway.

The curtain moves and Sloane appears behind the glass, wearing something loose, her hair falling around her shoulders while one hand rests against her stomach.

For a moment she looks directly toward the street. I stay where I am, hidden beside the car, and feel the same vicious pull I’ve felt every time I have seen her since we found her.

She has no idea. We located her last month and made no move. I didn’t drag her back to me and demand answers, even though every instinct I have told me to do exactly that.

Because Petrov visits her.

That changed everything.

The first time surveillance caught him near the hospital, I thought it was coincidence. The second time, I stopped believing in coincidences.

Then came the photographs.

Petrov sitting across from her in a café.

Petrov walking beside her.

Petrov speaking to her as though he had every right to be there.

Once, his hand rested briefly against the small of her back while they crossed a street, and I stared at that photograph long enough that Anton eventually took it away from me without asking.