Page 18

What luck I have.

What am I going to do?

A wild, aching part of me wants to keep the baby. I want to cradle the tiny life already growing inside me, protect it, love it fiercely the way no one ever loved me.

But then the fear rushes in. The father is the Bratva devil himself.

Andrei Popov.

The man who could snap his fingers and have people disappear. The man who could find out about a child, his child, and decide it belongs to him.

With the kind of power he has, he could take the baby away from me before I even had time to blink. Courts, lawyers, money, threats, he has every tool to make sure I never see my own child again.

I can’t risk it.

I quickly head back to my bedroom, pick up my phone, and text my boss: I’ll take the transfer to New Jersey.

Happy Birthday to me.

Chapter Five

Andrei

I have rules. Hard lines carved into my life. One of the oldest: no woman sleeps in my bed. Ever. They leave before the sheets cool. No lingering. No spending the night.

But last night, I broke it.

She fell asleep curled against me, strawberry-blonde hair spilling across my chest like spilled sunlight, her breathing soft and even, one leg hooked over mine like she belonged there.

I stared at the ceiling for hours, arm around her waist, thumb tracing lazy circles on her hip. It felt… right. Wrong in every way I’ve trained myself to believe is safe, but right.

I should have woken her. Watched her gather her dress and disappear. Instead, I pulled the covers higher and let her stay. I wanted her to stay. All night. All day. Forever, maybe. I’ve never wanted that with anyone.

There’s something about her, captivating, magnetic. I want to crack her open, learn every thought in that pretty head, every secret she keeps behind those wide eyes. I want to tell her my name so I can hear it on her lips again and again, ragged and desperate, as I make her come apart. I want to know what makes her laugh, what makes her cry, what makes her burn.

I was already planning it: when she wakes, we talk. We break the no-names rule. I get her name, her number, her everything. Then my phone vibrates on the nightstand, Viktor, one of my lieutenants. Trouble at the warehouse on the west side.

I slipped out of bed quietly and left. I told myself I’d be back before dawn. She’d still be there, and we’d start over in daylight.

When I returned at first light, the suite was empty. Sheets twisted, pillows dented where her head rested, but she was gone. Like a ghost.

I stood in the middle of the room, feeling something unfamiliar clawing up my throat. Rage? Loss? I don’t know. I’ve never chased a woman in my life. They chase me.

I searched anyway. The sheets still smelled like her, citrus, from whatever perfume she wears, mixed with the raw scent of sex and sweat. I pressed my face to the pillow and inhaled like an addict, memorizing it. Pathetic. I don’t do pathetic.

She left her shawl behind, red, velvety, probably kicked under the bed in our rush last night. I picked it up, turned it over in my hands, and brought it to my nose, inhaling deeply. Proof she was real. Not a dream.

Nothing else was missing. No jewelry taken, no cash, no valuables. The room was exactly as I left it, minus her.

Now, it’s been three weeks since the wedding. Three weeks since she looked at me with those eyes and said the words that flipped every rule I live by.

I can’t stop thinking about her.

I’ve hired a private investigator to scour every part of the Hamptons, but how do you find a woman when you don’t know her name? Her job? Where she’s from?

The only thing I have is her age, twenty-three, almost twenty-four, and the memory of her body under mine.

It infuriates me. No one has ever slipped through my fingers like this. No one has ever stayed in my head this long. No one has ever made me want to break my own rules just to keep them close.