Page 119 of Hate You Most

The nation is disappointed in you.

Lev

We need to be seen together. Soon.

In public.

Unless you would prefer for your father to handle things again…

I assume not.

Lev

Tell me where you are.

I’ll come to you.

Or are you planning to let everything fall apart?

Viktoriya.

`Answer me.

Viktoriya

I'm in Detroit.

Good.

Send me the details. I’ll be there within two days.

We’ll fix this properly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

May 4th, 2023.

— Outside Dakota Sanchez apartment. Detroit, Michigan.

Viktoriya closed the apartment door behind her as quietly as she could.

She took a steadying breath and turned toward the elevator. She knew this was a bad idea, but she had run out of options. She had to make everything right somehow, and she'd realized yesterday that there was no way she could agree to what Dakota was asking.

She couldn't come out and she couldn't be seen with Dakota openly. She had to think bigger than herself, she had to keep her sister safe.

The elevator doors closed and a broken reflection stared back at her from the smooth metal. She didn't recognize who she had become. She looked elegant and confident and it was just enough to pass as composed if nobody looked too closely.

The dress she'd chosen was black silk with a slit that climbed high along one thigh when she walked. The fabric caught the light as she moved out of the elevator, it clung to her hips before falling loose at her legs. Her hair fell in soft waves and she'd put on diamond earrings that dangled whenever she turned her head. She hadn't dressed up like this in months, and that was exactly the point.

Or at least, what she'd kept telling herself as Lev had kept messaging and calling her. She needed to end this madness, she needed to just be normal for once. Her father was losing it, and she didn't like it, but she was going to conform for once in her damn life.

Viktoriya needed to be seen exactly where everyone expected her to be. At a nightclub, on the arm of her on-again, off-again boyfriend and actor Lev Mironov. He had never once asked what she wanted, and she hadn't asked him. This was mutually beneficial to them both. She didn't have a choice, she had to do this no matter how little she wanted to.

The air outside was crisp and still damp from the earlier rain. Puddles lined the street as she walked, her heels clicking purposefully against the stone.

Viktoriya had barely reached the club before the cameras found her. They were not visible all at once, not exactly, but she knew their presence the same way she knew the feeling of blades against smooth ice.

White flashes from across the street, and one quick blinding light behind a parked car. She should've been used to this, but she wasn't. For a moment, she almost stopped. The attention felt less like being photographed and more like being peeled open under bright white light. She was exposed. Out in the open. But wasn't that what she wanted? Otherwise, what the actual fuck was she doing here, standing outside one of the country's most famous clubs with the boyfriend her father had handpicked for her?