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You will die, Bratva bitch.
My hands come up to cover my mouth. I can’t speak or think at first beyond the awfulness of it, and even Mikhail seems frozen to the spot, staring at it uncomprehendingly.
“Well,” he says slowly. “I guess this was the source of the noise.”
There’s blood splashed over the door, the stairs, down the porch. It’s violent and brutal, and I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a huge jump from threatening letters and questionable jewelry being left for me, and I can’t quite wrap my head around what it might mean.
“I need to clean this up,” he says through gritted teeth. “You are going to go inside, and sit on the couch in the living room, and fuckingstay there. Do you understand me? You will not go poking around the house, or trying to find an escape route, or doing anything except sitting in place until I’m finished. I will not tolerate any more disobedience.”
I can’t speak. I feel as if I’m cold to my bones, the absolute horror of the scene in front of me turning me to ice. I know Mikhail wants an answer, but I can’t seem to find the ability to form a single word.
He snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Krasotka. Natalia. I’m in no mood to play games.”
“That would be a first.”
I want to clap my hand over my mouth again. I know it was the wrong thing to say, and I steel myself for his reaction, for angry hands on me. But instead, his eyes widen again, and to my utter shock, he starts to laugh.
“Sometimes I think I’ll miss your smart mouth,” he says, his voice a low, husky murmur as his eyes sweep over me. “Don’t worry,kotenok. I’ll have plenty for you to answer when I’m done here. Now go inside.”
I don’t argue. I don’t have the energy to. I just nod, stepping around the blood as I walk slowly towards the living room, feeling as if I’m still half in shock from what I saw. I sit down, as I was instructed, and wait for Mikhail to come and talk to me.
There’s not any fight left in me, not right now. I don’t doubt that Mikhail might rouse it in me again–he’s good at that–but right now all I can think is that while I was skulking around the house looking for the money Mikhail took from me, myotherstalker was outside, preparing to leave that violent scene for us to find.
I’ve never wanted to leave Moscow so badly–hell, Russia as a whole. I want to be anywhere else, countries away if I can manage it, far from all of this. From stalkers, from my past, from Mikhail and his revenge.
It doesn’t matter if his touch makes me feel things I’ve never experienced before, if he makes me crave things I shouldn’t, if he’s given me more pleasure than I’ve ever had in my entire life. I don’t want to be a part of this game any longer.
I just don’t know if I’m going to be given a choice.
I go over the night again and again as I sit there, trying to think of what I could have done differently. All I can think is that I should have stayed in bed. It was a hopeless effort from the start–there was no way I was going to be able to check every room in the house for wherever Mikhail is hiding the money. For all I know, it’s not even here. He might have hidden it somewhere else after he’d gone through my apartment.
I feel like an idiot for thinking I could pull it off. And now I’m going to have to deal with the fallout.
It feels like an eternity before Mikhail comes into the living room. His hair is damp and slicked back, and he’s wearing a loose pair of black joggers and nothing else. I feel a flash of resentment at the fact that he clearly took the time to shower and clean himself up after cleaning the mess the stalker left, although I suppose I shouldn’t be angry at him for coming to talk to me not reeking of blood and bleach.
“You’re telling me,” he says without preamble as he stalks into the living room and stops in front of me, “that you have no idea who this person is. That you have absolutely nothing you can give me as to their possible identity.”
“I–”
Mikhail holds up a finger, glaring at me. “Remember–”
“I know,” I cut him off, feeling a sharp jolt of anger at his interruption. “Ruby is in danger. You’ve made that crystal clear. But no, I don’t fucking know who it might be.”
I shake my head, continuing before he can speak, feeling more and more frustrated by the moment. “Men get obsessed with girls at the club all the time. That’s the way things are, in that line of work. It could be someone like that, completely unrelated to who I am, or anything to do with my family. Or, it could be someone from my old life who is after me for the same reasons you are.”
Something gleams in his eyes, his lips thinning as he glares at me, a suspicious look on his face. “What about Adrian?” he asks, and I stare at him, uncomprehending for a moment.
“What?” The change in topic feels so abrupt that I can’t quite figure out where he’s going with it at first. “I don’t understand.”
“I know who Adrian Drakos is by reputation,” Mikhail snaps. “And I know from the man who gave me the information I needed to be sure that ‘Athena’ was you, that he was the last lover you were with before you came back to Moscow and–according to you–weren’t with anyone else until us. So, could he have sent someone after you? Someone to get you back for leaving him?”
It’s all I can do not to laugh. “Adrian can have any woman he wants, and does,” I tell Mikhail flatly. “What was between us was never serious. He wouldn’t go to these lengths. He might have been insulted at being left, or angry at the way things ended between us–or that he wasn’t the one to end them–but this isn’t how a man like that behaves. You know that.” I cross my arms, looking at Mikhail incredulously. “This is your jealousy talking, not sense. You know this isn’t Adrian.”
Mikhail steps forward, suddenly, reaching for me and dragging me up off the couch, close enough to almost be touching him. “You want to hear jealousy?” he hisses, his hands rubbing up and down my arms as he grips them. “I know of Adrian Drakos. I know not just his reputation as an assassin, but the way he is with women.”
He pulls me closer, his expression heated and deadly as his gaze roves over my face, my lips, down to my breasts. “Did he make you come the way I do,kotenok?Did he make you breathless when he touched you? Did he hold you down while he licked that sweet pussy until you screamed for him?”
Mikhail’s arm snakes around my waist, pulling me hard against him, and I feel him thickening against me as his other hand tangles in my hair, forcing me to keep looking at him. “Was his cock as big as mine, Natalia? Did it make you scream and beg even when you insisted you didn’t want to? Did he fill you up the way I do?”
