Chapter 20
ROLAN
I should have killed him.
I should have taken my gun and put a bullet through his left eye the moment his hand touched her arm.
But I didn’t. Because her debt is a leash that keeps her in my house, and a dead creditor makes the leash disappear.
Cold, bloodless arithmetic that I’m performing while my vision narrows to a red point and every muscle in my body screams in a language older than numbers.
He touched her.
His fingers on her elbow, casual, possessive — the grip of a man who has practiced ownership on this woman so many times the gesture has become muscle memory.
She flinched. A small thing, barely visible. And I stood fifteen feet away behind tinted glass and watched it happen and didn’t act, no matter how badly I wanted to.
My security team has Webb’s men on the ground.
Two of them carrying guns they’ve never gotten the chance to fire and relying on size rather than skill.
Alexei’s men disarmed them in under eight seconds.
They’re face down on asphalt behind the building, wrists zip-tied, humbled by their encounter with professionals.
I don’t care about them.
I care about the woman I’m dragging toward the Escalade, not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to communicate that the pace is non-negotiable. She’s stumbling slightly in those ridiculous black flats with the scuffed toes, her face a mess of confusion and fear.
We reach the car. I spin her, pressing her back against the passenger door. The metal is cold, and she gasps at the contact, her shoulders hitting the armored panel with a dull thud.
“What the hell just happened?” My voice is low. Controlled.
She looks up at me, those hazel eyes wide, wet.
“He’s an old acquaintance. I didn’t know he’d be here. I swear I didn’t?—”
“Stop lying.”
The words cut through whatever she was about to say next. Her mouth closes, opens, and closes again.
“You let him touch you.”
“What? I didn’t?—”
I turn her body. One hand on her hip, the other on her shoulder, rotating her body so her back is against my chest and her palms are flat on the car door.
She lets out a startled squeak, and I lean down, my mouth beside her ear, my breath moving the loose strands of dark hair at her temple.
“Do you think anyone can touch you and walk away from it?”
She tries to speak. What comes out is broken, half-formed. “No — I?—”
Her body is trembling against mine.
Good .
My hands find the button of her jeans.
“What are you?—”
I don’t answer. The button comes free. The zipper follows. She’s breathing hard now, her ribs expanding against my chest, her hands still pressed flat against the car. We’re in the middle of a parking structure. The light is gray and industrial, and there is no one in sight.
My team cleared the perimeter before we arrived.
I push the jeans down over her hips. She inhales sharply.
“Someone could —”
“I don’t care.”
I press her forward, bending her over the hood. I feel her flinch, feel the way her body tightens and then softens.
My hand slides between her thighs.
Wet already . Despite the fear. Despite the confusion. Despite Landon Webb.
I lean over her. My chest against her back, my mouth at the shell of her ear, and my hand between her legs where the heat is devastating.
“Always ready for me.” My voice is barely recognizable — low, rough, scraped raw by the thing I’m not naming. “Even here. Even now.”
She opens her mouth to respond as I push a finger inside her, and the words die. A small choke escapes. Her forehead drops to the hood. Her hands curl into fists against the metal.
“No one touches you,” I say against her neck. My lips brush skin, and she shivers — a full-body response, involuntary. “No one. Not him. Not anyone. Do you understand?”
She doesn’t answer. Her breathing is ragged, her body clenching around my finger, her hips making the smallest unconscious motion — pressing back, seeking more.
I add a second finger. Her spine arches.
“Promise me.”
Nothing.
Just breaths, moans, and the obscene sound of my hand working between her thighs.
“Elizabeth.” My voice drops. A command. The voice that makes men confess and soldiers obey, and that I have never, until this moment, used on her. “Promise me.”
“I promise.” Barely audible. A whisper that breaks in the middle. Her voice cracks on the second word.
My thumb finds her clit. She gasps. I curl my fingers inside her, and her whole body locks, every muscle tensing simultaneously.
“Rolan.”
My name. Not Mr. Belov.
She comes. Hard. Clenching around my fingers, her body shuddering, her hands sliding on the metal, her forehead pressed against the surface.
I’m hard — painfully, impossibly hard — straining against the fabric of my trousers, and her body is right there, bent and open and still trembling from the aftershocks.
While I’m still holding her, I pull my cock out and let her feel what she does to me. She lets out a gasp.
One motion. That’s all it would take. One motion and I’d be inside her, and the noises she’d make — I’m sure I know how it would sound. I’ve imagined it a thousand times.
I hold myself back.
“Next time something like this happens,” I say, and my voice is steady again, the control reassembled, the mask back in place, “the consequences will be significantly worse. Do you understand?”
When she doesn’t respond, I press harder, inserting the head of my cock in her entrance.
“Yes.” A breath. Not even a word but an exhale.
I pull my hand away and step back.
She stays bent over the hood for a moment, her body still twitching with aftershocks. Slowly, her fingers unclench, and her shoulder blades draw together as she pushes herself upright.
She pulls her jeans up. Her hands are shaking. She fumbles with the button — once, twice — and I watch her struggle without helping.
I open the passenger door.
“Get in.”
She obeys without a word.
I round the car, settle behind the wheel, and pull out of the parking lot. The two sedans fall in behind us at the gate. Nobody speaks.
Three minutes of silence. Four.
“What did he want?”
She’s looking straight ahead. Her hands are folded in her lap. “I don’t know.”
“I already told you to stop lying, Elizabeth.”
She exhales slowly. “He sent a message. Said he wanted to talk.” A pause. “I genuinely don’t know what about.”
“But you went anyway.”
“I went to tell him I couldn’t meet.” She turns to look at me. “That’s all I was going to do.”
I say nothing. The road unfolds ahead of us.
“How do you know him?” Her voice shifts to the careful tone again, but sharper. Genuinely curious and genuinely unsettled by the curiosity. “You said you knew who he was. Was that a bluff?”
I consider how much to give her.
“Do you think,” I say, “that I don’t know the history of everyone I allow inside my house?”
The silence that follows has weight.
She turns back to the window.
I keep my eyes on the road. We’re ten minutes from the estate. The city thins at the edges, the density of buildings giving way to the wider spacing of the north suburbs, the bare trees, the sky that hasn’t decided yet whether it’s going to snow.
“Thank you.” Her voice is quiet. “For today. For what you did. ”
I don’t respond.
“It won’t happen again,” she adds. And then, lower, “I’ll make sure of it.”
“If he contacts you again,” I say, “you tell me immediately.”
She turns from the window and studies the side of my face.
“Okay.”
We pull through the side gate. The estate rises ahead of us, the facade lit with the low amber glow of dusk. Dmitri’s sedan peels off toward the garage. I pull up to the main entrance and stop.
I take out my phone and pull up the message thread with Dmitri and type with one hand while the engine idles.
Update on Webb’s goons.
The response comes in under ten seconds.
DMITRI
Handled. Disposed. Clean.
And Webb?
DMITRI
We let him go, as per your orders.
I want eyes on him. 24/7. Every move.
DMITRI
Confirmed.
I pocket the phone.
She’s watching me. She doesn’t ask. She’s learning, slowly, the cost of the questions that have obvious answers.
I get out, round the car, and open her door.
She steps out, and I walk her inside to her room.
I stand in the corridor for a moment longer than necessary. Then I turn and walk to my office, because I need a drink, and if I stay in that corridor for one more second, I’ll break the fucking door apart.
I haven’t move for a long time.
The vodka sits untouched. The lamp throws shadows across the desk. Outside, the estate is quiet. The guards are on rotation; the house is settling into its nighttime rhythms. Anya is asleep.
I think about the parking lot.
She said my name as if it hurt.
This has been the problem since the kitchen. Since the fucking Hello Kitty pajamas. It’s not that I want her. Wanting is simple. Just the body’s response to stimulus. Manageable. Temporary.
The problem is that I can’t fuck her.
Not won’t. Can’t. Because fucking Elizabeth Calloway would require a kind of trust I haven’t been able to build yet, and may never.
She carries a debt. A significant one, large enough to have driven her to my doorstep, large enough to keep her here month after month, depositing payments to a man she despises. And as long as that debt exists, I can’t separate what she does from why she does it.
So, I hold the line.
Still, part of me hopes she breaks a rule. Crosses a boundary. Gives me a reason.
A reason to touch her again.