Chapter 10
Sofia
I woke alone.
For several heartbeats, I thought maybe I’d dreamed the whole thing—the night of the party, the hallway, the black mask, him at the bar, the vodka, his hands on me in the dark.
But the sheets were tangled, my body ached in places that had nothing to do with bartending, and the faint trace of his cologne lingered on my pillow.
“Ugh!” I covered my face with my hands.
A mistake. That’s all it was. A one-night mistake.
I told myself that over coffee, then during the shower that did nothing to rinse him off my skin, I muttered it around the mouthful of eggs that I forced myself to eat.
When I rinsed my plate, my head dropped. We were from two very different worlds.
He had slummed it in a weak moment of too much vodka—though he didn’t act like he’d drank more than water. He was gone without a word. I told myself that would be the end of it.
Except it wasn’t.
My phone buzzed just as I was shoving the stack of overdue bills back into a drawer.
I didn’t recognize the number, but it didn’t say spam risk.
Thinking it might be the catering company, I answered. “Hello?”
“Good morning, Sofia.”
My blood froze. That voice. That accent. I gripped the phone tighter. “How did you get my number?”
On the other end, a low laugh. Rich. Dangerous. Amused. “You gave it to me, kisa.”
The hell I did. I opened my mouth to argue, but the memory of his smirk in that hallway and last night at the bar stopped me. Men like him didn’t need you to hand them anything. They just took it. My name, my number, my peace of mind.
My body.
Except that wasn’t true. Last night was completely consensual. I wasn’t drunk. I knew exactly what I was doing.
“I… must have,” I lied, hating the way my voice faltered.
“Mm,” he hummed. “Lunch. Today.”
My jaw dropped. I should have said no. I should have blocked the number, pretended I didn’t hear the steel in his voice that made it sound less like an invitation and more like a command. But instead, I heard myself whisper, “Where?”
* * *
“You look ravishing,” he told me in his beautifully accented voice as we waited in the lobby of one of New York City’s elite restaurants.
My cheeks heated. “Thank you.”
“Mr. Sokolov? Right this way,” the host murmured.
Sokolov. I filed that away.
Maksim rested his hand on my lower back as he gently guided me through the tables after the man carrying the leather-clad menus.
Though I held my chin high, I felt incredibly out of place in my skinny jeans, knee-high suede boots, and off-the-shoulder sweater. Except Maksim treated me like I was dressed in Chanel.
Lunch turned into a blur of expensive suits, exquisite appetizers, and sharp, all-knowing eyes across the table. In the restaurant he brought me to, the smell of money was as strong as the delicious scent of lavish food.
We were seated in a cozy alcove with floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, the city was all hustle and bustle, but we were nestled in a practical oasis where the sun warmed our backs and sent prisms cascading onto the pristine white tablecloth off the cut crystal glasses.
As I ate a lunch that likely cost more than I made in a night, he asked questions I didn’t want to answer and told me things I couldn’t tell if they were truths or lies. The way he watched me—like I was the only thing in the room that mattered—made me occasionally forget how to breathe.
And afterward, when he drove me home, it wasn’t a choice. Not really. His hand on my back, his mouth on mine before the door was even closed, the way I melted and burned and forgot every warning bell in my head.
We didn’t make it to the bed. Hell, we didn’t make it to the couch. The wall by the door bore the proof of that. Passionate wasn’t the word. It was wildfire. Possessive. Consuming.
“Fuck, Sofia,” he cursed under his breath as he filled me.
“Yes,” I moaned and dug my nails into his firm ass cheeks.
Every time I tried to remind myself this was wrong, that he was dangerous, his hands dragged me back into the blazing fire. And God help me, I didn’t want to find a way out.
By the time the sun went down, I’d stopped pretending it was simply a mistake.
I knew better, but I couldn’t help myself.
This wasn’t an ending. This was the beginning of something I had no control over.
And Maksim Sokolov wasn’t the kind of man you walked away from.
* * *
By the end of that week, I’d stopped pretending he was a mistake.
Maksim showed up everywhere. One day, he’d be outside O’Malley’s, leaning against the wall like he owned the sidewalk, or he’d be outside my building, waiting in that black SUV that seemed more sleek shadow than machine.
Several times he was inside the diner across the street, nursing a coffee like he had all the time in the world.
He didn’t ask. He appeared.
One night he dragged me into the corner booth of a late-night café in Little Odessa, ordered for both of us in Russian that rolled over my skin like a caress, then spent the entire time watching me eat as though he needed proof I’d finished every bite.
Another afternoon, he pulled me out of my shift on some excuse about needing me, took me to lunch at a posh little place where the waiters greeted him like royalty, and kept his hand on my thigh the entire time.
Every night ended the same—my apartment, his mouth, my body burning until I couldn’t remember why I’d ever wanted to run away from him.
“What’s going on with you?” Isabella asked me the night I filled in as the bartender for a small, intimate Halloween party for a famous designer on Park Avenue.
“What do you mean?” I asked, not making eye contact as I worked on the drink order she was waiting for.
“I haven’t hardly talked to you since the Popov party,” she huffed petulantly.
I laughed. “Girl, you know we’ve both been busy working and when you’re not, you’re up Weston’s ass.”
Her lower lip protruded and she crossed her arms. “I don’t like that you’re alone so much. What about Esteban? Has he reached out to you?”
“No, but it’s okay,” I replied with what I hoped was a nonchalant shrug.
She was quiet as I finished the last Halloween-themed cosmopolitan. When I set it on her tray with the rest, I saw her staring at me, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Who is he?” she finally asked with an arched brow.
“No one,” I insisted. My cheeks flamed.
“You always were a terrible liar,” she whispered with a wicked grin. “We’re going to talk.”
“Isa, it’s just really new and it may not go anywhere. If it does, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I better be. At least tell me where you met him.”
“At O’Malley’s,” I lied, but didn’t. We had officially met at the bar.
“He better be sweet to you,” she warned as she artfully hefted the tray and walked off.
Sweet? Maksim? I snorted to myself. He was protective. Possessive. Danger encased in expensive suits and steel. And God help me, I let him wrap me tighter around his finger every day.
Still, in the quiet moments between his visits, the fear lingered. Men like him didn’t come without a cost. They weren’t sweet.
I got my reminder one night when I slipped out of the bar, exhausted, only to find Maksim’s friend, Konstantin, leaning against a black car at the end of the block. He wasn’t Maksim, but the resemblance in the cut of his suit and the weight of his stare was enough to make my breath hitch.
I’d met Konstantin once when he had shown up at my bar to quietly speak with Maksim in one of the corner booths.
“Maksim is distracted,” he said simply, his accent softer but no less sharp. “Do you know what happens when men like him get distracted?”
I swallowed, throat tight. “No.”
“They bleed.” His eyes flicked over me, cold, assessing, like I was nothing more than a piece of lint on his coat sleeve. “And so do the people who make them weak.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but headlights flared, and Maksim’s SUV pulled to the curb. The driver’s side window rolled down, and there he was—jaw clenched, eyes dark, watching Konstantin like he’d already decided how many bones he’d break if he didn’t move along.
Konstantin smirked faintly, pushed off the car, and disappeared into the night.
Maksim didn’t speak as I slid into the passenger seat. But his hand found my thigh, gripping hard enough that I was sure it would leave a bruise.
It should have terrified me.
Instead, it made my pulse race, because for the first time I understood—this wasn’t just lust. It was some kind of dangerous, secret war.
And I was caught right in the middle of it.