Chapter 7
BELLA
DAYS LATER
Hot water sluices off my body, and my mind can’t stop thinking about the impossible phone call with De Savoie and everything it implied.
I close my eyes and try to empty my mind but my thoughts don’t want to leave. And under the hot water pitter-pattering around my feet, all they do is sink and stay.
It was a custom commission that Mr. Romanov worked very closely with us on.
I turn my face into the water and let it run down over my face. A custom commission that he worked on closely with De Savoie. The necklace is sitting on the edge of my bathroom vanity, and I turn over every possibility in my head. But none of them provide a satisfactory answer.
None except one, and that single answer is almost too terrible for me to think about.
Thankfully, that’s when the intercom buzzes, and snaps me out of my thoughts.
Lydia is here. Just like the night with the Bellamy gallery, she’s coming to watch Anthony while I play my role by Slava’s side for another gala.
I just hope this time, things won’t go the way they did the last time.
But Nico’s ominous answer leaves me doubting that very much.
I shut off the water and grab my towel, wrap it tight around my body, and leave wet footprints across the tile towards the door.
When I reach it, the intercom buzzes again, impatient.
"Anthony," I call out to him as I buzz Lydia in. "Can you go in your room while I let Aunt Lydia in?"
"Okay!" His little voice floats back, cheerful and uncomplicated.
My hair leaves a dripping trail of water on the hardwood as I reach the door.
I should wait until I hear the knock, but I’m running late already.
The sooner Lydia is inside, the sooner I can finish getting ready.
Which means the sooner this evening can begin and end and become another night I survive Slava Romanov.
“Finally.” I open the door and my voice dies in my throat when I see who’s standing outside.
It's not Lydia.
It’s Slava, all six-foot-three of him.
For a single suspended second, the world stops making sense.
"You're not—" I start, and my voice comes out strangled, wrong. "What are you doing here?"
He answers me with a penetrating stare. I’ve seen him stare at me before, usually whenever I glare at him. But after the other day in the office, his stare feels different now.
He looks at me like he can see me, like really see me. As he looks, he runs his thumb across his lower lip again. I feel myself growing hot despite a slight breeze rushing through the door against my wet skin, and I’m having trouble drawing another breath.
Seconds stretch into minutes, and water continues to pool around my feet.
“Don’t ever open doors without knowing who’s on the other side again,” he says. “Ms. Creminelli.”
The heat of his gaze travels inch by inch from my face to my exposed collarbone and I’m suddenly aware of just how exposed I am to him right now. Standing in the doorway, wearing nothing but a towel.
And absolutely, soaking wet.
“You’re early,” I manage to choke out.
"I’m on time," he replies. "We're on the clock, Bella."
"I would have met you downstairs."
"I'm here now."
"Yes, I can see that. That's the problem."
His brow lifts a fraction. "I wasn't aware my presence was a problem."
You have absolutely no idea what your presence is doing to my carefully compartmentalized existence right now.
"You need to wait downstairs." My voice cracks at the exact wrong time. "I'll be down in twenty minutes."
"I can wait inside."
"No!"
The refusal is too fast and too fierce. His eyes narrow and I know I just did something that few people dare to do to him.
I told him no.
"Why?" he asks quietly as his hand rises up to take my chin between his fingers. "Are you hiding something, Ms. Creminelli?"
My heart stops, and then starts again, pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, my wrists, the tips of my fingers and between my legs from the kiss of his skin on mine.
Hidden behind me in the apartment is a six-year-old boy with his father's eyes and his father's stubbornness. And I won’t let his father’s killer see him.
"I don't have to explain a fucking thing to you. This is my home, and you don't get to stand in my doorway and demand justifications for my boundaries."
"Boundaries." He tastes the word with amusement.
I know. It’s a funny thing talking about boundaries while his hand is gripping my chin and I’m standing in front of him in nothing but a wet towel.
But I’ll be goddamned if I let him keep the upper hand.
Recklessly, I step forward into the space between us that should be staying empty and safe. My bare feet cross the threshold of my own door until I'm standing so close I can smell his cologne.
I don't care that I'm wet and dripping and practically naked. I don't care that he's fully dressed and I'm exposed. I don't care about any of it except making him get as far from Anthony as I can.
"Go downstairs." My palm lands flat against his chest, soaking the fine fabric of his shirt with a dark handprint over his heart, and I push. "Now. I will be down shortly."
He remains fixed in place like a mountain. I press harder until I can feel his heartbeat through the wet fabric. It’s faster than I expected, but it’s still steady compared to mine.
Then, as if to prove that he won’t just let me win either, he steps closer and leans in closer. All spaces disappear between us, and I shift slightly to the side to block him from seeing anything inside of my apartment.
And in the process, my shoulder brushes against his jaw.
His stubble is rough against my bare, wet skin. The brush is light and innocent. But it makes my heart beat a mile a minute. My breasts tingle, and suddenly the towel feels too rough on my skin. The urge to step even closer and press my body against him is almost impossible to resist.
But I force myself to stay still.
Slava turns his head, slowly and deliberately, because I know he felt the same damn thing and he's trying to figure out just what to do about it.
His eyes narrow. His jaw clenches. And we stare at each other.
I can't breathe. I literally cannot pull air into my lungs because his eyes have me pinned and his stubbled jaw is inches from my face and my hand is still pressed against his chest.
He breaks the silence first. "Have it your way, malyshka."
His voice has dropped even deeper, and through the conduit of my arm, I feel it rumbling deep in my core, sending a tingling throb down to my clit until a different kind of wetness starts slicking my thighs.
I don't know what that word means. But I know that it is something inappropriately intimate that he has no right to call me.
Nonetheless, my body responds to it like it’s been waiting to hear that word my entire life. I like the way it curls through the air between us, and I wonder what it might sound like as his tongue runs along my skin.
He steps back.
The loss of his warmth is so sudden it makes me sway. My hand, still extended where his chest was, drops to my side. I watch him button his jacket slowly and his eyes flick down to where the towel is slipping slightly at my sternum before he drags them back to my face.
"Twenty minutes," he says. "Don’t be late."
He turns and walks toward the elevator.
I close the door. Lean against it. Press my forehead to the cool wood and try to remember how to breathe again.
What the hell was that?
My shoulder burns where it touched his chin. My palm tingles where it pressed against his heart. My whole body feels like it's been rewired, every nerve ending recalibrated to a frequency that's specifically, impossibly tuned to Slava Romanov.
"Aunt Bella?"
I nearly jump out of my skin.
Anthony is standing beside me and looking up at me with Luca's eyes. His small face is creased with worry.
"You looked scared."
"I'm fine, peanut." My voice sounds almost normal. “I was just surprised, that’s all.”
Anthony considers this with the grave thoughtfulness of a child who has learned too young that adults don't always tell the truth. Then he nods, apparently satisfied, and asks, "Is Aunt Lydia coming?"
"She'll be here soon. You're going to wait for her while I get ready, okay? Stay in your room like a good boy."
He nods again and trots off. I watch him go and feel the weight of everything I'm protecting settle back onto my shoulders—heavier now, somehow, pressed down by the memory of Slava's skin on my shoulder and his voice calling me malyshka.
I push off from the door and head for my bedroom. Hair. Makeup. Dress. In that order.
I have a gala to attend and an identity to maintain and absolutely no time to stand around dissecting the way Slava Romanov looked at me when I was wearing nothing but a towel and righteous indignation.
The knock comes when I'm halfway through my eyeliner.
My hand jerks and sends a black streak across my temple.
Motherfucker! I told him twenty minutes and I know for a fact that it hasn’t even been ten. And if he thinks he can just come up again when I expressly told him to fuck off.
I stomp over to the door and yank it open. "I said I'd be down shortly, what part of that was unclear?"
"Wow, okay. Hello to you too." This time, it is Lydia.
The fight drains out of me so fast I feel dizzy. "Oh God. I'm sorry. I thought you were—"
"Someone else?" She steps inside, already scanning my face with the practiced eye of a woman who has known me since before any of this started. "Care to tell me who's got you ready to throw hands in a cocktail dress?"
“No-one."
"Uh-huh." Lydia nods. "No-one made you almost take my head off before I got through the door."
“I just want tonight to be over with." I stop and try to assemble something resembling composure. "That’s all."
Lydia closes the door behind her, and leans against the wall, and watches me return to the mirror to fix my eyeliner. "You know you can talk to me, right? About whatever's happening with you?"
"Nothing's happening with me."
"You're lying."
"I'm fine," I snap, and immediately regret it.
She's my best friend and the only one who knows the full truth of who I am and what I'm doing. She deserves better than my deflections.
But I can't explain what just happened at my door. I can't explain Slava’s chin on my wet shoulder, the press of my palm against his heart, the way he called me malyshka, and how much it bothers me that I want him.
I can't explain it because explaining it would mean confronting the reality of what I’m feeling. And I don’t want to do that.
"I'm sorry," I say instead. "I'm just... it's going to be a long night. I'll tell you everything tomorrow."
Lydia studies me for a moment longer, then nods. "I'm holding you to that."
I finish my makeup in focused silence. Foundation first, then concealer. One layer after another of my carefully applied armor until I can almost fool myself into believing that I can survive the night without another dangerous fantasy of what I want to happen.
Now, for the final piece.
I pick up the tangle of gold chain from my bathroom vanity and I look at the seven-pointed star.
It was a custom commission that Mr. Romanov worked very closely with us on.
Maybe it’s for the best if I leave it off tonight. If I leave it off, maybe he won’t stare at me with a gaze that makes me want to throw myself into him.
But then I hold the diamond against my throat, see the way it sits so exposed around my throat, and I think about the way his eyes darken as he stares at it.
At me.
Like I’m something he wants and can’t have—something he can’t look away from.
And like the madwoman that I am, I clasp the chain closed behind my neck and let the star settle against my chest.
The thing about digging… is that you never know when you’re digging your own grave.
I want him to look.
Because the longer he looks, the closer he’ll come to losing his composure. And once he loses his composure, it’s only a matter of time before he breaks and cracks and loses control.
And when he does, I want to know just exactly what he’ll do to me.