Lev #2
Her door is slightly ajar, soft nightlight spilling into the hallway. I push it open quietly and step inside.
Mila's asleep, small body curled tight under blankets decorated with stars. Dark curls spread across her pillow. She looks peaceful. Safe.
She wasn't peaceful five years ago.
Five years ago, she was two years old and screaming, covered in her mother's blood, and wouldn't let me touch her for hours. The attack happened while I was across the city handling business—my wife Katya and newborn son Dmitri alone in our bedroom when Pavel Grom’s men broke through security.
And I later learned that Patrick O'Rourke was also involved.
By the time I got home, Katya and Dmitri were dead in pools of blood, and Mila was under the bed, small hands pressed over her ears, eyes wide and empty.
She saw things no child should see. Heard things that still wake her up screaming sometimes.
And I can't erase those memories no matter how many guards I post, how many locks I install, how much distance I put between her and the world.
I failed her once. Let her see her mother die because I wasn't there to protect them.
I won't fail her again.
I watch her sleep for ten minutes—the only weakness I allow myself—memorizing the rise and fall of her small chest, the way her fingers curl around the edge of her blanket. She's seven now. Getting older. But still so fragile.
Still mine to protect.
Finally, I leave before she wakes and sees the blood still crusted under my fingernails.
Back in my office, I pull up the security feeds. The hallway camera outside Valerie's room shows her door closed and lights off. She's probably asleep, or lying awake and terrified. Either way, she's contained.
I switch to the recorded footage from earlier—the hallway camera caught her stumbling back to her room after fleeing my bathroom. She could barely walk straight, kept stopping to lean against the wall like her legs wouldn't hold her.
Good.
I fast-forward through the rest of the evening.
She doesn't leave her room. Doesn't call anyone on the visible phone.
But around 8 PM, the angle catches her pulling something from her bag—a second phone.
Cheap flip phone. She stares at it for a long moment, types something quickly, then shoves it back.
Burner phone.
My blood runs cold.
Burner phones mean secrets. Mean contacts she doesn't want traced. Mean she's reporting to someone.
Who?
I make a note to have Mikhail pull her phone records tomorrow. Both phones. And to dig deeper into Marina Petrov's agency. If someone compromised my vetting process, I'll know by morning.
But even as I plan her surveillance, I can't stop thinking about that moment in the bathroom.
The way her eyes went flat and cold. The way she dared me to pull the trigger. The way strength flashed through all that weakness for just one second.
I want to see it again.
Want to push her until the coward disappears and only the viper remains. Want to know what it would take to make that fierceness surface and stay.
What that fierceness would look like, writhing hard with pleasure.
Fuck.
My hand moves to my belt.
This isn't smart. She's a potential threat. Someone I should eliminate or keep at arm's length until I know who sent her.
But I'm undoing my belt anyway, unzipping my pants, because the image of her soaking wet and terrified in my shower won't leave my head.
I lean back in my chair and stroke myself slowly, eyes half-closed, replaying the encounter.
The way her uniform clung to her body. The curve of her hips. The rapid rise and fall of her chest as she hyperventilated. The feel of her pulse hammering against the gun barrel when I pressed it to her forehead—fast and desperate and alive.
"You'd look so pretty like this, Milaya," I murmur to the empty room, grip tightening. "With my gun to your head. Crying and showing me that darkness you're hiding."
Would she fight? Or would that viper surface and take everything I gave her without breaking?
I imagine pressing her against the shower wall right there, hand wrapped around her throat, feeling her pulse race under my palm. Imagine the heat in her eyes before terror floods back in. Imagine making her show me that fire again—making her earn the right to survive.
My hand moves faster, and Russian falls from my lips without thinking.
"Pokажи мне," I growl. Show me. "Show me what you're really made of, little mouse."
The image shifts. Her underneath me. Tears streaming down that pretty face. But her eyes—angry and fiery and daring me to break her completely.
"You'd take it, wouldn't you?" I'm speaking in English now, filth mixing with Russian. "Take my cock, take my violence, take everything, and you'd still look at me with those dark fucking eyes."
I imagine her on her knees in my office. Gun pressed to her temple. Mouth open. That flash of steel in her gaze even while she's choking.
"Khoroshaya devochka," I breathe. Good girl. "Show me the viper. Ya khochu uvidet' tvoyu temnotu." I want to see your darkness.
I come hard, jaw clenched, her name mixed with curses in two languages. Fuck. The way she'd look ruined and still defiant.
Afterward, I clean up and sit back in my chair, satisfaction and anticipation warring in my chest.
Tomorrow, I'll start unraveling whatever web she's caught in.
And I'll push her until that viper surfaces again.
Because the mouse is pathetic and useless.
But the viper?
The viper might be exactly what I need.
I pull her file back up and start cross-referencing everything. Viktor Novak's death—listed as home invasion, robbery gone wrong. But the timing is suspicious. Father dies, and two weeks later his daughter shows up in my house with a burner phone, hunting through my private quarters?
No.
Someone sent her. The Italians? Someone testing my defenses?
I'll find out.
And when I do, I'll decide whether Valerie Novak lives or dies.
But first, I'm going to crack her open and see what's really underneath all that fear.
Because that flash of darkness—that fierce, fearless moment when she wasn't afraid to die—that's worth keeping her alive.
At least for now.
I text Mikhail: Full background on Valerie Novak. Phone records, financials, known associates. Everything. By morning.
His response is immediate: Done.
Good.
This is going to be interesting.