Chapter 16 Ilya
ILYA
The surveillance feed from the gallery is open on my laptop, the only thing I’m interested in watching as I sit on my couch and sip vodka, waiting for her to leave and return home.
I've been watching her constantly since our confrontation four nights ago, unable to stop myself even though I know I should give her space to process, to accept what's happening between us.
She's been staying late at the gallery every night, avoiding her apartment, throwing herself into work. I understand the impulse—she's trying to maintain control over something, anything, when her entire world has been turned upside down.
Tonight she's in the back room, cataloging pieces. I watch her photograph a bronze sculpture, focusing intently on it. Even through the grainy feed, I can see the exhaustion in the way she holds herself, the tension in her shoulders.
I should let her work in peace, turn off the feed and give her privacy, at least the illusion of it.
But I can't. The need to watch her is compulsive and overwhelming.
The front door sensor triggers, and I see a figure enter the main gallery on a different camera. My body goes rigid instantly, every instinct screaming danger.
The man is large, moving with a brutal focus that I recognize. He’s the kind of man who has one purpose in life: to hurt others at the behest of someone who doesn’t feel like doing it themselves.
And I have a feeling, a gut instinct honed from years of recognizing danger, that I know who sent him.
Terror floods through me, cold and sharp.
I knew Sergei might make a move. But I thought I had more time. I thought he'd approach me directly first, test my boundaries before going after her.
I was wrong.
The man is moving through the gallery, toward the back room. Toward Mara.
I’m up off of the couch before he makes it halfway across the gallery floor, grabbing my jacket and gun as I bolt for the door. I grab my phone as I rush down the stairs, texting Kazimir that I’ll likely need a cleanup crew at Mara’s gallery.
If I can get there in time. If I can stop him before he hurts her.
He’s not leaving there alive if I have anything to say about it.
I have a feeling Sergei sent this man there to grab her, so she can be used as leverage to get me out of New York, or to get me to stop whatever it is he thinks I’m doing here. The laughable thing is that my reasons for being here have nothing to do with him… until now.
If he hurts her, I’ll start a war before I let this slide.
The thought of what could happen to her makes my blood run cold as I drive toward the gallery.
I've never felt fear like this. I've been shot at, stabbed, beaten, threatened by men who could actually kill me, and I've never felt this kind of visceral terror.
But the thought of Mara hurt, of arriving too late, of finding her—
I can't finish the thought.
Manhattan traffic is a nightmare, but I don't care.
I weave between cars, run red lights, my hand on the horn, my foot heavy on the accelerator.
Other drivers honk and swerve, and I ignore all of it, focused only on getting to her.
My mind won't stop showing me images I don't want to see.
Mara hurt. Mara bleeding. Mara's body broken on the gallery floor while that brutal man stands over her, waiting for me to arrive so he can deliver Sergei's message.
I've killed men for less than what he’s attempting right now. I've destroyed entire organizations for smaller insults. But none of that matters if I'm too late.
The fear is unfamiliar and overwhelming. I've spent my entire adult life in control, building walls around anything that could be used against me. But Mara has destroyed all of that. She's become the one thing I can't protect myself from, the one weakness I can't eliminate.
And now she's paying the price for my obsession.
I run another red light, nearly clipping a taxi. The driver leans on his horn, screaming something I don't hear. My phone rings. Kazimir.
"I'm five minutes out," I say before he can speak.
"Ilya, you need to think about this. If you go in there alone—"
"I'm not leaving her with him."
"This is dangerous. You should wait for backup."
"No." The word comes out flat and hard. "If something happens to her because I waited—"
I don't finish the sentence. I don't need to. Kazimir knows me well enough to understand what I'm not saying: if Mara dies because I was waited and didn’t take her with me that night that I showed myself to her, I'll never forgive myself.
"Be careful," Kazimir says finally, and hangs up. “I’ll be right behind you.”
The gallery appears ahead, its windows dark except for security lighting. I pull up to the curb, not bothering to park properly, and I'm out of the car before the engine stops, my gun already in my hand.
The front door is unlocked. I slip inside, my movements silent, years of training overriding the panic that wants to make me rush.
The gallery is quiet. Too quiet. My blood is cold with fear, with the anticipation of seeing her bloodied on the floor in the back room… or gone altogether, taken by a man who I didn’t consider an enemy before, but do now.
I move through the main space, my gun raised, every sense on high alert. The back room is ahead, light spilling from the doorway. I can't hear anything—no voices, no sounds of struggle, no screams.
The silence is worse than noise would be.
I reach the doorway and pause, taking a breath, preparing myself for whatever I'm about to find. Then I step inside.
The scene in front of me is more shocking than I could have imagined.
Mara is standing there, facing me, bent to grasp at a sculpture on the ground that’s smeared with blood. She’s smeared with blood, her hair sticking to her face and her clothes spattered with it.
The man I saw on the camera is on the floor in front of her, his skull caved in, blood pooling beneath his head. I look from the sculpture, to his head, and back to Mara.
She’s staring at me, frozen, her face bloodless. She’s clearly going into shock, but she's standing. She's breathing. She's alive.
The relief that floods through me is so intense it's almost painful. My knees nearly buckle, and I have to lock them to stay upright. She's alive. She's hurt her attacker, not the other way around. She survived.
My magnificent, fierce Mara survived.
I holster my gun and move toward her, my gaze racing over her even as relief threatens to overwhelm me. The blood—is any of it hers? Are there wounds I can't see? Is she injured beneath the gore?
"Mara." My voice comes out rougher than I intended it to, urgent and demanding. "Are you hurt?"
She doesn't respond. Her eyes are fixed on me, her breathing shallow and rapid.
The moment I reach her, my hands are on her immediately, running over her arms, her shoulders, checking for injuries beneath the blood. "Where are you hurt? Tell me where you're hurt."
She flinches at my touch but doesn't pull away. She still doesn't speak.
I cup her face with both hands, forcing her chin up. Her skin is cold and clammy. "Mara. Look at me. Are you hurt?"
Her eyes finally focus on mine. “Alexander,” she whispers, her voice hollow, and the sound of the false name I gave her pulls at something in my chest.
“Ilya.” I reach up, brushing a piece of blood-soaked hair out of her face. “Ilya Sorokov.”
“I.S.” Her voice is still a hollow-sounding whisper, and I swallow hard.
"Are you hurt?" I ask again, gentler this time but no less urgent. "Did he hurt you?"
She shakes her head slightly, the movement small and uncertain.
I don't trust it. I need to check for myself. My hands move to her neck, checking for bruises or cuts, then down to her shoulders, her arms, looking for wounds, for signs of a struggle, for anything that would tell me she's injured.
"I need to see," I tell her as she flinches away. The blood is everywhere, making it hard to tell what's hers and what's the dead man’s.
"It's not mine," she says, her voice shaking. "The blood. It's not mine."
I pause, my hands on her ribs, and look at her face. She's still pale, still shaking, but there's clarity in her eyes now. "You're sure?"
She nods. "I'm sure."
I check anyway, running my hands over her one more time, confirming what she's told me. No wounds. No injuries. The blood is all someone else’s.
The relief is physical, a release of tension I didn't realize I was holding. I've been holding my breath since I saw the man enter the gallery, and now I finally let it out, my forehead dropping to rest against hers for just a moment.
She's alive. She's unharmed. She's practically in my arms, and I have no intention of letting her go again.
I pull back to look at her properly, taking in the full picture. She's covered in someone else's blood, her clothes ruined, her hair disheveled and matted. But she's standing, breathing, her heart beating beneath my palm where my hand still rests on her ribs.
She fought back. She survived. She killed a man who came to hurt her.
Pride mixes with the relief, dark and possessive. This is my Mara—not some fragile thing that needs constant protection, but a woman who can be fierce and deadly when cornered. A woman who can survive in my world.
"You're magnificent," I murmur, the words escaping before I can stop them.
Her expression changes, shock giving way to something else. Anger.
She shoves at my chest, and I let her push me back a step. "This is your fault." Her voice is shaking, accusatory. "He came here because of you."
I can't deny it, and I won't insult her by trying. "Yes."
"Someone tried to kill me because of you." Her jaw is clenched now, her fear transforming into rage. "Because you've been stalking me, because you couldn't leave me alone, because you decided I was yours—"
"You are mine."
"—and now there's a dead body in my gallery!" Her voice breaks on the last word, and I can see her starting to fracture, the shock and adrenaline wearing off as reality crashes in.