Chapter 4
Dmitry
The drive to Queens should have taken twenty minutes—straight shot down the BQE, no traffic at this hour, just me and the road and a problem I needed to contain.
Instead, I had Eva in my backseat turning my Audi into a war zone, and the puppy whimpering on the floor like he knew exactly how fucked this situation was.
I'd put her in back because I didn't trust her in front. Too many things to grab—the gear shift, the steering wheel, my throat. The backseat seemed safer, contained, controllable. Big mistake.
The first hit came as I merged onto the expressway.
Her elbow connected with the window hard enough to make the whole car shudder.
I watched in the rearview as she wound up for another strike, her face set with the kind of determination I usually saw in men about to die for something they believed in.
"That's thousands of dollars of German engineering you're destroying," I told her, keeping my voice conversational even as the bulletproof glass started to spider-web under her assault.
"Bill me," she snarled, and drove her elbow into the window with enough force to actually crack through the first layer.
The thing about bulletproof glass was that it was designed to stop things coming from outside—bullets, rocks, whatever enemies might throw at you.
It wasn't really meant to handle sustained assault from inside by someone who didn't care about destroying themselves in the process.
And this girl definitely didn't care. She was all fury and desperation, throwing her whole body weight behind each strike.
"You realize we're going sixty miles per hour," I pointed out, watching her try to enlarge the hole she'd made. "Even if you get through, you'll die on impact with the asphalt."
"Better than whatever you're planning," she shot back.
The puppy started crying then, high-pitched whimpers that cut through the sound of breaking glass and highway noise. He'd pressed himself into the corner of the floor, as far from the violence as he could get, shaking like he was back in that cardboard box.
"You're scaring the dog," I said, surprised to find I actually meant it. Something about that pathetic little creature got to me, maybe because he was as fucked as she was, just in a different way.
I saw in the rear-view that Eva actually paused for a moment. She looked down at the puppy, and her whole face changed. For exactly one second, all that rage melted into something softer, something protective. Her mouth opened like she wanted to comfort him, to tell him it would be okay.
Then her walls slammed back up, and she glared at me in the mirror. "You're the one scaring the dog," she shot back, like I was the one destroying my own car.
Each impact shook the whole vehicle. She'd figured out to aim for the hinges, the weak points, using both feet like a battering ram.
The leather on the door panel split under the assault, exposing foam and metal underneath.
My beautiful A8, the one I'd had imported special from Munich, was being systematically destroyed by a hundred-pound girl with mismatched eyes and no sense of self-preservation.
By mile marker twelve, she'd torn through the seat leather with her fingernails, looking for anything she could use as a weapon.
By exit thirty-four, she'd somehow managed to remove one of the headrests—those things were designed to be permanent fixtures, but she'd found the release mechanism through pure violent determination.
Now she was using it as a club, slamming it against the window.
"If the glass breaks, you'll sever an artery," I warned her. "Then you'll bleed out in my backseat, and I'll have to explain to my detailer why the leather's ruined."
"Fuck your leather," she spat, but I noticed she switched tactics, using the headrest to try and break the lock mechanism on the door instead.
I should have been furious. This car cost more than most people's houses. Every piece of damage she inflicted would take weeks to repair, specialists to source parts. But watching her in that rearview mirror, raging and absolutely refusing to give up, all I felt was a grudging kind of respect.
Most people, when faced with the reality of their situation—trapped, overpowered, completely fucked—they folded. They negotiated, they pleaded, they accepted their fate. Not this one. She'd rather throw herself through broken glass at highway speeds than submit.
It was magnificent, in its own deranged way.
The women in my world—the trophy wives and mob daughters and high-end escorts—they knew how to smile while planning your death.
They'd poison your drink or put a knife between your ribs while whispering endearments.
They hid their violence under designer clothes and perfect makeup, wielded it like a scalpel, precise and clean.
This girl didn't hide anything.
Her violence poured off her like heat from a forge, raw and honest and absolutely uncontrolled. She wasn't trying to manipulate or seduce or negotiate. She was just trying to survive.
"Almost there, little one," I said, not sure if I was talking to the dog or the girl.
"Don't call me that," she snarled, punctuating each word with another strike against the door.
The safe house was a converted industrial loft in Queens, three floors up with no exterior fire escape—I'd had it removed two years ago, right after I acquired the property.
The neighbors thought I was paranoid. They were right, but not paranoid enough, apparently, since I was now harboring the most wanted woman in Brooklyn.
Eva came through the door like a soldier entering hostile territory. Her mismatched eyes swept the space in a pattern forged from paranoia—exits first, weapons second, defensive positions third.
I set the puppy down on the kitchen tiles, and he immediately peed, a puddle spreading across the Italian marble I'd had installed last year. The smell hit instantly—sick animal and fear, a combination that would take industrial cleaners to remove.
"He needs water," Eva said, like I was too stupid to understand basic animal care.
"No shit," I muttered, opening cabinets until I found a mixing bowl that would work. The kitchen was fully stocked—I kept all my safe houses ready for extended stays—but I'd never had a dog in here before. Or a girl who looked ready to tear my throat out with her teeth if given the opportunity.
While I filled the bowl from the filtered tap, she edged toward the door. Not obviously, not directly, but in that way people did when they thought they were being subtle. A step here, a shift there, gradually decreasing the distance between herself and what she thought was freedom.
"It's biometrically locked," I told her without looking up from the bowl. "Only opens for my palm print."
She froze, then tried the handle anyway. Because of course she did. The lock gave a soft electronic beep, denying her access. She pulled harder, threw her shoulder against it, rattled the handle like she could intimidate technology into compliance.
"What if there's a fire?" she asked, and there was something in her voice that wasn't quite fear. More like she was calculating whether setting the place ablaze would be worth it if it meant escape.
"Then we burn," I said simply, setting the water bowl down for the puppy, who attacked it desperately, splashing more than he drank.
She processed this information, those impossible eyes narrowing as she worked through the implications.
No fire escape, no emergency exit, no way out except through me.
I could see her mind working, running through options like a computer processing data, discarding impossible plans and looking for the one crack in my security.
Then she bolted.
Not for the door—she'd already established that was pointless. She ran for the bathroom, moving faster than I'd expected given her injuries. Those long legs covered ground quickly, and she slammed the bathroom door behind her before I could react.
I didn't chase her immediately. Part of me was curious what she'd try.
The bathroom window was small, barely two feet wide, with a three-story drop to concrete below.
The glass was reinforced, but not bulletproof like the car windows.
If she was desperate enough—and she definitely was—she might actually attempt it.
The sound of metal on metal told me she'd found the shower curtain rod.
Smart. Use it as a lever, break the glass, maybe wrap the curtain around her hands to protect them from the edges.
I gave her thirty seconds, counting them off in my head while the puppy lapped water and shook and generally made a mess of my kitchen floor.
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.
I walked to the bathroom, didn't run. No point in seeming desperate.
The door wasn't locked—she'd been too focused on the window to bother with that detail.
I turned the handle and stepped inside to find exactly what I'd expected: Eva halfway out the window, three stories up with nothing but a straight drop to the alley below.
She'd broken the glass efficiently, used the curtain rod just like I'd predicted.
The curtain itself was wrapped around her hands, already spotted with blood from where the glass had cut through the thin fabric.
Her upper body was through the opening, legs kicking for purchase on the sink, and for one terrifying second, I thought she might actually make it through before I could stop her.
I grabbed her ankle just as she got her hips to the frame.
She came back through the window fighting like something feral, all nails and teeth and pure rage.
Her heel caught me in the jaw—a solid connection that snapped my head back and filled my mouth with the iron taste of blood.
She'd split my lip, maybe loosened a tooth.
Good aim for someone being dragged backward through broken glass.