Chapter 6
Dmitry
Seven days of cataloging Eva's rebellion had turned me into something I didn't recognize—a man who watched security footage of my own property like other people watched Netflix.
The kitchen destruction count stood at two, though she'd gotten creative with flour the second time, turning my imported marble counters into what looked like a cocaine processing facility after a DEA raid.
Twelve escape attempts in total, each more inventive than the last, each teaching me something new about how her mind worked.
And yes—that’s almost two a day. I didn’t get the feeling that she really wanted to escape, it was more like she just wanted to let me know she was angry with me.
The biting incidents had dropped to three, and the last one barely broke skin. She was learning my patterns the way I'd learned hers, timing her attempts for when I was on calls with suppliers, in the shower, pretending to sleep.
Today's footage showed her latest innovation.
She'd managed to partially disassemble the bathroom window frame with a butter knife she'd hidden—not stolen, hidden, because she'd asked properly for it at breakfast three days ago and I'd forgotten to count it back into the drawer.
The girl had played a long game, waiting seventy-two hours to use a utensil she'd acquired legitimately.
I rewound the footage, watching her work.
She'd wrapped toilet paper around the handle for better grip, used my expensive face cream as lubricant for the screws.
The whole operation took forty-three minutes of patient, methodical work while I was on a call with our concrete supplier about a shipment delay.
She'd almost gotten the entire frame loose before the knife slipped, cutting her palm. Not deep, but enough to bleed.
The fascinating part was what happened next.
She'd cleaned up the blood with the efficiency of someone who'd hidden injuries before.
Reassembled the frame well enough that a casual glance wouldn't notice.
Returned the knife to the kitchen, washed it, put it back in the drawer.
Then she'd bandaged her hand and sat on the couch with Bear like nothing had happened, reading one of my books when I finished my call.
She thought she was being clever. She was being clever. But every camera angle was covered, every room monitored. I'd watched her clean that cut, saw how she'd checked to make sure the bandage wouldn't show under her sleeve—my sleeve, technically, since she'd taken to wearing my clothes.
That was another development worth cataloging.
She'd claimed all her clothes were dirty, which was bullshit since I'd bought her a week's worth of everything.
But she wore my t-shirts to sleep, my henley when she made breakfast, even found a pair of my track pants that she'd rolled up four times at the ankles.
She looked ridiculous and somehow perfect, drowning in fabric.
The weight gain was subtle but noticeable.
Maybe five pounds, enough that her cheekbones didn't look like they could cut glass anymore.
The shadows under those impossible eyes were fading from purple to faint blue.
Her hair was longer now that it was clean and cared for, falling past her shoulders in waves she kept trying to contain with elastic bands she'd found in my bathroom drawer.
I switched cameras to the current feed. She was in the living room with Bear, who'd recovered remarkably well. The puppy followed her everywhere, his loyalty absolute and unquestioning. She'd taught him commands in some made-up language only they understood.
"Propor-shun-al response," she was telling Bear, setting his food bowl down with exaggerated precision. "That's what the psycho calls it. You be good, you get good things. You be bad, you get corner time."
The puppy wagged his tail, waiting.
"Say please," she commanded, and Bear lifted one paw in what they'd decided counted as asking nicely.
"Good boy. See? We can play his stupid games."
She was playing house while plotting her escape, and the contradiction made something in my chest do things I didn't want to examine.
This girl who'd spit in my face a week ago was now practicing table manners when she thought I wasn't watching.
Setting napkins beside plates with careful attention to placement.
Using the right fork for salad versus main course, knowledge she'd picked up from watching me.
My phone rang, Ivan's number flashing on the encrypted line. I'd been dodging him for three days, but there was only so long I could pretend to be handling business that didn't exist.
"You've been radio silent for a week," he said without preamble. "Alexei's asking questions."
"I'm working on something related to the Morozovs.
" Not entirely a lie. The USB was in my safe, its contents backed up to three secure servers.
I'd been through every file, mapped every connection, built a comprehensive picture of Morozov operations that would be invaluable when we inevitably went to war with them.
I should tell them about the USB, so we could work on it together. But I couldn’t not yet—it was too risky.
"And this work requires you to be completely unavailable?" Ivan's voice carried that particular tone that meant he was running probability calculations in his head. "You missed the Thursday meeting. Alexei had to handle the Gorgonov situation himself."
The Gorgonov situation—a territorial dispute over the Queens waterfront that I should have handled. Would have handled if I wasn't playing whatever this was with a twenty-two-year-old thief who'd somehow rearranged my entire life in a week.
"I need more time," I said, watching Eva on the monitor as she practiced having a tea party with Bear, complete with proper posture and pinky fingers extended.
"Time for what, exactly?" Ivan asked. "Is there something you're not telling us."
There was everything else.
"Just a few more days," I said. "I'm working on something."
"Dmitry." Ivan's voice softened slightly. "Whatever this is, be careful. Alexei's patience isn't infinite, and the Morozovs are starting to panic. Panic leads to violence."
"Understood," I said.
I hung up and returned to watching Eva, who'd moved on to teaching Bear to dance, holding his front paws while humming something that might have been a waltz.
She was barefoot, my t-shirt hitting her mid-thigh, hair falling in her face as she laughed at the puppy's clumsy attempts to follow her lead.
I was working on something, alright. I just didn't know what to call it yet.
One hundred lines of "I will not attempt to pick locks with stolen cutlery" sat stacked on my kitchen counter, her handwriting deteriorating from Catholic school neat to angry slashes to tiny rebellious doodles of middle fingers in the margins.
The last twenty lines were barely legible, but she'd completed them. Every single one, because she'd learned that half-measures just meant starting over.
Now she sat across from me at dinner, eating her pasta like she'd been raised by wolves. Sauce on her chin, deliberately slurping noodles, chewing with her mouth open in a performance of defiance that would have been funny if it wasn't so calculated.
"Eat properly," I said, not looking up from my own plate.
She took a bigger bite, letting marinara drip onto the table I'd cleaned an hour ago. The splatter pattern was almost artistic in its deliberateness—she'd aimed for maximum mess without seeming like she was aiming.
"Corner," I said simply.
The word hung between us for exactly two seconds. Then she snapped.
The plate went first, sailing past my head with enough force to leave a red smear on the wall behind me.
Her water glass followed, exploding against the kitchen cabinet in a shower of crystal that caught the light like expensive rain.
She was up before I could react, grabbing the remote from the coffee table.
"Fuck your corner!" She hurled the remote at the TV with impressive force, the kind that came from genuine rage rather than calculation. The screen cracked on impact, spider-webbing from the center in a pattern that would cost three thousand dollars to replace.
But she wasn't done. She grabbed books from my shelf—the Russian novels I kept for appearance, the technical manuals I actually read—throwing them with mechanical precision. One caught me in the shoulder, leaving what would be a bruise.
"What kind of mob enforcer doesn't even hit back?" she screamed, reaching for one of my grandmother's music boxes—the only one I kept out in the open—on the high shelf.
I moved then, fast enough to intercept her hand before she could grab something actually irreplaceable. She spun, shoving me with both hands, real force behind it even though she might as well have been shoving a brick wall.
"Are you soft?" Another shove, harder. "Is that it? Too pathetic to even do violence right?"
She was in my face now, close enough that I could see tears gathering in those impossible eyes. Not from sadness—from pure, clean fury at my refusal to be the monster she understood.
"Hit me!" She actually slapped me then, not hard enough to hurt but sharp enough to echo in the destroyed room. "Come on! Show me what you really are! Show me why they call you The Beast!"
The title hung between us. She'd been listening to my calls, picking up more than I'd realized.
Dmitry Volkov, The Beast, who'd once broken a man's arms in seventeen places for stealing from the family.
Who'd earned his reputation with blood and broken bones and bodies that took dental records to identify.
"Hit me," she said again, quieter now, almost pleading. "Just fucking hit me so I know where I stand."