30. NIKOLAI
Chapter thirty
S team billowed around me as I shoved the glass shower door open, stepped inside, and let the scalding water beat down on my skin.
I needed this—needed to step back and pull myself together. That girl had wrecked my focus and fucked with my head like no one else ever had.
Lyla had burrowed under my skin and cracked something wide open.
I didn’t lose my cool—not ever. My mind always found the next move.
If someone crossed me, they disappeared.
If someone stole from me or hurt what was mine, I made sure they never got the chance again.
And if I thought someone deserved help, I gave it—anonymously.
But with Lyla…the rules didn’t apply. The way she’d gotten to me didn’t compute.
I braced both hands against the marble wall, letting the water lash my back and sear across my muscles to remind me I was still made of flesh and bone. I wasn’t the cold-blooded machine everyone thought I was, nor the monster I’d trained myself to become.
But maybe I’d never been that ruthless—not really.
If I had been, she wouldn’t be locked in my guest room right now.
She would be off with whatever scumbag Delgado had sold her to.
Or at least, out of my hair and far away, living under whatever new identity I’d paid to conjure for her. Another problem solved.
But no. I’d burned down a club, started a fucking war, and infuriated half the syndicate to keep her alive.
A girl who hated me.
A girl who looked at me like I was the devil in a tailored suit.
This morning, when I’d told Luca what had happened, he’d gone quiet, which was worse than yelling or veiled threats.
All the other syndicate members, along with the Volkovi Notchi, were livid.
I’d acted on my own against the very threat they were making meticulous plans to take out.
I could hear my mother’s voice in my head: You risked it all for a girl? For some American strip club whore?
I exhaled hard through my nose and reached up to rub the water off my face. They didn’t get it. They never would.
They didn’t know what it felt like to be a human under layers of steel refrain.
Didn’t know what it was like to watch her step onto that stage and light up the dark like she was born to be worshiped.
To listen to her smart-ass mouth and want to rip the sarcasm right off her tongue with my own.
To cradle her half-naked body after she nearly died and realize that maybe I didn’t want to be alone in this hell anymore.
I wanted her.
I wanted to bury my cock in her tight, wet pussy and fuck her until she forgot everything but me—until I owned her, body and soul.
I wanted my name and only my name on her tongue when she cried out in pleasure, her voice breaking, her walls clenching, her thighs shaking around me.
I wanted her on her knees, hands bound behind her back, looking up at me like I was her goddamn world. I craved her complete and willing submission.
I wanted to give her the world and make her mine for all eternity.
I wrapped a hand around my thickening cock. My grip tightened as my thoughts drifted back to the memory of her standing on the parapet, her body on full display, her golden strands whipping in the wind—a goddess.
Fuck.
Even in the middle of this shitstorm, I was hard for her. My mind was still on her lips, her breathy moans, the fight in her body as I held her down on the bed, spanking her until she broke for me.
I pumped once, twice, imagining her bent over the vanity, begging for more. Her dripping little pussy. My name on her tongue. My hand in her hair.
Mine.
I let out a low growl as water pounded my shoulders. My other hand slammed flat against the wall.
I was losing it—losing the edge I’d spent a lifetime sharpening. I pumped harder.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
An alarm cut through the fog.
My head snapped toward the bathroom counter. The screen of my phone lit up with a blinking notification.
SECURITY ALERT—GUEST ROOM DOOR TAMPERED.
Every other thought vanished.
I dropped my cock and turned off the shower, slinging water from my hair.
What the fuck was she doing now?
I threw my head back and laughed.
The audacity of this girl!
Stepping out of the shower, I moved to the vanity where my phone sat.
I tapped the screen to open the security notification.
The feed from the guest suite flickered to life.
I wasn’t the kind of man who installed cameras in private places in my own home.
There were no cameras in regular bedrooms or bathrooms. But that bedroom wasn’t meant for guests.
It was meant for prisoners.
It was a fail-safe. A vault. A quiet little cell with five-star amenities.
And Lyla Laine Oakley had just declared war on it.
The screen showed her still in her drenched T-shirt and shorts, ranting and raving as she tore through the room like a demon in bare feet.
Hair wild, face flushed, soaked fabric clinging to every inch of her.
The mattress was off-center, the bedding had been ripped off, and one curtain was torn down.
She was mad as a hornet and unafraid to destroy the world if she had to.
I scrolled the feed back a few minutes, curious to see what she had done to trigger the alert.
And what I saw made me chuckle in sheer amazement.
She’d scoured the room—pulled open every drawer, yanked the closet doors wide open, and even peered behind the headboard like there might be a secret tunnel hidden there.
Then, swinging a lamp like a baseball bat, she’d struck the door handle over and over until she finally gave up and moved on to the room’s next victim—the bed.
She had stripped it, tossing the pillows to the floor and ripping the sheets off with a fury that said she was done being held against her will.
Every inch of the suite was subject to her scrutiny, and she damn well looked like she’d start tearing through the drywall next.
I dragged a knuckle across my lip, smirking.
Good luck with that, sweetheart.
The door was reinforced, and the window was laminated and hurricane-rated. Lyla was fearless, but it wouldn’t matter. This wasn’t a room someone could get out of.
But she didn’t seem to care.
When I clicked back to the live feed, she was tying the fucking curtains and sheets together. I was astounded by her gall.
I zoomed in and watched as she used her teeth to start a tear in the top sheet.
Then she ripped it into two pieces. She used a complicated-looking knot to secure the pieces together.
Not a single hesitation; she knew what she was doing.
She tied the makeshift rope to the bedframe like she’d done this before—maybe with the silks she’d performed with.
My smirk faded when she grabbed the large standing vase from the corner.
The thing was thick—and over three feet tall. A museum piece, heavy as hell. She dragged it toward the center of the window, pressed her forehead against the glass with her hands braced on either side and stared down at the space below.
She thought she could smash the fucking window, scale down the rope of tied linens, and drop onto the neighbor’s terrace two stories below.
Jesus Christ.
I wrapped a towel around my waist and broke into a sprint.
She wasn’t the type to bluff.
She was going to do it.
I charged down the hallway, keeping my eyes glued to the live feed. She had hoisted the vase over her head.
I slammed my palm against the scanner.
Click.
The lock released.
I shoved the door open.
And everything stopped.
Lyla stood silhouetted against the skyline. The storm raged outside, behind her small, taut body.
“Lyla—!”
She didn’t even turn to look at me.
With a guttural scream, she hurled the vase.
There was a blur of porcelain and gilded edges as it slammed into the floor-to-ceiling glass with a sickening crack !
The impact reverberated throughout the room.
The window didn’t shatter outward, but a spiderweb of shimmering lines instantly appeared on the immense pane, spreading out from the point of impact like a venomous bloom. The vase didn’t bounce; it exploded. Porcelain shrapnel erupted and ricocheted back at her like a barrage of white knives.
One jagged shard glinted in the light.
Lyla let out a scream—a raw, piercing sound of pain and rage—and her hands flew to her forehead. I couldn’t see the wound, only the immediate welling of red between her fingers.
My stomach clenched into a cold, hard knot of dread.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
She wasn’t supposed to hate me so much that she would hurt herself. The sight of her, injured because I had caged her in, twisted something inside me. The calculated calm I usually carried shattered.
I had made her this desperate.
And now she was bleeding in front of me.
I had broken her.
I hadn’t stopped to think this through well enough.
I stormed across the room in my bare feet, across the shards of porcelain littering the floor, and scooped her up. She still had the nerve to fight me like a wildcat, twisting against me, every limb thrashing like she was possessed—desperate to escape her own personal demons.
“You’re bleeding!” I barked. “Stop moving.”
We reached my bedroom, and I had almost stepped into the en suite when she squirmed loose with some contortionist bullshit move. She bolted.
I darted after her, caught her easily enough, and yanked her arms behind her back.
“If you don’t behave, I’ll tie you up,” I said, spinning her around. She slammed against the bathroom door and gasped at the impact, kicking backward toward my shin.
“Try it again,” I growled, “and I’ll cuff you to the fucking bed.”
She continued to fight, wild and furious. I dragged her to the vanity and turned her to face the mirror.
“Look at yourself!” I roared, gripping her wrists behind her back with one hand and twisting the other in her hair. I yanked her head up. “Fucking look at yourself.”
She hissed and fought against the pull, but her gaze finally landed on her reflection.
The moment she caught sight of herself, her entire body locked up.
Blood streaked down her temple. Her wet shirt still clung to her. Her hair was a tangled mess.
She was chaos incarnate. Beautiful but unhinged.
“A goddamn banshee,” I muttered.
“You did this,” she spat. “You caged me. You dragged me into your sick world and made me your prisoner.”
She jerked hard, trying to break free again, but I held her still.
“You don’t own me,” she snarled. “I hope you fucking die, you monster. Slowly. Violently. With no one to mourn you.”
My pulse spiked, jaw ticcing, fury and guilt boiling up within me.
“You’re a murdering rapist thug,” she hissed.
“A goddamn mafia lapdog pretending he’s better than the rest just because he wears ten-thousand-dollar watches and calls what he does business .
You’re the worst kind of man.” She was trembling with fury now.
“Because you think what you do is justified. You think you’re righteous.
But all you are is a calculating, cold-blooded predator who hides behind money and control because if anyone ever saw the rot inside you, they’d put you down like the mad dog you are. ”
My vision tunneled.
A red haze clouded the edges of my sight.
Fury cashed into me as fire crawled through my veins. I shoved her forward, pressing her against the marble edge of the vanity, my towel falling to the floor.
Her breath left her in a shocked whoosh.
She stiffened when I pressed the length of my cock against the small of her back.
I was naked. Hard. Furious. And I didn’t give a fuck that she knew it.
“Do you feel that?” I rasped in her ear. “That’s how close I am to losing the last thread of control I’ve got left.”
She bucked again, but I locked her in place with the weight of my body—pinning her arms behind her. Her legs shifted with tension.
My anger was surpassed only by my raging desire to fuck the attitude out of her.
I bent lower, brushing my lips along her temple as I whispered:
“Submit to me, and I will burn the world down for you. Fight me, and I will kill you with my bare hands.”
I didn’t release her right away—not even after I’d said the words that should’ve ended it.
Instead, I held her there—pressed against the vanity, seething—while I stared at my reflection behind her.
What the fuck was I doing?
What the hell had I become?
She was trembling beneath me, her body rigid with defiance and exhaustion, her fists still clenched behind her back. And yet it wasn’t just rage pumping through her. It wasn’t only fear. I could feel it in the way she breathed, the way she stilled when I pressed tighter to her.
She was scared of me, yes, but there was also a part of her that wanted me.
Slowly, I turned her to face me.
And when I saw the bloody wound on her forehead, a fresh stab of guilt cut straight through my ribs.
But I’d seen worse. I shifted into automatic mode, grabbing a clean towel from the nearby wall—stark white against the dark red now seeping from her skin. I carefully parted the damp strands of her hair and pressed it to her forehead with firm pressure.
The blood was spreading fast, making the wound look worse than it was. But I’d seen enough facial injuries to know that capillaries there bled like hell.
The shard had cut a jagged line, angry but shallow. There was no exposed bone, no deep tear in muscle. Dramatic as hell but not dangerous. It would leave a scar, but she’d live.
The second I knew for sure she wasn’t seriously injured, relief flooded my system, only to be overtaken by something darker.
Lust.
Not the casual kind. Not the kind that simmered.
The kind that had haunted me since the day she’d smarted off to me at the coffee shop. The kind I’d buried every time she threw one of those fire-laced glares my way.
It was the need to claim her.
To fuck the fight out of her.
To erase every insult she hurled at me and replace them with whimpers and moans.
Her wide, startled eyes locked on mine.
And in that instant, the path forward wasn’t just clear—it was fucking inevitable.
My gaze dropped to her mouth.
Unspoken desire roared to life, devouring everything else.