Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
MARINA
K ostya went limp.
His full weight collapsed on top of me, unmoving.
For half a second, my brain short-circuited.
Then reality slammed into me.
I threw the lamp aside, its base clattering loudly against the floor. My breath came fast and erratic. My pulse pounded in my ears, so loud it drowned out all logic.
Under any other circumstance, the press of his massive body pinning me down would have been the kind of fantasy I would have let myself indulge in.
But right now?
Right now, I needed to get him off me and get the fuck out of here.
I pushed. Shoved. Nothing.
He was dead weight.
Panic surged higher, clawing up my throat. Move, damn it !
When pushing didn’t work, I tried to roll him, using whatever leverage I had to wiggle my way free. It was slow, torturous work.
My muscles screamed in protest, my breath came in frantic bursts, but finally I tumbled onto the floor, gasping, my limbs shaking from the exertion. I crawled over to my bureau and yanked open the drawers. Snatching the first pair of panties I saw, a red thong, I pulled them on before putting on a pair of jeans and slipping into my beat-up canvas sneakers.
That was when I saw the blood.
Dark, seeping out of the back of his head.
“No, no, no, no, no…”
The room tilted.
I couldn’t breathe.
This is bad. This is so fucking bad.
I hadn’t meant to kill him.
I just wanted to hurt him enough to get away.
A little maiming, not murder .
If I had just injured him, the Ivanovs might have let it slide as self-defense, a warning, nothing worth starting a war over.
But if he were dead?
There was nowhere on this planet I would ever be safe again.
My hands trembled violently as I reached out, pressing my fingers against his neck, praying for a pulse.
Nothing.
His skin was still warm, but I couldn’t feel anything.
My heartbeat slammed against my ribs, a frantic, caged animal. My vision blurred, dark spots flickering at the edges. Cold sweat beaded my forehead.
Focus, Marina.
I could not afford to panic right now.
A full-blown meltdown would only waste time, and I didn’t have time.
Fix this. Now.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to take a slow breath in through my nose.
Hold for four seconds.
Exhale.
Again.
Again.
By the fourth breath, the room had stopped spinning. The dots in my vision faded. My hands still trembled, but at least I wasn’t on the verge of hyperventilating.
Good enough. It had to be good enough.
But I still had a massive unconscious—or dead—Russian enforcer in my bed.
And no plan.
How the fuck was I supposed to explain this to the cops?
“I’m sorry, Officer, I don’t know why he tied up my roommates just to collapse on my bed…with a raging hard-on.”
Yeah. That would go great.
Or worse, calling his brother in Moscow who, if Veronika was to be believed, was the mafia boss for the Ivanov family in Russia.
“Hey, Artem? We met once at my sister’s wedding— y’know, when she married your hot older brother? Anyhoo, long story short, we were getting freaky, I panicked, and I, uh…hit him with a lamp. Please don’t kill me.”
Yeah. That would really go over well.
This was it.
This was how I was going to die.
Not by Kostya’s hands.
Not by the cops.
But in a holding cell, where the cameras would just happen to malfunction.
And then, poof.
I’d be another nameless woman whose "suicide" didn’t even make the evening news.
Maybe he wasn’t dead?
My pulse pounded so violently I could barely think.
I couldn’t find a heartbeat, but maybe he was still breathing.
He was facedown, his body motionless, so I couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest.
I needed proof. Something.
Frantically, my gaze darted around the room, landing on a small mirror I had picked up from a souvenir shop tucked inside my favorite thrift store in Wicker Park.
My hands shook as I grabbed it and crouched beside him.
God, he smelled so good. Marina! Focus!
I held the mirror beneath his nose and waited.
My lungs burned from my refusal to inhale, refusal to move, until I saw something.
One second.
Two .
Then…the glass fogged.
My knees nearly buckled with relief.
He was alive.
Which meant I still had a chance.
Not much of one, because when he woke up, he was going to come for me—harder, angrier, unstoppable.
But a chance, nonetheless.
I had to move.
I snatched up the shawl Veronika had given me, wrapping it tightly around my shoulders before throwing on the secondhand leather jacket I had picked up months ago. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. I then grabbed the backpack I kept nearby, filled with what little money I had and my fake documents, just in case. I cleared the top of my vanity, sweeping my makeup, perfume and a few silly knickknacks that helped each place feel like home into my bag.
No more time to waste.
Without sparing a glance back at the unconscious Russian on my bed, I bolted downstairs.
My roommates were awake now, their eyes wide, panicked.
I dropped to my knees and fumbled with the knots binding their wrists and ankles.
“What the fuck is going on?” John’s voice was shrill. “Who the hell is that guy? Who are you? And why is some twelve-foot Russian hothead after you?”
“It’s not important,” I snapped, working at the knots faster. “You need to leave. Now. He’s not after you. As long as you’re gone when he wakes up, you should be fine. ”
John and Travis scrambled upright, rubbing at their wrists, still looking dazed.
“We need to call the cops,” Travis said, already reaching for his phone.
“No!” The word came too fast, too sharp.
Both of them froze.
Travis narrowed his eyes. “Why the hell not?”
I swallowed hard, my mind racing, forcing myself to focus. “Because you never know whose payroll they’re on,” I said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Because to me, it was.
“The Russian mafia owns cops all over the world. If you call them expecting help, but they’re working for the big guy upstairs? You’re fucked. We’re fucked.”
Travis paled, but John still looked ready to argue.
I didn’t have time for this.
“Just go,” I ordered. “Spend the night somewhere else.”
I bent down, quickly gathering the electrical cords and shoelaces Kostya had used to tie them up.
John grabbed my arm. “What the hell are you going to do?” he demanded.
I ripped free from his grip so fast he barely had time to react. “That’s not your concern.”
“The fucking Russian mob? Who are you, really?” Travis’s voice was sharp, full of suspicion. “We have a right to know.”
I looked up, meeting his gaze dead-on.
“No, you don’t.”
And then I shoved them both toward the door.
Because I had bigger problems to deal with .
“Leave.” I said it again, sharper this time. “Before he wakes up.”
That did the trick.
John and Travis hesitated only a second longer before scrambling to grab their things, throwing on their jackets and stuffing their pockets with their keys and wallets.
The front door slammed behind them.
I barely heard it.
I was already running upstairs.
Kostya was still sprawled out on my bed, motionless.
Still breathing.
Still here.
I ignored the way my hands shook as I untangled the electrical cords and tied him up. The same way he had tied up my roommates.
His wrists and ankles bound tightly behind his back, his body forced into a position he wouldn’t easily get out of.
It wasn’t perfect, but it would buy me time.
I grabbed the mirror again, holding it under his nose, waiting until the glass fogged.
He was still alive.
I sucked in a breath.
And another.
And another.
I backed up against the same wall he had pinned me against, the phantom heat of his body still imprinted on the space. My legs gave out beneath me, and I slid to the floor, dropping my head between my knees.
I just needed to breathe.
Every part of me was screaming to move .
Get up. Get out. Go!
But I couldn’t.
Because my mind wouldn’t stop replaying that kiss.
Over and over, like a fever I couldn’t shake.
If his closeness had turned me on, that kiss had brought me back to life.
I shouldn’t feel this way. Not about him. Not about my sister’s husband.
It had been bad enough when it was just a stupid crush—something I could ignore, something I could outgrow.
But this?
How the fuck was I supposed to get over a kiss like that?
I could still feel him.
The way his hands had moved over my body, possessive, as if he owned me.
And my God—I wanted that to be true.
He hadn’t kissed me as a show of affection.
It had been a claim. A demand.
His lips had tasted like expensive vodka, tobacco, and home, like something sinful wrapped in something inevitable. And I had melted into it. Worse. I had wanted to give him more.
When he asked if I was going to be his good girl, my body had fractured with need.
Fuck.
Those words—just his words—should not have done to me what they did.
I had wanted to drop to my knees and show him just how good I could be .
To feel his hands in my hair, his voice raw with pleasure as he let go, as he gave in to me.
I had never let a man touch me before.
Not like that.
Not like him.
What would he think when he discovered the truth?
It wasn’t because I was saving myself for marriage.
But because I was saving myself for a man like him.
A man who could make me feel safe even when his hands were wrapped around my throat.
A man who could set my body on fire with just a touch.
How could the American boys I lived with ever compare to the Russian businessmen my family worked with? I had spent my life around the real monsters, men who wore tailored suits, who smelled of wealth, power, and the kind of danger that caused my stomach to flip.
Men who took what they wanted.
How was some fuckboy who whined when he got shot in a video game supposed to stack up against that?
He wasn’t.
And I had never wanted any of them.
But I wanted Kostya.
I was ready for him.
Ready to lose myself in every filthy fantasy I had ever had.
I readjusted the ends of Veronika’s shawl under my jacket.
Veronika’s shawl.
The one I wrapped around myself for comfort. The one that reminded me of home and all that I had lost .
And suddenly, the walls crashed down.
What would she say if she knew?
That not only had her husband kissed me, but that I had kissed him back?
That I had wanted more?
Would she have even cared?
He had been her husband, but it wasn’t as if she had been faithful.
Would that make it better?
Would it make it worse?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know anything anymore.
Except that I needed to leave.
Now.
And yet…
I couldn’t seem to walk away without checking one more time.
Not because I had to.
But because I needed to.
Because it was…Kostya.
I had always thought Kostya was handsome.
So tall, the kind of height that made you feel small in the best way. The kind of broad, powerful shoulders that made a girl want to crawl into his arms and bask in the warmth and safety of them.
Veronika had never seen him that way.
And I never understood why she hadn’t.
I would have given anything to have him for myself.
For years, I had indulged in secret, forbidden dreams. What if it wasn’t her? What if it had been me? I would never have treated him the way she did .
The disdain Veronika had for him never made sense to me. But it had never been my place to say anything.
I was her sister.
My job was to support her.
Not lust after her husband.
But how was I supposed to fight this?
This wasn’t some childish crush anymore, not after discovering the way it felt when he kissed me.
When he touched me.
Now, I knew.
I had never been saving myself for a man like Kostya.
I had been saving myself for him .
How was I supposed to go on living my life now?
Knowing that someone could make me feel this alive, could electrify every cell in my body. How was I supposed to experience that for one fleeting moment and then never feel it again?
And it wasn’t just his touch.
It was all of him.
His intensity, the kind only truly powerful men could pull off without it turning creepy.
The way he looked at me.
The way he saw me.
Not just my body— me .
I didn’t know if it was even possible to lie to him. Not really.
Not if I was looking into his eyes.
Because he would see the truth.
But what was the truth?
Did I even know anymore?
Was he my sister’s husband—or her murderer ?
Had he really come after me to protect me?
He said he didn’t kill her.
He said Solovyov did.
And as much as I hated to admit it, that made sense.
Before reading the last message Veronika had sent me, I had assumed she had stolen what she gave me as some kind of prank. But when I got her warning, I knew if it had been a prank, it had gone horribly wrong.
She had told me that if anything happened to her…
I needed to run.
I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking my head, trying to clear the storm of emotions clawing through my chest.
Focus.
Kostya might not have been the man who pulled the trigger.
But he was involved.
One way or another, he was part of this.
And I wasn’t safe around him.
I needed to escape. Now.