Chapter 16 Willow
WILLOW
The bank bag my mom gave me is lying on the ground at my feet, dropped there when Malice pinned me against the car.
Somehow, I manage to rouse myself enough to grab it, then stumble inside my building and make my way up to my apartment.
I barely notice the walk up the stairs, and my fingers fumble with my keys for a second before I let myself in.
My mind and body both feel like they’ve been put through a blender, and the apartment seems to spin around me as I glance at the boxes I won’t be needing anymore.
I don’t know what the hell is going on with these men, but I’m realizing more and more that I’m in over my head.
What is happening?
Why am I so attracted to them?
So drawn to them?
I’ve never slept with a guy before, never even climaxed from a man’s touch. But I just did with Malice. And not even from his touch, but from the thick, muscled hardness of his thigh wedged between mine. He never even really touched me, never kissed me.
He just invaded my senses, and the overwhelming feel of him made me come.
I can still smell him on my skin, the heady, smoky scent that’s not quite like anything else I’ve ever smelled before. I shiver just from the lingering fragrance on me, and then wrap my arms around myself, like I’m trying to hold together all the pieces I feel like I’m fragmenting into.
I can barely remember when my life wasn’t consumed by these men, even though it wasn’t that long ago. Now I spend my days wondering what they might do next, where they might show up, and how they might shake my existence up even more.
“No. I can’t keep doing this,” I say out loud, even though there’s no one to hear it but me.
Malice was right, and I need to take his warning seriously. After he stood up for me to my mother and admitted he knows what it’s like to be used by someone who claims to love you, I started to feel a connection to him. Started to feel like maybe I knew him or understood him, in a way.
But the truth is, I don’t.
He’s a mystery to me, and everything about that mystery is shrouded in darkness and violence.
I can’t stop the Voronin brothers from doing whatever they want—that much has become abundantly clear—but I need to get my head on straight.
I need to force them out of my mind and put up higher walls around myself.
Because no matter how hard I’ve been trying to keep them out, they keep worming their way into my thoughts.
And that’s beyond dangerous.
Weirdly enough, life goes back to normal for the next several days. After depositing the remainder of the money my mom stole into my bank account, I go back to school and fall into my usual routine.
I was packing up to leave my apartment when Malice burst in, since I couldn’t afford the rent with no job and no money thanks to my mom, but after dropping off a check to my landlord, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
Things are going smoothly again. Or at least, as smoothly as possible.
I haven’t heard from my mom since Malice and I left her house, and that hurts, in a way. I know I’m never going to get an apology from her for stealing or for lying to me about the money being gone, but I wish she would say something.
I know she’s pissed at me, even though she was the one who stole from me in the first place. In the back of my mind, I can acknowledge that maybe this is for the best, all things considered. Maybe it will be good if this causes a rift between us that can’t be repaired.
I’ve been putting up with my mom’s bullshit for so long. Too long. But she was the only person I had for a long time. The person who adopted a scarred, scrawny toddler and took her home.
Instead of dwelling on that or thinking about the guys, I throw myself into my school work. More than ever, I want to do well, to get my degree and position myself for a better life than the one my mom has tried to suck me into time and time again.
Focusing on the future I want and how I’m going to get it is the perfect way to get my head back on straight.
I have just enough time to make sure I do well on my next English Lit paper, so I stay late one night, claiming a table in one of the study areas in the library while I pour over the books I have checked out.
Unfortunately, I don’t have as much peace and quiet as I’d like. April and her usual group are at a table nearby, laughing and talking.
“It’s going to be wild, I heard,” one of them says, sounding excited.
“What does that mean?” another one asks. “Someone’s springing for a keg?”
“More than that,” April chimes in. “It’s going to be the party of the semester. Anyone who’s anyone is going to be there. Chi Delta Psi doesn’t throw parties that aren’t legendary.”
I shake my head, trying to tune them out, but out of the corner of my eye, I see Colin come over to talk to them.
“You ladies are going to be there, right?” he asks.
April laughs, batting her eyelashes at him and tossing her flame-red hair over her shoulder. “Of course we are. We wouldn’t miss it.”
He grins and then looks over, catching sight of me listening to them from my table nearby. Before I can look away, he strides over, resting his hip against the table with his arms folded, looking casually handsome.
“You’re coming too, right, Willow?”
I blink in surprise. Before, I would have said no immediately. Parties aren’t really my thing, and there’s not really going to be anyone I know there. I haven’t taken the time to make friends on campus, and Colin is one of the only people who really talks to me.
But this is what people do, right? They go to frat parties and hang out on the weekends and get to know their classmates. Now that I’m not working at the club every night, I actually do have the free time to go to a party if I want to.
So I make a snap decision, blurting out the words before I can stop myself.
“Yeah, sure,” I tell him. “It sounds fun. I’ll be there.”
He grins broadly. “You just made my night.”
He raps his knuckles on the table once before returning to his friends, who are waiting to leave the library.
“Can you believe that?” April mutters once he’s gone, dropping her voice down to a whisper. “He asked her?”
One of her friends whispers something back, and judging from the look on her face, it’s not something flattering about me.
I roll my eyes and go back to my work, making notes for my paper.
By the time I’m finished, April and her friends are long gone. Finishing my paper took me longer than I expected it to, so the campus is nearly deserted as I head for the bus stop, hustling a little so I can hopefully catch the bus that leaves every hour.
I can see it trundling up to the stop as I approach the road that runs along the edge of campus, and I run for it, waving my hand to flag down the driver. I’m just about a hundred feet away when the man behind the wheel locks eyes with me… and then drives off.
“You have got to be kidding me!” I pant, staggering to a stop and resting my hands on my knees. “Fucker.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, resigning myself to waiting for the next bus in the dim light from the street lamp a little way away.
As I walk toward it, I chew on my lower lip. Maybe I should just spring for a cab.
With the money Malice managed to get back from my mom, I’m doing okay. But I still don’t have a job, and I won’t be able to keep dipping into my savings to pay rent forever, so my impulse is to save money where I can.
As I’m debating my options, movement in the shadows nearby catches my attention. I glance over out of the corner of my eye, half expecting it to be Malice or Ransom, or maybe the usually elusive Victor for once. But it’s not any of them. It’s just some other man.
A flash of relief fills me at the thought that they’re not following me around, but nervousness follows on its heels.
There’s something strange about the way the man is standing, away from the light of the streetlamp, half hidden in darkness.
I can’t make out his features very well—just enough to know that he’s not one of the brothers—but he’s bigger than me and dressed in dark colors that blend with the shadows.
A spike of fear makes my heart speed up a little bit, and I suddenly want to be anywhere but here.
Digging out my phone and trying not to draw attention to myself, I pull up the ride share app on my screen. All of a sudden, the expense of not having to wait for the bus seems totally worth it.
The closest driver is ten minutes away, and I clench my jaw as I order the ride. I stare down at my screen, alternating between silently urging the driver to go faster and glancing over at the man hidden in the shadows.
When he steps forward, my adrenaline spikes. I try to keep breathing, telling myself that he probably just got tired of the bus and is going to walk. But when I glance over at him, I realize he’s walking right toward me, his strides long and purposeful.
Fuck.
My body jolts into motion instinctively, and I start hustling down the street in the opposite direction, digging into my bag again for my knife.
Footsteps ring out behind me, and my skin chills.
I have to work to keep my brain from racing ahead of itself, spinning horrible scenarios of what this man might want.
I start walking faster, ducking down an alley to try to lose whoever the hell this is, but he keeps following me.
Now I’m panicking, and I break into a full run, darting around dumpsters and stumbling over small bits of trash scattered over the ground.
I can hear his feet pounding on the pavement behind me over the galloping of my heart, and it spurs me to run even faster, clutching the knife in one hand and my phone in the other.
When I burst out of the alley and onto another street, I turn left without pausing, my breath coming in choppy gasps as I scan my surroundings. Up ahead, a cab pulls to a stop at an intersection, and I practically scream at it to wait.
I run toward it, yanking the door open and practically throwing myself into the seat before the driver can pull away.
“What the—” The guy behind the wheel looks up in surprise as I slam the door shut behind me.
“Go, go!”
The urgency in my voice gets him moving, and he pulls away from the curb as I turn to peer out the window, catching sight of the man in the distance as we start to drive down the street. I shove the knife back into my bag, fear twisting in my stomach. I have no idea who was following me, or why.
Was it random? Just some asshole looking to prey on a woman alone at night? But then why follow me for so long?
It was almost like he was waiting for me at the bus stop. Like he was… targeting me.
I have a sudden vivid memory of asking Ransom how long it would take for him and his brothers to be satisfied that no one is probing into Nikolai’s death, and the way he basically confirmed that that day might never come.
So was my pursuer poking around, looking for information? Did he somehow manage to figure out I was at the whorehouse the night Nikolai died?
Ever since the first night I met them, the Voronin brothers have terrified me. They’ve loomed over my life like shadows, leaving me constantly looking over my shoulders. But for the first time, it occurs to me that maybe there’s someone out there I should be more afraid of than the three of them.
“You okay, lady?”
The cab driver cranes his neck to look at me, his thick brows scrunched together.
“Yeah,” I mutter, glancing out the back window of the car again.
“Where to?”
I hesitate for a second, then give him the names of the cross streets I remember seeing near the large building Ransom went into the day I followed him.
The idea of going home right now terrifies me, and if there really is someone following me in connection with Nikolai’s death, the brothers are the only ones who can help.
Soft music plays from the speaker, and the driver doesn’t make any attempt to chat me up as he navigates his way down Detroit’s darkened streets. He probably didn’t believe me when I said I was okay, and he’s clearly decided to leave me alone.
We pull to a stop at the curb after a while, and as soon as I get out, the cabbie drives away, leaving me alone on the street in front of the building.
My heart is still beating faster than normal, and a voice in my head is screaming at me that this is crazy. It’s late in the evening, and I shouldn’t be going to these men for protection when they’ve already threatened to kill me. I shouldn’t be going to them for anything at all.
But I don’t know where else to go.
So I square my shoulders and walk up to the building, finding a door with no windows in it. There’s no doorbell that I can see, and when I knock lightly on the heavy wood, the door swings open a crack.
I frown, reaching down to test the knob. It’s locked, but the door must not have been fully latched because when I give it a little push, it swings open easily.
Beckoning me inside.