Chapter Fifteen
The ceiling offers no answers. Just endless, plastered white that mocks me with its blankness.
I kick the sheets away. They’re tangled around my legs, a chaotic mess that mirrors the state of my head.
Nikita didn’t sleep in the master suite last night, but it still smells like him— cedar and cold gun oil.
Scent is a tricky thing. It bypasses the logical part of the brain and sinks hooks directly into the memory.
My body hums with leftover adrenaline. The fight in the hallway. The wall. His hand on my waist. The way his breath felt against my mouth before I shoved him away.
I touch my lips. They still feel swollen.
Damn him.
Damn me.
Swinging my legs over the edge, I sit up. The room is pitch-black except for the sliver of light bleeding under the door.
I need to move. If I stay in this bed, I’ll start overanalyzing the micro-expressions on his face when he pinned me.
I slip out of the room, padding barefoot onto the cool marble. The penthouse is silent. The security detail is posted at the perimeter, invisible behind monitors and tinted glass.
It feels huge. Empty.
I drift toward the living area. The floor-to-ceiling windows act as a canvas for the city. Manhattan is a sprawling grid of amber and sodium, a circuit board that never powers down.
The sliding door to the balcony is slightly ajar. A draft of winter air curls around my ankles.
I step out.
The cold bites at my exposed skin, sharp and bracing. I wrap my arms around myself, rubbing the gooseflesh that rises immediately.
He’s there.
Of course he is.
Nikita stands by the railing, a glass tumbler dangling from his fingers. The city lights catch the planes of his face, throwing his profile into sharp relief—the bridge of his nose, the stubborn set of his jaw, the dark sweep of his hair mussed by the wind.
He doesn’t turn. He just knows.
“You’re shivering,” he says. His voice is low, blending with the hum of the traffic below.
“It’s cold.”
“Well… yes, it’s late.”
He lifts the glass to his lips, takes a slow sip. Vodka, probably.
I don’t leave. I should, but my feet are concrete. Instead I walk to the railing, stopping a few feet away. The drop is dizzying. Five floors of concrete and air.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks.
“Too many thoughts.”
“They tend to multiply at night.”
Silence stretches between us. It’s not the heavy, suffocating silence of earlier. It’s… quieter. The kind of silence that exists when two people run out of things to say but don’t want to leave.
I watch the red taillights of a taxi snaking through the streets below.
“Did he suffer?” The question hangs in the freezing air before I even realize I’ve voiced it.
Nikita goes still. The movement of the glass stops midair.
“Ayaan,” I clarify, though I know I don’t have to. “When you… transferred him. Was he scared?”
He turns slowly. The wind whips a lock of hair across his forehead, but he doesn’t brush it away.
“He was a soldier,” Nikita says. “Soldiers know the risks.”
“He wasn’t a soldier. He was a kid who needed money.”
“There is no difference in my world.”
The dismissal stings, but it lacks the bite from earlier. It sounds… tired.
“I remember the day he left,” I say, keeping my eyes on the traffic.
I don’t want to look at him. If I look at him, I might see the monster again.
Or worse, I might see the man who held me while I cried last night.
“He bought me ice cream. Vanilla twist. He made this joke about how he was going to come back rich and buy us a house with a pool.”
I swallow hard. My throat feels tight.
“Did he…” I have to force the words out. “Did he ask about me, at the end?”
Nikita shifts his weight. The leather of his jacket creaks softly. “He talked about you constantly,” he says. “It was annoying.”
I huff out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “He was annoying.”
“He was obsessed with keeping you safe.” He pauses, staring out at the skyline. “It was his greatest strength, and his greatest weakness.”
“He sold himself for me.”
“He made a transaction. A bad one.”
I finally turn to look at him. The wind is whipping my hair into my face, but I don’t care.
“Is that how you see it, just numbers on a page?”
“I see it clearly,” he says, meeting my gaze. His eyes are dark, reflecting the city lights. “You see it through a lens of grief. You want him to be a martyr. A hero. I’m telling you, he was just a man who made a mistake and paid for it.”
“And you?” I challenge, stepping closer. “What are you?”
“The man who collected the debt.”
The admission lands between us, but it doesn’t scare me away. It should. This is the man who signed the order. The man who sent my brother into the void.
Yet, here I stand. Shivering in my pajamas, searching for comfort in the presence of my brother’s jailer.
I hate that I’m here. I hate that my body instinctively turns toward him for warmth. I hate that I can’t stop thinking about the way his hands felt on my waist earlier.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
It’s supposed to be a weapon. It comes out as a confession.
“I know,” he says.
“I hate that I can’t stop thinking about you.” The second betrayal slips out before I can bite it back.
He sets the glass down on the stone railing. The crystal clinks softly. “Do you?”
“Yes.” It’s barely a breath. “It makes me sick.”
He turns fully toward me. The space between us feels charged, electric, like the air before a lightning strike.
“Why?”
“You’re the villain.” I look up at him, searching his face for cracks. “You’re supposed to be the monster. But you… you wake me up from nightmares. You give me your mother’s jewelry. You stand there and tell me about my brother like you actually cared.”
“Care is a strong word.”
“It’s the right word.”
“Maybe I just don’t want you screaming in my ear at 3:00 a.m.”
“Maybe.”
He steps closer. “You’re overthinking it, Freya.”
“I always overthink.”
“Stop.”
“How?”
“Be here. Right now.”
He lifts a hand. I tense, expecting the grip, the steel. His fingers brush against my cheek. The skin is rough, calloused, but the touch is impossibly gentle.
He traces the line of my jaw. My breath hitches. My eyes flutter shut for a second, then snap open again.
“What do you want,” he murmurs. His voice is a rasp, scraping against my nerves.
“Don’t stop.”
The words hang there, and he lowers his head.
This isn’t like the hallway. There’s no violence here, no anger. Just the slow, inevitable slide of gravity.
I watch his mouth get closer. I see the faint scar on his upper lip. I smell the whiskey on his breath.
I don’t close my eyes. I want to see it happen.
His lips brush mine. A question. A test. I answer him.
I press forward, meeting him halfway.
His hand slides to the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair, tilting my head back to deepen the angle. I gasp against his mouth, and he takes the opportunity, sweeping inside with a possession that makes my knees weak.
I grip his jacket, my fingers fisting in the leather, pulling him closer. I need the friction, the weight, the solid reality of him. He’s an anchor in the storm of my own confusion.
He walks me backward until my spine hits the cold stone of the railing.
The bite of the ice against my back contrasts sharply with the heat radiating from his front. He crowds me, surrounding me, consuming me.
His other hand drops to my waist, pulling me flush against him. There’s no space left. Every inch of me is pressed against every inch of him.
I can feel his heart hammering against my ribs. It matches the frantic rhythm of my own.
We aren’t playing roles anymore. We aren’t Bratva lieutenant and angry wife. We’re just a man and a woman teetering on the edge of something dangerous.
He breaks away, breathing hard, his forehead resting against mine.
“Freya.”
My name sounds like a prayer. Or a curse.
“Don’t stop,” I say again. My voice is wrecked.
He groans, a low sound vibrating in his chest, and then he’s kissing me again. Deeper. Harder.
His hands are roaming now—down my spine, over my hips, pulling me tighter against him. I’m drowning in the sensation. The taste of whiskey. The scent of leather. The feel of his stubble scraping against my chin.
I hook my leg over his hip, needing more leverage, needing more contact.
He reacts instantly, lifting me slightly, pinning me harder against the railing. The stone bites into my back, but I don’t care. I welcome the pain. It grounds me. It reminds me this isn’t a dream.
Time dissolves.
There is no city below. No wind. No Bratva. There’s only the frantic slide of his mouth and the punishing grip of his hands.
He hoists me up, and my legs wrap around his waist on instinct. The silk of my pajama pants are absolutely no barrier against him. I can feel him, hard and insistent through the denim of his jeans. The friction sends a jolt of electricity up my spine that wipes out coherent thought.
“Nikita.”
I gasp his name against his lips, and he swallows the sound. He doesn’t speak. Words are useless here. He grinds against me in a slow, deliberate roll of his hips that tears a ragged moan from my throat.
His hands are everywhere. One is fisted in my hair, tilting my head back, exposing the column of my throat to the biting air. His mouth leaves mine, trailing hot, open kisses down my jaw, to the sensitive skin just below my ear.
“You taste like fear,” he growls, the vibration of his voice buzzing against my skin.
He bites down on the pulse point in my neck.
I cry out, my head falling back. The pain blooms, hot and bright, morphing instantly into pleasure that pools low in my belly. I’m wet, aching, ready to combust from just this—just the pressure of his body and the way he’s claiming me.
He shifts his weight, one hand leaving my hair to shove between us. His fingers are cold when they slip under the waistband of my pants, but his touch is scorching.
“No,” I gasp, my hips jerking involuntarily. “Too much.”
“You can take it.”
He pushes aside the fabric of my panties and finds me. I’m soaked. He groans, a low, guttural sound that makes my inner muscles clench.