Chapter 6
Kirill
In the dark office, the bank of monitors glows, transforming shadows into hard lines and catching my face in ghostly fragments. One screen for every room of the house.
Jordan hovers in the top right.
Cross-legged on the bedroom floor, head bowed, eyes closed. Lips moving. Praying.
The fear remains visible in her posture, her shoulders tensing like she’s bracing for impact. But she’s managing. Containing and boxing up her panic with cheap affirmations.
For a moment, I almost believed she wasn’t scared. That she’d managed to brainwash herself with all that mumbo-jumbo and really convince herself that all this was the universe throwing some weird magnetic waves at her or whatever.
But then I got close, trapped her between myself and the wall, and a flicker of terror bled through those brilliant green eyes and shook that bright smile.
I wanted more. Wanted to run my hands over her shoulders and feel the tremor beneath her skin. To taste the fright on her lips and in her scent. To see how those eyes might darken if I actually touched her…
Fuck that.
I shift away from her video to focus on the rest of the safe house.
Roman calls this place “unassuming.” A bland colonial in Oak Park, west of Chicago. Manicured hedges. Neutral shutters. Neighbors who keep their mouths shut.
The fortified interior boasts three separate security systems, bulletproof windows, and enough hidden firepower to wipe out half the block. Medical kits. Shelf after shelf of dry food. Burners. IDs with names we never use.
After what happened with Kolya, I chose the most obscure and defensive safe house for this interrogation.
Kolya never lets his guard down, but Gio Falcone’s men still managed to track him down, lay siege to our North Side safe house, and abduct Chloe while Kolya fought off the stragglers.
Kozlovs never get ensnared in the same trap twice, and I won’t be caught unawares.
I glance back at Jordan and turn up the audio for her room.
Her soft but steady voice filters through. “You are safe. You attract love and light. You are safe.”
A loop, breaking on “safe” every third time.
She doesn’t buy her own words.
Not really.
But she stubbornly clings to the script, refusing to bend to reality.
I stab a button, spooling the footage back to our arrival. I left her in the living room, where I ordered her to sit and not move. While she didn’t listen, she didn’t bolt for the door either.
Instead, she wandered.
I settle deeper into the chair, narrowing my eyes at the screen.
In the footage, Jordan studied the severe metal sculpture on its pedestal. She tilted her head and extended her fingers, brushing—almost petting—the sculpture’s razor edge. As if calming a rabid beast.
What the fuck was she doing?
Next, she caressed the back of the leather sofa. The leather hardly rippled, but she lingered before drifting toward the massive gray stone fireplace. A showpiece. Not a hearth. She placed her palm flat against the cold wall. Closed her eyes. Listening, tuning herself to the silence in the rock.
I bend over the monitor, frowning.
This wasn’t a performance for me. She does this when she believes she’s alone. No casing the room or inventorying weaknesses. No glancing at exits or threats. She’s not scheming. She’s forging some weird communion with the furniture.
Ridiculous. The most backward, infuriating thing I’ve ever watched.
But I can’t glimpse away.
Most people I escort to these places fall into neat, familiar patterns.
They scope out windows, jiggle the doorknobs, prowl for phones, weapons, and exits. Their eyes flick from object to object, drawing invisible lines through the room, measuring. Survival instinct seizes most people, even when they know resistance is pointless.
Jordan Elizabeth Thorne?
She pets sculptures. Listens to the empty echoes of the fireplace. Treats a lump of metal with more care than most people spare for each other.
A strange, hollow ache swells in my chest. Maybe envy. Maybe worse.
I push the sensation down before the shape transforms into anything real.
I’ve tallied her strengths. She’s beautiful and graceful and has sharp, intuitive eyes. But she leaves them untouched, gathering rust. Not a weapon. Not even a tool.
She has no idea what she could be.
She has no concept of her worth.
My eyes flicker to the current feed.
She’s still hunched in her new cell, her lips moving wordlessly.
Despite a weird composure underneath, as if she’s cut some kind of deal with her terror and refuses to break first, tears track down her face.
I see the strength she possesses, buried under all the spiritual bullshit.
The waste irritates me.
But there’s no need to act on that observation.
She’s not going to be around long enough for any of this to matter. After she gives me what I need, she’ll become another loose end to tie up.
Clean. Simple. Final.
Jordan
For a heartbeat, I’m hovering in that sweet, empty limbo, knowing I’m asleep and can enjoy the escape before hunger drives me from my bed to the kitchen faucet to fill up on water.
Then memories flood my mind.
A stranger. A car. An alley spattered with bodies and blood. The cold click of the lock and the scent of metal and rust.
Gray pillows greet my tired eyes.
I sit up and scan my prison cell, gaze settling on the fur throw that still lies at the end of the bed. I drag my fingers through the soft fabric.
Objectively, the room is beautiful and comforting.
Yet unease crawls beneath my skin. I shove the throw aside.
Even now, I can sense him. Not his cologne or soap or even sweat. But that sharp, elusive trace of frosty metal and electric air hovers around me, woven deep into the rug and rising off the white walls.
The bed is no longer warm and welcoming. Stumbling off the mattress, I have a sudden, fierce need to get clean.
Akin to a five-star hotel, the bathroom matches the bedroom.
All gleam and no substance. Black granite countertops, subway tile, sterile white paint, and gold fixtures decorate a space as big as my entire apartment.
Empty and impersonal as a showroom.
The shower hisses on, and streams of water knife down from extravagant jets.
I stand beneath the spray until my skin stings and my fingertips pucker, trying to rinse away yesterday’s terror.
The fear clings to my flesh, stubborn as a bruise that won’t heal.
Some memories just don’t scrub off.
I yank on my hopelessly wrinkled dress and finger-comb my hair into some semblance of manageable as I return to the bedroom.
I’ll make the most of this new day.
The soft, unmistakable click of the lock halts me in my tracks. My breath sticks. Heart hammering, I edge away from the door, shoving my back against the far corner by the window. Every muscle strains as I wait.
Silence.
No footsteps.
The door remains shut.
I stay frozen in this small, sterile room, my pulse still thundering so intensely, he must hear the erratic rhythm. After all, sharks can feel vibrations. I picture him on the other side of the door, listening for the shape of my fear.
Then his voice slices through the thick silence, low and steady from somewhere in the hall. “Come here.”
Not harsh, not loud, and not a demand. Just dropped into the room like a stone in deep water. A certainty. He knows I’ll obey the order.
The door opens easily.
The hallway stretches before me, a slab of minimalist intent, pale walls, and spare lines. One wrong move may shatter the illusion of stability. Wary, I step lightly, as though the floor itself could betray me.
He’s waiting, anchored on one of those low, modern leather couches that probably costs more than I cobbled together last year. Sculpted arms ripple beneath a tight black t-shirt. With a pure, blank expression and those cold eyes, he tracks my every move.
A predator’s patience, coiled and watchful.
What’s left of my purse sits on the coffee table.
What an asshole.
No. Not an asshole.
Just a broken man I’m here to help.
Right. I can do this.
A forensic exhibit of my existence lays scattered on the smooth surface. ID, keys, receipts, all the little artifacts of daily survival exposed under the overhead lights. Each item is a fragment of my life, a snapshot of how I subsisted subjected to his frigid, methodical inspection.
“Let’s see who you are.” He selects a smooth gray stone from the chaos and turns it over in his palm. “A rock.”
I lick my lips, suddenly parched. There’s no way to say this without sounding dumb, so I may as well lean into it. “I found that on my first solo hike. It’s not just a rock. Look, it’s shaped like…”
Why am I explaining myself?
He hasn’t earned the story, and he definitely wouldn’t care that it resembles a heart from one angle and a bird from another.
The stone offers physical proof that perspective matters.
That hike—which I went on three months after running from my mother’s suffocating world—was the first time I’d really, truly been out in nature.
I sat by a stream, hungry and terrified, the stone just waiting for me to find it and ground myself.
No, he doesn’t deserve that tale.
And he doesn’t press with any probing questions.
The rock lands back on the table, already forgotten, as his hand moves to a folded scrap of paper. I’ve had a lot of scraps like that in my purse over the years. My mind tumbles over itself trying to remember this exact one.
He opens the note with careful deliberation and scans the purple-inked list in my handwriting. “‘I am a beacon of abundance.’”
Right. I’d tucked that one into the little pocket next to my wallet, half spell, half reminder. All desperate hope.
Heat climbs up my throat and settles in my cheeks. I try to mask the embarrassment, but he watches every twitch. A killing machine logging data. “That’s a positive affirmation. To manifest what you want.”
It’s too early for this interrogation. I haven’t even had my water yet.
He holds my gaze, his eyes shifting from that blank, polished sheen to something colder.
Disbelief. As if the word manifest belongs to some dead language. He doesn’t believe me, not for a second.
I almost laugh at the cruelty of the universe.
At the absurdity of a kidnapper and his captive discussing the law of attraction. If I weren’t so afraid, I’d double over in fits.
He’s methodical. Unhurried. Picking my life apart piece by piece.
First the birth control pills. He clicks open the pack with narrowed eyes.
“Got a boyfriend I need to worry about?”
I nearly jump at the tone of his voice.
My face flushes hot. I keep up-to-date on my meds, but I haven’t dated in months. Haven’t had sex in over a year.
Though that’s none of his business. So why do I care what he thinks?
I definitely don’t.
I straighten my shoulders. “Even if I did, something tells me you wouldn’t be worried.”
He blinks and hangs his face. Breathes out a noise almost reminiscent of a human laugh.
“So no boyfriend. Care to tell me why Jordan Bennett has a dentist appointment three months from now, Miss Thorne?”
I hold his gaze, though not a single part of me wants to explain the reason for the alias I chose after running away from home all those years ago.
Still, on a deep inhale, I start talking. “I’ve been…on my own for a long time…since I was a teenager. I didn’t want certain people,” my mother, “finding me. So I used a different last name. I still put ‘Bennett’ on certain documents. It’s habit.”
When I started The Thorne Identity a few years ago, I was an adult and no longer cared if my mother contacted me. Sometimes, though, I wonder if on some semi-conscious level, I wanted her to find me and reach out.
“Hmm.” Without further comment, he sets the pills down and moves on.
Behind my back, I clench my hands in my dress. I’m not sure how much of this methodical unraveling of my life I can handle.
He rummages until he finds my house key, alone but for a bunch of broken or handmade keychains. Next comes a purple popsicle stick one of my students in guided meditation for underprivileged kids gifted me. He rolls the thin wood between his fingers, then sets it aside.
He holds up a cloth sachet. Sniffs. “What’s this?”
I exhale slowly. The tension in my spine could string a bow. “Herbal tea. My best friend gave it to me to try the other day.”
Sharp eyes glance up at me. “The woman on your fridge.”
My stomach clenches, a ball of steel wool scraping my insides.
He noticed those pictures. Noticed Ashley’s face and name.
What else did he pick up on without me realizing?
He doesn’t comment on the tea anymore.
I try to relax. I can’t let him get under my skin.
But every gesture, every object, every detail he scrutinizes, strips one more layer away, grinding me down into a list of consumables, a file of habits and weaknesses.
Except I am more than what I carry.
Intent to show him that this interrogation doesn’t bother me, I allow my gaze to wander. Everywhere I look, I find hard lines. The room, his jaw, the furniture, the movement of his hands. Everything reeks of money and power.
I picture my vision board at home. The images I cut and glued together. I’d expected a professional boost, a powerful mentor, someone to help lift my business out of its slow death spiral.
But instead, I manifested this guy.
Cold, awe-pure horror sweeps through me.
The universe listened and gave me exactly what I asked for.
A shark.
An absurd thought. But true.
He glides like a predator, all coiled potential and deadly precision. His pale eyes track motion with unnerving focus. His very presence disturbs the atmosphere of a room, like a current of danger flowing beneath deceptively calm waters.
I need to remember not to thrash or splash, as that attracts them and sets off their predator drive. I’ve always heard sharks sense distress, blood in the water. They respond to panic with aggression.
So I stand very still, breathing evenly, as he continues his inventory of me.