Chapter 8
Kirill
I fucked up.
After leaving a plate full of sandwiches and fruit in Jordan’s room, I stalk the length of the office, restive in the dark room, my shoulders locked tight as my hands curl and uncurl.
The kiss replays in my head, over and over, in merciless slow motion.
The heat of her lips. That startled gasp. The way she yielded, for a heartbeat, without surrendering.
I rake my palm down rough stubble, as if I could drag the sensation out of my skin. Like touch can erase memory.
My mistake. Caught on video.
Falling into a trap that might snare someone younger and softer isn’t like me.
I know better.
Losing control gets you killed. Emotions are just liabilities dressed up in pretty clothes.
I don’t feel.
I eradicate.
My smudged reflection in the window is a blank-eyed husk. I hardly see the man who was here an hour ago, before I crossed the line.
A line I’d never even considered crossing before.
The blue-white glare of the monitors distracts my eyes, but not my mind. In the top right quadrant, Jordan paces beside the bed in the guest suite, her fingers ghosting over her lips.
She’s reliving the kiss too. The wrong but real surge of connection.
I’ve survived by being nothing, a bare black wall that swallows every threat and leaves no mark. But for a single, catastrophic second, she saw through me.
“Fuck.”
I can’t let this stand. Can’t let her keep probing and examining me like I’m some riddle to solve.
I have nothing inside me. Only the job. Only the logic of force and pressure.
My phone vibrates. Vanya, the Kozlov’s charmer, right on schedule.
Eyes on Target Two. Confirmation?
Proceed, I reply.
This is how I work. Find the leverage, test the cracks, and break what needs breaking.
Another notification. A link to a live video. The woman from the pictures on Jordan’s fridge lives her life, oblivious to the fact that she’s being tailed and recorded by my guys as she works her second job at a coffee shop.
I transfer the video feed to a tablet, cross to Jordan’s room, and unlock her door. The sharp, deliberate click splits the silence.
She spins as I enter, caught in the act of pacing, like we’re two sides of the same restless coin. Her brown hair hangs loose around her face. Our gazes lock and hold.
There’s the charge again, that impossible flash. She doesn’t shrink. Doesn’t beg. Clear, ruthless curiosity tangles with the fear threaded through her.
A curiosity that shoots a spark of desire down my spine.
Unacceptable.
I draw closer and extend the tablet.
She studies me, narrowing her eyes as if she’s weighing her options. Then she moves in, careful but unafraid. I catch her scent as she nears, the same blend of lavender and citrus that clouded my mind while I kissed her.
Close, so close, but that’s as far as it goes.
No more contact. Not ever again.
She accepts the tablet. Her fingers skirt mine, a hair’s width away. Our skin never touches.
Good. She’s learning.
The instant she sees the screen, the gleam in her eyes darkens. Horror drains her face to chalk. Her throat spasms with a dry, helpless swallow as her gaze fixates on the ordinary but live scene unfolding on the monitor.
“Her name is Ashley Connelly.” I’ve erased my earlier mistakes. The man in this room is as he should be. Calm, collected, and focused on the job. “She lives at 1412 Northwood Avenue. She takes the brown line to work. Her mother has Parkinson’s.”
“She’s like a sister.” She clings to the tablet with white knuckles. The metal groans in her grip. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice cracks as she peers at me with red-rimmed eyes. “She has nothing to do with anything!”
I watch the tears bead along the edge of her lashes.
Absolute cold seeps through me as whatever heat flickered between us disappears.
This is better.
Simpler.
I know the tools of fear and pain intimately.
“Leverage. You’re withholding an asset. And I’m holding one of yours.”
The threat needs no explanation when the tablet in her hands already spells everything out.
She hugs the device to her chest, biting her lip. “Please don’t hurt her.” She steps toward me and reaches out with her free hand. “Kirill, please. I don’t know anything. She doesn’t—”
“Give me what I want, and this ends.”
That’s a lie.
Because I now want more than just the mission.
I want Jordan. I want to break the lock on her code and force my way through whatever walls she’s built. I want her to tip her head and expose her throat so I can coax out that same wounded whine she made for me before.
As I leave the room, I crush the thought.
That path will only lead to failure.