Chapter 14
Paige
I slide down the headboard, tucking my knees up so that my skirt bites at the backs of my thighs. I dig my fingers into my shins, holding myself together and trying not to vibrate apart.
Every shadow crawls. Every flicker of the shitty neon sign outside plucks at my nerves.
Across the room, Vanya’s nothing but a silhouette in the dirty lamplight, one leg sprawled wide, a hand draped loose over his knee.
The chair’s cheap and low, but he owns it.
He sits with his elbows out, his shoulders relaxed, and his head tipped back enough that his jaw is a study in harsh angles.
He’s paying attention to more than just me. He’s alert to any sign of trouble.
My mind refuses to stop replaying everything that brought me here. Lining up what Vanya did and didn’t do and how that might change things.
That is, if he revealed the actual truth. If I can trust him. If he’s really the hero and not the monster.
I need to weigh his words and his actions tonight against the man in the chair.
That type of hollowness—the pit of emptiness where most people have emotions—only comes from pain and loss. Vanya has jagged edges. They prickle my skin and tickle my ear canals.
I hate that I recognize his anguish. I reassure myself that I’m nothing like him, that I didn’t let my trauma carve me out. Deep down, I know it’s a lie.
Still, shared loss won’t keep us alive.
Once again, I close my eyes and replay everything that happened after I left work.
I focus on the men in the car, reliving each moment until I can hear their voices over the clunking of my engine. While I can’t understand the words, I know I heard Italian, not Russian or any other Slavic language.
Not Vanya’s people.
That stacks up with what Detective Colvin said too. The mafia and the Bratva. Gang wars.
Draw that out to its logical conclusion…and while Vanya is a bad guy, he’s a bad guy who’s striving to keep me alive and protect me from the other bad guys.
Vanya’s a monster, but he’s a monster with eyes only for me.
Besides, he’s all I’ve got.
I bury my head against my knees, pressing my thighs together, attempting to suppress the fear and desire swimming in my core. I’m in a real state of turmoil.
As much as I rail against his arrogance and would love to blame him for all this chaos, I keep looping back to the feeling that nothing in the world could really reach me while I’m with him.
He protected me. Defended me. Searched me for injuries. If I accept everything he’s claimed as truth, and if I add that to what Detective Colvin said earlier, Vanya’s the only person I can trust.
Yet…I don’t quite believe him. Not with the way he denied the rose, the dead bird, the broken pen, the email. Maybe it wasn’t his style, but it’s not like I can fact-check the mind of a sociopath. Suspicion curdles in my stomach. I can’t lower my guard around someone who can shatter me in one move.
Vanya shifts, drawing my eye. His jacket is off, his shirt hanging open at the throat. He looks more appealing and more dangerous by the minute. The kind of heat that burns and scars rolls off him in waves. I can’t find a single thing to say.
Eventually, he rises.
I track him reflexively, my attention bonded to him like a magnet.
He crosses the room with a predator’s grace and opens the door just wide enough to lean his body into the fresh air outside. With his back to me, he pulls out his phone and makes a call.
To his Bratva? Checking in about his job? About me?
He listens to the other end of the line for a few moments before speaking.
“I’m compromised. Someone betrayed us again.
I have to assume Sasha. It happened right after Colvin showed up at the library.
” He pauses. “I didn’t see Gio, but I suspect his involvement.
They were his mercenaries for sure. Well trained.
Almost as good as us.” A longer silence passes.
“No, I had Paige’s car towed. No one will find it.
Mine’s beat up but hidden for now. We’ll need it replaced. ”
Braced against the threshold with one leg propping the door open, he releases a string of rough, angry Russian. His head is bowed, and his free hand fists at his side like he’s holding himself together through sheer willpower alone.
Not daring to move, I watch from beneath my lashes, pretending to doze as I drink in the show.
Once the call ends, he stands motionless for two minutes. Another ticks by.
With his head hanging and the cords of his neck taut, he’s not the unbreakable force who commandeered my life. He’s just a man, shaken by the aftermath of violence, by the pressure of being responsible not just for me, not just for the job, but for the expectations of everyone above him.
Still feigning sleep, I flip over on the bed and continue tracking him through the reflection of the cheap prints on the walls.
I know from random articles and books that the Bratva, the Brotherhood, is just that.
They’re brothers, cousins, fathers, sons.
Vanya’s a monster, but one who’s protecting his family.
If the same mafia guys who came after me tonight are also after his family, he must be worried. He called someone Gio. That’s an Italian name, just like the language those maniacs were screaming.
Vanya finally drags himself back inside, shutting the door with a loud, echoing click.
Considering I’m drained, mentally and physically, my exhaustion isn’t totally fabricated. I have no problem staying still.
At least until I contemplate the likelihood of him climbing into bed behind me. I open my eyes, inspecting his reflection in the prints on the wall again.
Then, just like that, he resets. The mask slides back into place, and he melts into the guise of a monstrous charmer. Collected, elegant, in control. He returns to the chair, dropping down with a heavy finality.
My need rushes back, sharp and tangled with shame and a perverse gratitude for his protection, brutal or not.
I close my eyes, not to sleep, but because some animalistic part of my brain could use the break.
Every time my mind starts to relax, the crash of headlights in the rearview jolts me awake. I sweep the room for enemies, expecting to see the gunmen from the road at any second.
But I only find Vanya, perched in the chair, unmoving, his eyes fixed on me with the flat patience of someone who’s done this a thousand times before.
He never comes close. Never offers comfort.
Sometimes, he prowls the room. Oddly enough, the pacing soothes my nerves, and after a few false starts, I finally mange to sleep.
Some hours later, panic grabs me as I confuse the sliver of light through the curtains—the rising sun—for headlights. I bolt upright, startled by the dingy walls, cheap pictures, and floral scent of Vanya’s candle.
He’s still here.
For a few minutes, we just stare, neither saying a word. He’s all business, dressed in a fresh navy suit buttoned all the way up. Even his shoes and accessories appear new and clean.
In a deep, secretive corner of my soul, I wish he’d gaze at me the way he did last night, cracked open and vulnerable. I wish he’d let the mask slip just once more, so I’d know I didn’t dream it.
But he doesn’t. He’s already got me, after all. Why would he bother continuing with the seduction?
“Get ready. We need to move again.” His tone leaves no room for argument.
Which is fine because I don’t have one. I had a lot of time to think, and everything he’s said must be true. He’s the bad guy who’s keeping me safe.
“Just let me freshen up.”
I scamper to the bathroom, flicking on the lights and fan.
After taking in the sad state of the washcloth, I use my hands to scrub my face instead.
With no sense of what this day has in store for me, I get ready.
My bun was half out already, so I finish the demolition.
I don’t have enough pins or time to redo the style.
Finger-combing my hair and using the remaining pins at my temples is the best I can manage. The majority of my waves blanket down my back.
Then I go out to meet my fate.
Vanya opens the door and glances back at me. For a split second, I think he’ll offer a quip or a joke or try to put me at ease, at least a little.
Instead, he just nods. “Stay close.”
I do.
Because nowhere out there is half as terrifying or safe as right here in Vanya Orlov’s shadow.
As the door shuts behind us, the world restarts.
Whoever I was before last night…I have a very strong feeling she’s not coming back.