Chapter Eleven - Eden
I spend the morning pretending to read while really watching him.
Simon moves through my apartment like a man with purpose.
Nothing about his presence feels casual.
Every movement is controlled. He pours coffee without spilling a drop.
He checks his phone with attention that feels surgical.
Even the way he leans against the counter looks intentional, like he has calculated exactly how much space he is taking up and what it means.
I sit at the table with my notebook open, pen resting on the blank page. I should be writing something for my research, but every time I try to form a thought about behavior in urban spaces, I end up circling the one human subject in the room I have no idea how to classify.
He is not pacing today. That almost bothers me more. He stands near the window, one hand in his pocket, watching the street below. I wonder how many of the people passing down there belong to him. I wonder how many know they do.
My research on the Sharov family keeps flickering through my mind.
Lukyan Sharov, the cousin who appears in glossy photos and rumors.
Whispers about “the family” underneath the wealth.
Organized crime. Territory. Missing people.
Clara’s article and the way she vanished after she touched their world.
And Simon. The man who rarely appears in photos but stands in the background when he does. The one the captions barely mention. The one everyone overlooks until it matters.
Seeing his name on a screen felt distant and terrifying. Seeing him now, in my kitchen, drinking my coffee while two armed men stand in the hallway outside, feels worse in a way that is harder to name.
He turns away from the window. His eyes sweep the room and land on me. I look down at my notebook too late to pretend I wasn’t staring.
“You’re quiet,” he says.
“Do you want me to perform?” I ask. The retort slips out before I can stop it.
One corner of his mouth tilts up. Not a smile. Something else. “I want you to act natural.”
“This is my natural.” I tap my pen once. “Taking notes in my head. Trying to figure people out.”
“Have you figured me out?” he asks.
I meet his gaze. “Not even close.”
He nods once, as if that answer satisfies him, then walks closer. My heartbeat picks up automatically. He’s not even doing anything threatening. He’s walking. Existing. Yet every step tightens something in my chest.
When he reaches the table, he stops a respectable distance away. Respectable for anyone else. For him, it feels like a decision. He could have crowded me. He could have boxed me in against the chair. Yesterday he did. Today he doesn’t.
“Write,” he says.
I frown. “About what?”
“Whatever you usually write about when you watch people.” His tone is calm. “Consider this practice.”
I should say no. I should tell him to get out. Instead, my hand moves on its own. The pen touches paper. My pulse thuds against my wrist as I write the words exactly as they form in my mind.
Controlled posture. Measured speech. High threat, low volatility. Simon’s dangerous, but not impulsive.
I stop, aware that he can see the lines if he leans forward even a little. My cheeks heat. I snap the notebook shut.
He watches my hands, then my face again. “You think I’m not impulsive?”
“I watched you decide not to kill me,” I reply. My voice comes out too honest. “I don’t think a man who acts on impulse would have done that.”
His eyes darken a fraction. “You keep bringing up your death like I’m still going to make that decision.”
“You brought me to a warehouse,” I say quietly. “Forgive me for staying on topic.”
Something sharp flickers across his expression and then smooths away. He pulls out the chair opposite mine and sits, shoulders relaxed, legs slightly apart, arms resting loosely on the table. Everything about the pose looks like calm, except I can feel the energy under his skin from here.
“It confuses you,” he says. “That I can do what I do and still hold back.”
“Yes,” I admit. “It really does.”
His gaze stays on me, steady and unblinking. “You expect one kind of monster.”
“You think you’re a monster?” The question slips out, softer than I intend.
He considers me for a long moment. “I know what people call men like me.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He does not answer. Instead, his attention drops to my notebook again. He does not reach for it, even though we both know he could take it out of my hands in a second. He lets it sit between us like a neutral piece of evidence.
“You keep trying not to scare me,” I say.
His eyes lift back to mine. “Is that what you think?”
“You could have put a gun to my head,” I say. My throat tightens, but I keep talking. “You could have had your men tie me up. You could have treated me much worse, but you keep… stopping. Pulling back. It looks like restraint.”
“Would you prefer I didn’t restrain myself?” he asks.
Fear skates cold along my spine. “No. I’d prefer you never needed to in the first place.”
That lands between us like a weight.
For several seconds, he says nothing. The silence stretches, but it does not feel empty. It feels like a test. He studies my face with that same laser focus he had in the warehouse, as if he is searching for an answer I do not know I am giving.
His movements are not soft. They are precise. When he reaches for his coffee, his hand does not shake. When he leans back in the chair, his shoulders stay aligned, his posture straight. He reminds me of a blade sheathed inside a suit, waiting for the right moment to cut.
My mind keeps trying to reconcile him with the bullets and blood in that alley. With the articles about the Sharov family and the missing men tied to them. With Clara’s name, still unanswered on my phone.
At the same time, another truth keeps creeping in.
He didn’t have to grab me off the street personally. He did not have to send me home afterward. He did not have to stand between me and his own men with that quiet command that said no one touched me without his permission.
He doesn’t fit into any category I know. Not predator. Not protector. Somewhere in between. Something worse.
“Does my family scare you?” he asks suddenly.
“Yes,” I say. There is no point lying.
He watches me carefully. “And me?”
I hesitate, because the answer is harder.
“You scare me,” I say slowly, “but not the way I thought you would.”
His expression tightens, almost imperceptibly. “How did you think I would?”
“Loud. Obvious. Unhinged.” I swallow. “You’re none of those things.”
“What am I, then?”
I shake my head. “That’s what I’m still trying to figure out.”
Something in his gaze shifts. Not softer. Not kinder. More focused, if that is even possible. He seems almost interested in my confusion, like it is a puzzle he didn’t expect to enjoy.
He stands after a while and crosses to the window again. The distance helps, but it does not erase the awareness thrumming under my skin. When he is near, I feel the danger in every breath. When he steps away, I feel the space like a phantom touch.
He stares down at the street, hands in his pockets. “You’re not wrong to be afraid of me.”
The honesty in that sentence chills me.
“I could have killed you the night you hid behind that dumpster,” he adds. “I didn’t.”
I grip my pen tighter. “Why?”
He glances back over his shoulder. “You already know why. You’re observant enough to figure it out.”
I hate that he is right. I hate that the answer terrifies me more than the question.
The reason he did not kill me is the same reason he is sitting here now, drinking my coffee and studying my reactions.
I interest him.
I pull him.
That, more than the Sharov name, more than any cartel or alley or gunshot, might be the most dangerous part of all.
***
Curiosity creeps in before I can stop it.
Fear should be enough to drown everything else out, but it doesn’t. My brain does what it always does: it starts to observe. To catalog. To make sense of the thing that scares me.
When Simon’s men rotate shifts outside my door, they always glance inside once. Just once. Their eyes flick to him immediately after. They don’t linger on me. They don’t ask questions. They don’t take up space they haven’t been given. Every decision waits on him, even if it’s unspoken.
He doesn’t bark orders. He doesn’t need to. A look, a nod, the slightest shift of his hand, and they adjust, move, disappear. It’s a hierarchy built on unquestioned authority, and he sits at the center of it like gravity.
The more I notice, the clearer it gets: they don’t just work for him. They orbit him.
Somehow, right now, so do I.
Whenever there’s a sound from the hallway or the street below—a shout, a car horn, footsteps too close to the door—he positions himself between me and the noise.
Not obviously, not theatrically. He just happens to be closer.
He just happens to shift his stance. He just happens to angle his body so I’m behind him.
If someone bursts through the door, they’d see him first. They’d hit him first.
It doesn’t erase what he’s done. It doesn’t make the blood in that alley vanish. But it forces me to see layers I never expected to find in a man like him.
Violent. Dangerous. Ruthless. Protective.
The contradictions do weird things to my heartbeat.
I catch myself staring more than once. When he’s near the window, framed in dull afternoon light.
When he leans over the table to reach his coffee.
When he shrugs out of his jacket and the fabric pulls tight across his shoulders.
I catalog his physicality the way I would any subject—broad, solid, controlled—but it’s not purely clinical.
Attraction hits me in small, unfair bursts.