Chapter Thirteen - Eden
I don’t mean to talk to him more. It just… happens.
It starts with something small. The kitchen light flickers once, twice, then gives a weak buzzing whine that grates on my nerves. Simon’s scrolling through something on his phone, leaning against the counter like he’s part of the architecture.
“You know,” I say, “for a man who runs half the city, you’d think you could manage working lightbulbs.”
His eyes lift from the phone, slow and deliberate. The corner of his mouth tips up. “You complaining about my hospitality?”
“Calling it hospitality is generous,” I reply. “I’m pretty sure kidnapping cancels out fresh linens and tea.”
His gaze sharpens, but there’s amusement there. “So you admit the linens are fresh.”
I stare at him, then roll my eyes. “That’s what you took from that?”
“Yes.”
The light flickers again. I point up. “I’m just saying, if you want to keep someone captive, maybe fix the electrical.”
“Duly noted,” he says, voice dry. “I’ll add it to my list of priorities. Right after ‘stop cartel from taking over my docks.’”
“I’d argue my lighting situation is more urgent.”
His smirk deepens. “I’m beginning to see why you attract trouble.”
The air between us hums with something unspoken. I feel it in the way he leans just slightly closer than he needs to, hands braced lightly on the counter, shoulders angled toward me. His gaze doesn’t just glance over me; it sticks, tracing the line of my throat before settling on my eyes again.
I pretend I don’t notice. My body very much does.
Our exchanges keep happening like this—small, sharp, threaded with something that feels too much like flirting for it to be safe. I test him in little ways, pushing at the edges of his rules, watching what gives and what doesn’t.
“Why can’t I go downstairs?” I ask one afternoon, arms folded.
“Because I said so,” he says.
“That’s not an answer. That’s a dictator slogan.”
“That’s a fact,” he counters. “I don’t want you in common areas. Too many eyes. Too many variables.”
“You own every floor in this building, and you need to control all of them?”
“Yes.”
The certainty in his voice hits me in a way that makes my pulse jump. I ignore it.
“So your rules are: I stay here, I don’t leave, and I don’t talk to anyone but you or your men?” I ask. “Sounds less like protection and more like isolation.”
“Isolation is a form of protection,” he says calmly.
“Spoken like a man who’s never taken a psychology class.”
He gives me a look that’s all sharp edges and faint amusement. “You think you can diagnose me?”
“I think you’re textbook control-oriented with probable attachment avoidance and—”
He steps closer, cutting the distance between us in half. “Careful,” he says softly. “You’re very close to turning your analysis into provocation.”
My breath catches. My heart kicks against my ribs, but I keep my expression cool. “Maybe I’m just bored.”
“I don’t bore easily,” he replies. “You’re not boring.”
His gaze lingers, heavy and intent, before he finally steps back. The space he leaves behind feels charged, buzzing under my skin like static.
Our conversations turn into a kind of mental sparring.
At first, I’m sure I’m going to lose. He’s older, more experienced, terrifyingly intelligent in the way he sees through people. But I know how to pick apart patterns. I know how to push at weak points.
“You say everything you do is necessary,” I tell him one evening as we sit at the table. “But that’s not true.”
His eyes flick from his drink to me. “Isn’t it?”
“Killing a man in an alley and covering it up as suicide? Maybe necessary in your world. Grabbing me off the street instead of just… warning me?” I lift a shoulder. “That feels like a very specific choice.”
“Warning you wouldn’t have worked,” he says.
“You didn’t try.”
His jaw ticks once. “You underestimate how bad people are at listening.”
“You underestimate my ability to decide for myself.”
He leans forward, forearms resting on the table. The angle brings his face closer to mine, and suddenly the distance between us feels microscopic. I don’t lean back. I refuse to.
“Decide then,” he says quietly. “If I’d told you to stay away, would you have stopped looking into the alley? Into me? Into my family?”
Heat crawls up my neck because we both know the answer. “I don’t like being told what to do.”
“Exactly.”
The tension spikes. His gaze drops briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes. My heart slams so hard I’m sure he can hear it.
For a moment, our faces are close enough that if either of us moved an inch—
I break eye contact first, looking down at my notebook. “You can’t know that for sure,” I say, voice a touch too thin.
“Eden,” he murmurs, “I’ve built an empire on understanding what people will do before they do it.”
I hate that it thrills me. I hate that it scares me even more.
He sits back eventually, but the air doesn’t clear. The small space he leaves between us crackles, and every time my hand brushes the table near where his just was, my skin remembers the heat of his proximity.
***
In rare moments, cracks appear in his armor.
It happens once when I ask about his family. We’re in the living room, the TV murmuring unused in the background. He’s sitting angled toward me, one ankle resting on his knee, looking dangerously comfortable.
“How long have you and Lukyan been doing this?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. His gaze drifts to the window, eyes unfocusing for half a second. “Long enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
“Were you always like this?” I push. “Strategic. Controlled. Willing to do… whatever it takes?”
His jaw tightens. “No one starts like this.”
The flicker is quick: pain, memory, something raw flashing behind his eyes before he shutters it. If I blinked, I’d miss it. I don’t blink.
“What changed?” I ask.
His eyes snap back to mine. For a second, I think he’ll shut down, go cold, remind me exactly who he is. Instead, he looks at me like he’s weighing something invisible.
“Life,” he says finally.
“That’s vague,” I say softly.
He huffs out a humorless breath. “So is the question.”
Another time, I call him out on his methods.
“You’re not God,” I say, standing in the hallway as he goes over something with one of his men. “You don’t get to decide who lives and who dies just because it keeps your numbers balanced.”
He dismisses the man with a quick gesture, then turns to me. His eyes are flat, voice cool. “If I don’t decide, someone else will. Someone worse.”
“Maybe the idea of ‘worse’ is a little flexible.”
A shadow crosses his face. “You think I don’t know what I am?”
“I think you’re very good at justifying it,” I shoot back.
For once, he doesn’t respond right away. His fingers flex at his sides. His gaze slips—only slightly, only for a heartbeat—but it’s enough to hint at something underneath the control. Doubt. Regret. Exhaustion.
Then it’s gone.
“Go sit down,” he says finally. “We’re not having this argument in a hallway.”
My pulse quickens whenever he’s near, no matter how much I fight it.
When we squeeze past each other in the kitchen, his hand brushes my hip, light but possessive. The contact lasts less than a second, but my entire body goes hot and tight, traitorous and utterly beyond my control.
When he stands behind me to look at something on my laptop, his chest hovers near my back, heat radiating through my shirt. I smell his cologne, the faint trace of smoke on his skin, and my lungs forget how to function.
When I walk down the corridor and he’s already in it, I have to pass within inches of him. His shoulder grazes mine, his eyes flick down my body once, and my stomach flips like I’m falling.
I hate it.
I hate that my skin prickles when he says my name in that low voice. I hate that my pulse jumps when he steps into my space. I hate that my body—my stupid, disloyal body—responds to him like he’s some kind of gravitational force I can’t escape.
My mind knows exactly who he is.
A killer. A crime boss. A man who took my choices away.
Except then he hesitates before answering a question about his history. Or his eyes flicker when I poke holes in his logic. Or he steps between me and the sound of violence without even thinking.
Those tiny, fleeting slips humanize him in ways I’m not prepared for.
They complicate everything. So I do what I always do when something scares me: I watch him harder.
***
I don’t fall asleep so much as drift into it sideways.
One second I’m staring at the ceiling, listening to the low murmur of Simon’s voice in the other room as he speaks softly in Russian. The next, my eyes are heavy, my thoughts blurring at the edges, and I slide into dreams that don’t feel like dreams at all.
He’s there.
Not the vague, warped version most people become in my sleep, but him—sharp, precise, inescapably real. We’re in the warehouse again, but the air feels different. Warmer. He steps closer and instead of dragging me, his hand settles at the small of my back, firm and guiding.
“Here,” he murmurs, voice low against my ear. “Stand here.”
His fingers adjust my posture—one hand on my hip, the other lightly touching my spine, nudging me into place. My skin tingles where he presses, heat blooming outward in slow, thick waves. I should pull away. I don’t.
In another fragment, I’m in the kitchen. The flickering light is gone. Everything is dim and golden. I’m reaching for a glass on a too-high shelf, fingers just brushing the edge, when suddenly he’s behind me. His chest brushes my back as he reaches up, caging me in without quite touching the wall.
“Careful,” he says.
His voice is right at my neck, deep and unhurried. His arm moves above my head, muscles flexing, and the warmth of his body sinks into mine. My breath catches. The air feels thick, heavy with something unnamed. When he hands me the glass, his fingers brush mine.
It’s nothing. It’s everything.
In another sliver of dream, I’m sitting at the table, and he’s leaning over my shoulder to read what I’ve written. His hand comes down over mine on the notebook, steadying it, his thumb resting against my knuckles. He’s so close I can feel his breath on my cheek.
“You’re not wrong,” he murmurs. “But you’re not right either.”
I turn my head toward him and our faces nearly touch. His eyes drop to my mouth. The air crackles. My whole body goes hot.
I wake up with my heart racing and my skin too warm.
The room is dark, only the faint glow of the streetlights sneaking through the curtains. My sheet is tangled around my legs. My breathing is shallow, uneven, like I’ve just run up a flight of stairs.
For a second, I don’t know where I am.
Then it all rushes back—the apartment, the guards, the fact that he’s probably still here, a few steps away. The reality hits just as hard as the remnants of the dream.
I press a hand to my face, trying to cool the heat there. It doesn’t help. Every time I close my eyes, I see him again—his hand on my back, his fingers over mine, his body too close, his voice sliding down my spine like something I should not want.
I shouldn’t be able to think about anything except fear.
Instead, I’m flushed and restless, wanting things I have no business wanting.
Guilt washes over me in sick little waves.
This isn’t some mysterious stranger with a tragic backstory.
This is a man who ordered a killing in an alley and watched another human being die without blinking.
A man who had me grabbed off the street because I saw too much.
A man whose name is attached to missing people and violence and all the things I’ve spent my life analyzing from a safe academic distance.
He is not a good man, he is not a safe man. Still, my body doesn’t care.
It remembers the feel of his fingers on my wrist, the way my pulse jumped when he touched my hair, the quiet way he stepped in front of me when he thought there might be danger. It responds to him like he’s heat and gravity and oxygen, and my mind has no idea how to reconcile that.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, shame simmering under my skin.
Somewhere along the line, I’ve crossed a line I swore I’d never go near. My fear hasn’t faded. My anger hasn’t vanished. But threaded through both now is something darker and more dangerous.
Desire.