Chapter 2
Ilya
Misha steps closer when the little beauty in blue walks away from me, as though she has every right. It’s a rare thing to find someone brave enough to turn their back on me. If it weren’t for the quick flutter of her pulse under her creamy skin, the violent rise and fall of her luscious breasts with every tremble of breath she dared to breathe, I’d think she was one of those who simply lacked the innate awareness of when they stood in the presence of a true predator.
Most people froze in my presence. As though they thought if they ran, they’d tempt the thing within me that yearned to chase, to maim, and claim. She’d tensed at first, frozen in the same instinctual fear that paralyzes so many. Then, defiance flashed in those lovely, intriguingly sad blue eyes.
She’d been afraid of me. I know, because I could scent it. It dripped from her pores like saccharine honey after the comb has been ripped viciously from the hive. Addictive and sticky sweet.
Still, sensing that she’d encountered a true predator, she’d didn’t cow. She didn’t buckle under the weight of my glacial stare. She didn’t wait for the dismissal I always gave when my prey refused to give the chase I craved, before she dismissed me.
Color me intrigued, Little Blue. Something you should have known better than to do.
“That was interesting,” Misha observes, and even though I’ve yet to tear my eyes off the temptress in the blue silk dress as she weaves through slot machines in her desperation to escape this place—me—and I think, people in general, I agree with a silent nod. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone brave enough to walk away from you before you’re done with them.”
Little Blue slips around a corner, toward the entrance doors. I snap my gaze to Misha. He’s one of very few people who don’t flinch when I fix my eyes on him.
More than once, in the hopeless confessions that drip with agony, and hunger for the bliss of death, I’ve been told that my eyes are soulless. My mother believes one can see into the soul through the portal of the eyes. I’ve confirmed this with every soul I’ve claimed, over, and over again, as I dip my hands beneath skin, through flesh and muscle, past bone and cartilage, to the ticking bomb every living thing houses within the vessel their souls possess.
I’ve come to believe there is a glitch in my portal. Or perhaps the rumor is true, and I’m nothing but a void. A vessel of death and torment wreaking havoc upon the most depraved of this world, taking pleasure in the way they beg, the tears they cry, the mercy they think they’ll be granted. Mercy they never deigned to give in the ends they delivered.
Hypocritical.
A delusion I do not share for myself.
I have no doubt that when my time comes, my body will go in the pinnacle of torment. That light that lives in the eyes of everyone I’ve ever crossed—that shimmer that dims when the time bomb explodes—that is where I differ.
Because when I look in the mirror, that light is missing.
It”s that missing light, that dullness behind the brilliantly sharp blue of my irises, that makes people uncomfortable. That makes them squirm.
The reason I’m known in the criminal underworld as Ilya Volkov, The Void.
I turn to my oldest friend and chosen brother. The corner of Misha’s lip lifts. Many men have been punished for far less. “I want everything there is to know about her on my desk by Monday morning.”
That fucking grin widens. “We’re not flying home Monday morning?”
“No.” He doesn’t even quake under my glare. Little shit.
“Sure thing, Pakhan.”
“Everything, Misha.” I don’t have to feed a threat into the words. He understands it’s there.
With a nod not lacking amusement from my friend, and right-hand man, I head back to my office. I’ll study Little Blue on the security footage from the first moment she entered my casino, to the moment she fled the doors.
I’ll study her movements, her expressions, the people she speaks with and how she engages with them. By Monday, I’ll know her name, age, medical history, and family lineage. I’ll know where she works, and if she has a boyfriend I’ll need to—deal with.
The thought sparks something neurotically unpleasant. It scorches, unfamiliar and unwelcome.
I rub my palm over my chest, where the burn is most intense.
Then I return to my thoughts with force. I’ll know what she does with her spare time, the food she keeps in her cupboards, and if she prefers coffee to tea. I’ll know everything there is to know about the woman with the sad blue eyes. Then, in the way I’ve always suspected, and maybe even feared I would—like my father when he fell for my mother, I’ll take her.