Chapter 3
PAVEL
I t looked like more than one person was going to die tonight.
I'd given explicit orders.
This office building was supposed to be empty.
Not a single soul inside.
No external security, no late-night meetings or ambitious new hires burning the midnight oil to prove themselves.
And no cleaners.
That was why I had scheduled this meeting for midnight.
It was the dead of night, shrouded in complete darkness, away from prying eyes.
It had taken me weeks to get everything set up.
There were supposed to be no interruptions, no mistakes.
Everything was riding on this one night. And since neither Gregor nor Artem had any idea what the fuck I was doing, it had to be flawless .
Yet here she was, the sweet kitten who had been avoiding me for weeks.
Putting everything, including her life, in danger.
She thought I hadn't noticed her all this time. But I had. Oh, I definitely had.
The first time I saw her, down on her hands and knees, still haunted my dreams.
Did she not know the way her pants hugged her ass made every man want to bend her over and fuck her?
For weeks, I'd watched her from the shadows as she cleaned, gliding through the offices like a ghost, quiet and efficient. Always so careful not to disturb anything, not to be seen.
The woman practically dripped sex appeal.
From the way she bit her lip in concentration, to how she moved with a silent grace, unaware of the attention she drew.
Three weeks ago, I'd caught one of the night guards watching her. His eyes had followed her as she bent to empty a trash can, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. The next night, he came to work with a broken arm. No one asked questions. No one ever did.
Only I was allowed to watch her.
To savor the innocent way her gaze would stay on the floor.
A natural submissive.
Every time I saw her, I wanted her.
To take her, ruin her, corrupt her.
Every cell in my body screamed that she was mine. A possession no one else would ever touch.
Last Friday, I'd watched her from my darkened office as she cleaned the conference room across the hall. Some drunken accountant had stayed late, cornering her by the doorway. I made sure he "resigned" the next day.
She never knew I was the reason he disappeared.
Never knew that she already belonged to me, because I’d been forced to rein in my lust.
Gregor made it very clear—the staff were off-limits.
Initially I’d had no intention of going against his wishes, at least until after Solovyov was dead.
After that, he and Artem would be too busy with their power struggle to notice where I stuck my cock.
But all bets were off now.
She was here, where she wasn't supposed to be.
My men assured me she had left.
I caught her scent before I even opened the closet door a few minutes ago. The same floral fragrance I'd memorized from the nights I'd followed just behind her, her hips swaying to whatever music she was listening to on her headphones. My movements shrouded in the dim, after-hours lighting.
Now she was running through the building like a frightened rabbit.
The warning shot I'd fired was my gift to her—a chance to play the game I'd been dying to initiate for weeks.
Unfortunately, she wasn't a temptation anymore.
She was a problem.
My sweet little kitten had seen things not meant for her eyes.
That had turned her into a liability.
We did not suffer liabilities .
Of all the things she could've seen, a stone-cold murder was the worst.
A clean, efficient bullet to the head of the last of Solovyov’s men.
Once I made a call to my cousin, Roman, we’d finally take out Solovyov himself.
And then the threat to the Ivanovs would be over.
No loose ends, no weaknesses.
At least there wouldn't have been, if she hadn't seen everything.
It wasn't even the type of killing she could have been persuaded to believe was self-defense.
It was an execution, and she witnessed every second.
She shouldn't have fucking been here.
My jaw tightened as I considered the options.
I'd killed men for far less than what she'd witnessed.
Part of me wanted to keep her alive just to watch her break under my control. The other part knew that breaking the rules for this woman might cost me everything I'd built.
Last month, when I noticed she was working late by herself, I'd stationed two of my most trusted men nearby. Not that she knew. But I'd made sure she got to her car safely, watching from the window as she drove away. I told myself it was just to protect a company asset.
I was lying to myself even then.
Finding it hard to concentrate.
And now, the way she tried to run from me made my cock hard.
She’d made herself prey.
Fuck, I loved prey .
I tracked her to one of the office spaces, a large room filled with cubicles. The lock on the door was no barrier—one solid kick and it splintered open.
There had always been something so appealing about the chase; the adrenaline, the power, the raw intensity was just so appetizing.
This little kitten was begging to be chased down, to be hunted.
"You can't hide from me," I called out, my voice slicing through the darkness. "I've been watching you for weeks. I know your every move."
I advanced slowly, my footsteps deliberate.
Each aisle a new hunting ground in my methodical search for her.
"Did you think I didn't notice you?" I continued. "The way you avoid the east wing after ten. How you always double-check that the executive bathroom is empty before cleaning it? The little sandwiches you sneak from the cafeteria when you think no one's looking?"
The desks weren't that deep. I spotted her almost immediately, her fair skin caught in a shaft of moonlight angling across the floor to where she sat huddled in a cute little ball.
I could've gone straight to her, but where was the fun in that? I wanted to savor this.
"I've known your real name for weeks, Alina," I called as I walked down her aisle, catching the way her body trembled harder with each step I took. "Did you think that silly fake name would protect you? Nothing protects you from me."
For the second time tonight, her perfume would have given her away as I neared her hiding spot even if I hadn’t already seen her. A light and fresh fragrance, but tainted now with the sharp, almost salty scent of fear. It was intoxicating.
Finally I stopped in front of the desk she was under, dropped to my haunches, and leveled my gaze on her. "Either come out willingly or be dragged out. The choice is yours."
I gave her a moment to realize how fucked she really was.
Literally.
There was no escape. No place to run or hide.
I could practically see her thoughts racing, calculating odds, searching for options.
It was fascinating, the way hope drained from her eyes when she realized there was only one way this night would end. With her surrender.
She hesitated, then uncurled herself and got onto her hands and knees.
"That's it," I encouraged, my voice dropping lower as I rose. "Come to me."
Christ. I shifted my hips as my cock lengthened inside my jeans.
When she crawled toward me, I caught sight of the soft curve of her breast beneath her shirt. A single glimpse, and I wanted to tear the fabric from her body, to mark every inch of her pale skin as territory I'd claimed.
I didn't take a step back, forcing her to look up at me.
I inhaled sharply.
Fuck.
Making her crawl to me was a mistake .
She was so small, so delicate.
Her wide brown eyes shone with terror, her soft lips trembling as she whispered, "I didn't see anything."
A lie. A cute lie, but a lie all the same.
I cupped her chin and forced her head back. “Remember two weeks ago when that security guard cornered you in the stairwell? Did you wonder why he suddenly requested a transfer?"
Her expression shifted to confusion.
"Or that supervisor who kept finding reasons to 'check your work' after hours?"
The tears tracking down her cheeks should have evoked mercy.
Instead, they tempted me to taste them, to consume every drop of her terror before replacing it with a far more addictive emotion.
My lips curled into something between amusement and warning. “You saw me kill that man, didn’t you, moy kotyonochek ?”
My sweet little kitten.
Such a fitting name for such an enticing little creature caught in my trap.
Finally, I took a step back, letting her rise to her feet.
"I swear, I won't tell anyone, I won't say—" She swiped at the wetness trailing down her face, her brown eyes glistening as she stared up at me.
“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. I don't believe you." I traced the barrel of my gun along her jawline.
She sucked in a soft hiss through her teeth at the contact, her gaze breaking away from mine and darting left, then right .
She was looking for an escape.
She wouldn’t find one.
"Don't even think about running again," I warned. "I've memorized every route you take through this building. I know where you'd go."
Part of me wanted to let her run, just so I could chase her again.
Maybe if we'd been truly alone, I would have let her.
Let her tire herself out running down the halls, finding new places to hide that I could discover.
Each time I found her, I'd remove a piece of her clothing as my reward.
It was tempting, but my men were still in the building.
And I was going to be the only one who played this game with her.
"Please," she begged. "I'll do anything. Just let me go."
"Anything?" I raised an eyebrow. "That's a dangerous offer to make to a man like me. A man who just blew someone's brains across the marble."
Her body started at my cold-blooded admission.
Slow and steady, I moved forward, herding her to exactly where I wanted her.
Forcing her back until she hit the wall and opened her lips to let slip a little squeak of terror.
I lifted my hand, brushing a stray curl that had fallen out of her cute ponytail from her face, not with my fingers, but with the still-warm barrel of my gun.
Her breath hitched, and she flinched away.
"You should be afraid," I murmured. "But you should also know that for weeks I've made sure no one else laid a hand on you. I've been watching over you, Alina. Protecting you. So you can understand how angry I would be, now that you have put us both in a very…difficult…position.”
“I promise, I won’t tell a soul about what I saw.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You promise? Well that changes everything as long as you promise.”
Perhaps it was cruel to taunt her, but then again, I was a cruel man.
I tilted my head, studying her.
Her pulse hammered violently against the delicate column of her throat.
Even terrified, she was beautiful.
But there was something else beneath the fear.
She enjoyed being hunted by the big bad wolf, whether she realized it or not.
By dawn, she'd know exactly what belonged to me.
Her fear.
Her body.
Her obedience.
I'd carve my name into her soul until she couldn't remember a time before she was mine.
I smirked. This was going to be so much fun.
"The question, moy kotyonochek , is what am I going to do with you now?"