Chapter 6
ALINA
T he taste of submission lingered in my mouth long after Pavel was gone.
I had a minute—seconds, maybe less—before he returned to finish what he'd started.
The moment the door closed behind him, I collapsed forward to my hands and knees.
My stomach heaved as I spit all of his come from my mouth, wishing I could purge the degradation just as easily.
The violation had sunk deeper than flesh.
It had branded me, marked me in ways soap could never wash away.
I coughed and gagged, trying to rid my tongue of the bitter taste of powerlessness. The bile and stomach acid made it worse, a brutal reminder of what he'd taken from me—what I'd surrendered to survive.
What terrified me most wasn't just the violation; it was my body's betrayal.
Beneath the fear and disgust, a traitorous heat had flickered when he called me “good girl” with his fingers twisted in my hair.
That unexpected response horrified me more than the gun against my skin had.
What kind of person did that make me?
My confusion only amplified my panic as I struggled to process what had happened, what it meant. My body quaked in the aftermath, my lungs fighting each inhale, my throat raw, my jaw aching from being forced open.
I wanted to curl into a ball, to disappear beneath the humiliation.
I would have.
Any woman would yield to such crushing degradation.
But I couldn't.
Pavel would return.
That monster would come back to either use me again or kill me now that he'd taken what he wanted.
I needed to move. Now.
Survival had to overrule trauma. I could break down later, if there was a later.
I stood on unsteady legs and scanned the room.
No sign of anyone.
A door across the sea of cubicles led to another hallway, then to a staircase that would take me outside.
I just needed to reach it and escape this building.
Pavel knew too much about me, starting with my real name.
Thank god I never gave the management office my real address. It was silly but with all the cloak and dagger warnings about rules and the office building tenants, I’d hesitated to give them too much information .
The only reason why I’d given them my grandmother’s name was I figured they wouldn’t care about a sweet old lady living in a state-run nursing home. She was listed as my emergency contact, but with a note only to contact her if it were a true emergency…like I was dead.
It was bitterly ironic how that actually almost happened tonight.
But if something did happen to me, I’d wanted at least someone to know to call her.
The pathetic sadness that I would have to rely on my asshole boss for that because there was absolutely no one else in my life was a cold stone in my stomach.
That must have been how Pavel found out about my grandmother; he must have looked in my employee file.
I was a fool to think I'd ever been invisible to him.
Now I had to disappear completely. Vanish where his resources couldn't track me.
Fuck, I needed a shower, with water as hot as I could stand it. I'd scrub his fingerprints from my skin with steel wool and empty an entire bottle of store-brand mouthwash until I no longer tasted Pavel Ivanov's essence.
I needed to cleanse him from my body, scour him from my mouth, then retreat to my favorite state: denial.
In the morning, I'd pretend none of it happened.
I was simply dismissed from this job and needed to find another late-night cleaning position.
Therapists probably had some technical term with too many syllables for how I processed trauma. Advanced trauma experience compartmentalization syndrome, perhaps.
I called it doing what I needed to survive .
Sometimes that meant ignoring what couldn't be fixed.
I couldn't fix what happened, just as I couldn't fix that Pavel wanted me dead...or worse.
This job was finished, and I needed a new one.
I glanced around one final time before my gaze landed on the desk beside me.
Pavel had left his gun.
The same weapon he'd used to kill that man, the same cold metal he'd traced against my skin.
Carelessly abandoned.
A murder weapon.
I reached for it, then pulled my hand back.
Taking it would cross a line I'd never imagined crossing. I wasn't a thief. I'd never seen a gun before tonight. What would I even do with it?
But Pavel's face flashed in my mind—the cold calculation in his eyes as he squeezed the trigger, the casual way he'd executed a man, then forced himself down my throat moments later.
Would I use it? Could I?
The metal gleamed in the moonlight, both repulsive and compelling.
If I left it, I'd have nothing to protect myself.
If I took it, I became something else—someone who might have to decide whether to fire it.
My grandmother's face appeared in my mind’s eye. She depended on me. If I died tonight, what would happen to her?
I seized the gun, wrapping my fingers around its grip.
The weight surprised me; it was heavier than I expected, solid and deadly. My index finger hovered near the trigger as nausea and resolve battled within me.
It was either the smartest move or the dumbest decision of my life, but I had no time for second-guessing.
I was leaving one way or another.
I crouched low, staying beneath the cubicle walls as I scurried toward the back exit. The gun bumped against my thigh with each movement, a constant reminder of how drastically my situation had changed. Every creak of the building made me freeze, my ears straining for any sign of Pavel's return.
The door opened with a tiny click, and I peered into the hallway.
The main fluorescents were off, leaving only recessed lighting casting eerie shadows along the corridor. The stringent odor of industrial cleaner—usually just an occupational annoyance—now smelled like safety, like the normal world I was desperately trying to return to.
If Pavel remained on this floor, his men would be nearby too.
I hugged the shadows as I crept toward the stairwell door.
"Yeah, it's done. No, they don't know yet," a man's voice said as he appeared at the other end of the narrow hallway.
I ducked into an office before he spotted me.
Pressing against the wall behind the door, I held my breath. The gun felt impossibly loud in my hand, as if it might announce its presence.
He laughed into his phone. “His head exploded like a fucking watermelon. You should have been here. Bitch to clean up all that blood though.”
The casual tone made my skin crawl as he joked about the man whose brains were splattered across marble.
Static from a radio crackled, and Pavel's voice cut through.
"The cleaner ran off. She's still in the building, probably headed outside. Find her and bring her to me now."
A whimper of fear crawled up my throat.
I barely contained it as the man swore and ended his call.
Silence followed. My fingers pressed against the wall as my legs quivered. I clenched my muscles to stop their movement, remaining motionless.
The door to the office I was hiding in swung open and the man stepped into the room.
I froze, not even daring to breathe as I cowered behind the door, barely concealed.
My gaze was trained on the sliver of space between the door hinges and the wall, sweat trickling between my shoulder blades as I stood braced to run if discovered.
He cursed under his breath then left, slamming the door closed behind him.
I exhaled silently and leaned my head against the wall.
He opened several more doors down the hall, each one slamming shut with a finality that made me flinch.
After a few minutes of quiet, I eased the door open a crack and peeked out.
The man was gone, with no sign of other searchers...yet.
I crept in the opposite direction toward the stairwell and slipped through, closing the door softly. Voices echoed in the stairwell, but from floors above, moving away. The concrete walls amplified and distorted their words, to the point where they sounded almost inhuman.
"What are we supposed to do when we find the bitch? Kill her?" asked someone with a Russian accent that wasn't nearly as refined as Pavel's.
"Nah. Boss wants her alive, but he didn't say we couldn't take her for a spin first," another replied. They laughed as they climbed another story and exited the stairwell.
A chill washed over me as my mind raced with what they planned. I clutched the gun tighter, suddenly grateful for its reassuring weight.
No time to dwell on it.
I moved quickly but silently, eyes fixed on my feet to avoid tripping on the stairs. The rubber soles of my sneakers squeaked occasionally against the smooth concrete treads, each sound like a scream in the otherwise silent stairwell.
Down, down, down.
I wasted no time descending, not looking up until reaching the large steel door covered in warning signs.
Do Not Open—Alarm Will Sound .
If the Ivanovs were here tonight, they'd disabled the security systems.
Men like Pavel didn't leave electronic trails.
The best way to avoid police involvement was to avoid creating evidence.
I pushed that thought aside, realizing I was now evidence they would need to erase .
No point worrying about what I couldn't control. I pressed the door handle, bracing for alarms in case my assumption proved wrong.
Nothing happened.
I pushed the door open just enough to slip through.
Shifting the gun to my other hand, I ran my sweat-slicked palm over my thigh. The metal seemed to grow heavier with each passing moment.
The cool, crisp air outside helped clear my thoughts.
The distant sound of traffic—ordinary people living ordinary lives—was surreal after what I'd witnessed.
I wasn't free yet.
This building was one among several in the compound.
I needed to navigate the loading dock and back alleys without detection.
My heartbeat thundered as I darted through alleys, sneakers slapping against wet concrete.
The recent rain had left puddles that reflected the streetlights, creating twice as many sources of illumination to avoid.