Chapter 5
IVAN
The city bleeds gray at six in the morning, caught between night and day. I walk because sitting still feels impossible. Because I told Lila I had business to handle.
What business? Oleg's dead. Dmitri will retaliate, but that's tomorrow's problem. Tonight—this morning—my only business is the girl sleeping in my guest room wearing nothing but my shirt.
The girl I'm holding prisoner under the guise of protection.
The excuse still hasn't come. I've been turning it over in my head for hours, looking for the angle that makes this right. Makes this anything other than what it is—me wanting someone I shouldn't have and taking her anyway.
Her apartment is in Pilsen, a southwest side neighborhood where the rent's cheap and the buildings remember better days. I got the address from her employee file weeks ago, but didn’t visit. That would've crossed a line.
Now I'm crossing every line there is.
The street's quiet except for an old man walking a dog that looks even older and early risers heading to factory shifts. The smell of breakfast—eggs and burned toast—drifts from an open window. Normal people living normal lives.
I scan for threats out of habit. Dmitri's crew drives black Escalades with tinted windows and parks where they can watch exits. I count three potential vehicles within a two-block radius, but they're all too clean, too new for this neighborhood. Civilian cars.
Her building is brick, five stories. The front door's propped open with a phone book. Great security.
I climb to the fourth floor. The stairwell reeks of piss and the industrial cleaner that tries and fails to hide it. Apartment 4C. The door's thin enough that a half-hearted kick would take it down.
I pick the lock instead. Quieter.
The apartment reveals itself in sections as I step inside. A kitchen barely big enough to turn around in. A living room that's really just a couch facing a TV. Everything's cramped, sparse, but clean. She takes care of what little she has.
The thought does something uncomfortable to my chest.
I'm not here to feel guilty. I'm here for clothes, toiletries, and whatever else she needs for an extended stay. That's the story I'm telling myself.
The bedroom is barely big enough for the twin bed pushed against one wall.
There's a milk crate serving as a nightstand, a lamp with a shade that doesn't match.
Above the bed, she's tacked up drawings—city scenes, portraits of people who look like diner regulars, a detailed sketch of the Chicago skyline at sunset.
No drawings of me. Not where anyone could see them.
A tightness fills my chest. Hurt? Disappointment? No, fuck that.
I find a duffel bag in her closet and start filling it with what little clothes she has. Jeans worn soft at the knees. T-shirts with band names I don't recognize. A sweater that still smells like her. Underwear from a drawer I shouldn't be opening. Cotton, mostly white, nothing fancy.
Focus.
The matchbox-sized bathroom is next. Toothbrush, shampoo, and a pink razor. Makeup she doesn't need. I grab it all before methodically sweeping each room for anything Dmitri's men could use. Photos, documents—anything with her family's addresses or names.
In the process, I find a box under the bed, shoved toward the wall. Cardboard, standard moving size, with the top flaps tucked closed. Someone's written “TAX DOCUMENTS” on the side in black marker.
It’s off. Too obviously labeled yet hidden.
I pull it out and set it on the bed. The box is too heavy for documents.
Inside, there are no tax forms.
Instead, paperbacks. Dozens of them. The covers all similar—shirtless men with tattoos, women in various states of undress, titles in bold fonts promising danger and desire. Ruthless Vow. The Bratva's Prize. Claimed by the Pakhan.
My mouth goes dry.
I pick up the first one and flip through it. Small, penciled notes dot the margins and get messier as the pages progress.
Page 43: Why is this so hot??? Underlined three times.
Page 87: The way he just TAKES control...
Page 139: Would die if someone said this to me.
More books. More notes. On one particularly worn paperback, she's sketched in the margins—a man's hand gripping a woman's throat. The detail is precise. The intimacy of it clear.
There's a sticky note on another book marking a specific scene. The man has the girl pinned against a wall, one hand fisted in her hair, telling her exactly what he's going to do to her. Lila's written in the margin: God, yes!
Blood rushes south so fast I go lightheaded.
This is what she reads. What she thinks about. Dangerous men who take what they want. Who don't ask permission. Who claim and possess and keep.
Men like me.
But there's more. The stack of books rests on something, creating a false bottom. I move them aside and find a sketchbook, larger than the ones she carries. Hidden like contraband.
I should close the box. Should respect this boundary at least.
I open the sketchbook instead.
The first page steals my breath.
A naked man. Tattooed, scarred, built like someone who knows violence intimately. He's drawn from behind. The attention to detail is stunning. She's talented—I knew that from watching her sketch at the diner—but this is different.
I turn the page.
Another man, lying on his back with one arm thrown over his face, cock half-hard against his thigh. She's captured everything—the shadows, the texture, the weight of it.
Flipping through the pages, there are more bodies. Warriors and killers rendered in graphite and want.
Then I see myself standing at a window, city lights in the background. I'm naked except for shadows, one hand braced against the glass, head tilted back. She's drawn me like a study in power and isolation.
My hands tense as I turn to the next page.
It’s me again, sitting at a desk, head tilted back, face caught in pleasure. The perspective is from below, suggesting someone on their knees between my legs, implied rather than shown in the act, but the intent is clear.
Another page. Me in a shower, water streaming down my chest and abdomen, hand wrapped around my cock, face tight with need.
I keep flipping. She's drawn me fighting. Killing. Fucking.
She's imagined me in every scenario her mind could create and drawn it all with the kind of detail that comes from thinking about it constantly. From wanting it.
The final drawing hits different. It's intimate in a way the others aren't. Me asleep, face relaxed, vulnerable. She's captured a quality in this one—not the danger, not the violence, but a softness I didn't know I was capable of showing.
I sit on her bed, sketchbook open in my lap, and feel the last of my careful control dissolve.
She wants this.
She fantasizes about men like me. About being taken by men like me. About submitting to the power I have.
I'm giving her what she wants.
Good. I want this too. The math is simple when you strip away all the pretense about protection and responsibility.
I finish packing her bag with hands that aren't quite steady. Add the clothes, the toiletries, and a framed photo of her with an older woman who might be her mother. Leave the box as I found it—secrets intact, fantasies preserved.
I stand in her bedroom one more moment, duffel bag in hand, sketchbook returned to its hiding place. My cock's been half-hard since I opened that box, and now it's straining against my zipper with an urgency I haven't felt since I was a teenager.
She did this. Her drawings. Her notes. Her dirty little mind imagining me in positions that would make a prostitute blush.
When I get back to the penthouse, I'm going to let her feel how hard she makes me. Going to watch her face when she realizes what she does to me. See if those green eyes go wide with fear or desire.
Probably both.
I can’t fucking wait.