Chapter 12
TERESA
The elevator doors part and I step onto the executive floor, pulse already racing.
Angeloff soldiers drift through the corridor dressed in black suits, silver ties, and identical lapel pins that glint like blades. They aren’t ordinary executives, no matter how polished their pocket squares. They’re Angels of Death, Vlad’s personal hitters.
They watch me with shuttered eyes as I deliver typed directives, each memo a silent bullet slipped into the chamber of their next assignment.
I clutch the leather folio to my chest tightly. One wrong breath, one misstep, and any one of them might decide to turn the muzzle on me.
After all, my name is still on the List.
First stop, conference room Delta. I rap twice, then crack the door. Six men sit around the table, black-clad shoulders squared like chess pieces. The nearest, Grigori, whose résumé reads five languages, forty confirmed kills, lifts cold gray eyes to mine.
I slide the memo onto the polished wood and murmur the words, “From Mr. Angeloff,” retreating cautiously as though from a predator’s cage.
The hallway seems to narrow with every step. Recessed lighting overhead paints thin rectangles and each time I cross the boundary between them, a flicker of vertigo hits, as if I’m stepping over tripwires only I can see.
Next room. Three women this time, hair pulled back into tight buns at their necks, silver cufflinks biting into starched sleeves. They pause mid-discussion when I arrive, as if my presence contaminates classified air. As soon as I leave, their hushed conversation resumes.
Between deliveries, I catch my reflection in mirrored accent walls—eyes wide and feral.
Hold it together, Winslow.
The folio lightens as I shed memo after memo, but my anxiety grows. Somewhere in this hive of shadows, Vlad is the king spider who gave me an order to be at work and act natural. However, natural feels impossible when every angle suggests a rifle sight.
Turning a corner, I nearly collide with Dmitri. He places a steadying hand on my shoulder. Though the pressure is polite, I know that hand has snapped necks.
“Easy,” he murmurs. His eyes, glacier-blue, flick to the paper clutched in my hand. “Straight ahead, last door.”
“Thank you,” I manage, voice threadbare.
The last corridor is emptier, quieter, like it’s holding its breath waiting for me. My heels tap in sync with my pulse. Almost done. The final memo, a single sheet bearing Vlad’s signature in precise, imposing script. Room Omega waits at the end, door cracked, interior lights dimmed.
I reach for the handle—
A hand closes around my wrist.
I whip around, breath locked in my lungs. Vlad stands inches away, eyes darker than I’ve ever seen them. For a beat, I expect cold metal in my ribs.
“Come,” he says, voice soft but edged.
Panic jolts through me. I glance at the door to Room Omega—an escape I’m not sure is safer—then back at him. He doesn’t wait for consent. He steers me down an adjacent corridor. I nearly trip trying to keep up.
“Mr. Angeloff—”
“Hush,” he quietly commands. “Inside.”
He ushers me through the glass doors of his office, palm firm on the curve of my waist. The doors sigh shut behind us, sealing off the silver-tie gauntlet. Only then does he remove his hand. Heart thundering, I take two steps back.
Snow-streaked light drifts through the glass wall, dust motes swirling like restless spirits. I stand in front of his obsidian desk, fingers cramped around the single memo I never delivered.
At last, his voice breaks through the silence. “Your name is no longer on the Christmas List.”
He draws the dreadful black leather ledger from a drawer, flips to the final page, and lifts a gleaming black pen. The point drags through my name, slow, deliberate, final. Relief punches the breath from my lungs, but an alarming thought follows: what did that stroke of ink cost?
Vlad rests one hip against the desk, ledger still open in his hand.
“But how?”
“Effective this morning, five percent of Volkov Industries now sits in an Angeloff holding company.”
I blink, trying to wrap my mind around what I just heard. “Five percent? You just bought part of his empire?”
“Call it a family debt repaid.” He taps the page bearing my crossed-out name. “I could’ve leveraged the debt, really made him hurt. But I offered him a deal. You were part of it.”
Relief flows through me, but I’m still confused. “Let me get this straight. You bought my life? I’m safe now?”
“Safe enough,” he says. “Volkov treasures money more than vengeance when forced to choose between the two. And I made him choose.” He closes the ledger. “You have your life because I bought it,” he adds, making his way around the desk with quiet predation. “And what I purchase, I keep.”
Gratitude collides with fear. “So I’m a thing you now own?”
“Body and soul, Teresa.”
I swallow. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“My protection, which means my rules.” He counts them off.
“One: you follow every security protocol I set, no exceptions. Two: your schedule is mine to control until I say otherwise. Three: you relocate tonight to a secured apartment I own. Non-negotiable. Your apartment isn’t suitable or safe.
” He hesitates for a beat. “Or, you can go back to your place, take that bag you packed, and leave the city.”
“Why would I leave the city? I thought I was safe.”
“You’re off the list, which means you’re no longer the target of my people. But that doesn’t mean Volkov has lost interest in your untimely end. If you refuse my help, then you’d be wise to leave and start over somewhere else.”
Words crowd my tongue—protests, questions—but he lays a fingertip against my mouth, silencing them before they’re spoken.
“Choose, kotenok,” he murmurs. “Your life at risk, always running, or order and safety beneath my guard.”
The pad of his thumb traces my lower lip before sliding along my jaw and tilting my chin. Memory flares—his dominance, my surrender, pleasure so fierce it bordered on pain. My breath hitches.
“As I told you, fear and desire share a single nerve. I feel yours vibrating.” His gaze waits. “Say you understand, and you stay by choice.”
The words escape me in a whisper. “Yes. I choose you.”
My back meets the cool glass, the skyline smearing into jeweled streaks behind me. One of his hands braces beside my head, the other glides up my thigh beneath the narrow pencil skirt I’m wearing. His fingertips find the lower band of my panties, and my knees buckle, hunger flooding every vein.
The room fills with passionate need, with the whisper of fabric sliding over skin. He stops just shy of indecency—fingers hovering where the heat is most fierce. My hips arch, seeking him. I fist his silver tie, the soft slide of it adding to the sexiness of the moment.
He lowers his mouth to my ear, speaking in Russian I can’t translate. The rumble of his words vibrates down my spine. I shiver and almost forget my own name.
Then, as quickly as it started, it ends. He retreats. He smooths my skirt and restores my shirt all while leaving my nerves in open flame.
He presses a phone into my palm—sleek, small, obviously encrypted.
“Only this line for me or Dmitri. Answer always.” Next comes a manila dossier with a relocation address on the Upper East Side, door codes, and a rotation schedule for the shadow team that will watch me.
“Pack essentials only. Be ready by nightfall,” he instructs.
“And if you change your mind and decide you want to disappear, do it with your eyes open, ready for the consequences.”
I find my voice, bruised but there. “Yes, sir.”
The sir drips out of my mouth. I’m keenly aware that this man goes far beyond just my boss… he’s something else. Something much bigger.
The corner of his mouth twitches and he steps back, reclaiming the space between us. The office instantly feels colder with the distance.
“Dismissed.”
I turn on trembling legs, dossier and phone clutched to my chest. The door handle is cool beneath my fingers. I step outside his office into the hallway, feeling safer than when I walked in.
Safe or owned? The question ricochets inside my skull, and beneath it beats a deeper drum I refuse to name, an ache that remembers his touch, his voice whispering a language into my ear that I don’t understand.
I breathe deep and steady, then step into the stark, bright corridor, still trembling, still alive, yet tethered to a man who’s made it clear he keeps what he buys.
And he’s just bought me.