Chapter 3 – Lev #3
They’re alive.
Two words that had shattered everything I thought I knew about myself, about the grief that had shaped me, about the reasons I’d become the kind of man who wore gloves to hide scars and kept everyone at arm’s length.
The fire had been my origin story. Ten years old, trapped in a house that was turning into an inferno while my father’s enemies celebrated their revenge outside. I could still smell the smoke, still feel the heat that had turned the air into something that clawed at my lungs with every breath.
I’d been upstairs when it started, playing some stupid game with Trev while our mother read in the living room below.
Twin brothers, identical in everything except the color of our eyes—mine gray like storm clouds, his blue like summer sky.
We’d been inseparable, two halves of the same whole, finishing each other’s sentences and sharing dreams about futures we’d never live to see.
The explosion had come first—a sound like the world cracking open.
Then the smell of gasoline and burning wood, the orange glow creeping under doorframes like liquid hell.
I’d grabbed Trev’s hand and we’d run toward the stairs, toward our mother’s voice calling our names through the growing roar of flames.
But the staircase was already engulfed. A wall of fire that might as well have been a portal to another dimension, one where everything we loved turned to ash and smoke.
“We have to jump!” I’d screamed, pulling Trev toward the window.
He’d jerked his hand free, his blue eyes wild with panic. “Mom’s down there! We can’t just leave her!”
“The stairs are gone—there’s no way down!”
But he wasn’t listening. He was already turning back, already running toward the inferno that separated us from her. “I can make it through! I can get to her!”
“Trev, no—”
He didn’t stop. Didn’t even look back. He just plunged into that wall of flames like he could will himself through it by love alone.
I screamed his name until my throat was raw, until the smoke choked the sound from my lungs. The heat drove me back to the window, and I had no choice—jump or burn.
The fall from the second-floor window should have killed me, but I’d landed in the garden beds our mother had planted that spring—soft earth and mulch that cushioned my fall even as it tore the skin from my palms and knees.
I’d tried to go back in, tried to run toward the front door that was now a mouth of fire, but the heat pushed me back like a physical force.
The roof collapsed with a sound like thunder, sending sparks into the night sky like dying stars.
And with it, any chance that Trev had made it through.
Any chance of reaching the woman who’d sung us lullabies and kissed our scraped knees and promised us that love was stronger than the violence that surrounded our family’s world.
Except now I knew they’d survived. Had escaped through some other exit while I watched my childhood turn to cinders. Had been whisked away to safety while I spent the next twenty-seven years believing I’d failed to save them.
I drained the vodka glass and reached for the bottle, my gloved hands steady despite the chaos in my head.
These hands that had been burned trying to reach through flames that weren’t there.
These hands that bore scars from injuries I’d never actually received, because the fire that had marked me had been emotional, not physical.
The physical scars were real enough, though.
Third-degree burns across both palms and up my forearms, souvenirs from grabbing a door handle that had been superheated by the inferno on the other side.
I’d been trying to get back inside, trying to find some way to reach my family, when the metal had seared through my skin like a brand.
The doctors had said I was lucky—that nerve damage could have been permanent, that I might never have full use of my hands again. But luck was a relative concept when you were ten years old and the only family you had left was a father who’d taught you that pain was just another kind of weakness.
The funeral had been a performance. Two closed coffins because there hadn’t been enough left to justify open caskets, my father standing stone-faced beside graves that contained lies. I’d thrown dirt on empty boxes while my real family started new lives on the other side of the world.
“Grief makes us stronger,” my father had told me that night, his voice carrying the kind of certainty that brooked no argument. “Your mother and brother are gone, Lev. But their memory will make you harder than any man who hasn’t lost everything.”
He’d been right about the hardness. Wrong about everything else.
After the funerals, he’d brought me deeper into his world—introduced me to men who spoke in violence and measured loyalty in blood.
That’s where I’d met Maxim, another boy who’d been shaped by loss and taught that sentiment was a luxury we couldn’t afford.
We’d bonded over shared damage, over the understanding that softness was a liability in a world where showing weakness could get you killed.
Except Maxim had something I didn’t—a sister who reminded him that gentleness still existed, that not everything beautiful had to be destroyed by proximity to power.
Anya had been twelve when I’d first met her, all wild hair and fierce eyes and the kind of stubborn courage that should have gotten her killed in our world.
Instead, it had gotten under my skin and stayed there for over a decade.
The doorbell cut through my thoughts like a blade, sharp and insistent in the silence of my apartment. I froze, vodka bottle halfway to my lips, and listened for the sound to repeat. It did, longer this time, more demanding.
Nobody visited me here. Nobody knew the address except for a handful of people who understood that showing up unannounced was a good way to get shot first and identified later.
My hand moved automatically to the Glock tucked under the coffee table, muscle memory taking over as I rose from the couch on silent feet.
The security monitor showed me everything I needed to know and nothing I was prepared for.
Anya stood in the hallway outside my door, her dark hair catching the harsh fluorescent lights and her face set in that expression of determined stubbornness I remembered from a dozen arguments with her brother.
What the fuck was she doing here?
My chest tightened as I stared at the screen, confusion and want and something close to panic battling for control of my thoughts.
She looked older than I remembered, more polished, but there was something fragile in the set of her shoulders that made me want to reach through the camera and pull her against me.
Which was exactly why I should pretend I wasn’t home. Should let her stand in that hallway until she gave up and went back to whatever safe, sanitized life she’d built away from men like me.
Instead, I found myself moving toward the door, the blade in one hand and twenty-seven years of carefully constructed walls crumbling with every step.
I opened the door just wide enough to see her face, to confirm that she was real and not some vodka-induced hallucination born from grief and want and too many years of pretending I didn’t care.
“Anya.” Her name tasted like salvation and damnation on my tongue. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
She didn’t flinch at the profanity or the edge in my voice. Just looked at me with those hazel eyes that had haunted more dreams than I cared to count and said, “I came to see you.”
Such simple words. Such a complicated truth buried underneath them.
“You need to leave.” I gripped the door frame hard enough to feel the wood bite into my gloves. “Now.”
“No.”
“Anya—”
“I heard about your father.” Her voice was soft, careful, like she was approaching a wounded animal. “I’m sorry.”
Sorry. The word hit me like a physical blow because it was the first genuine condolence I’d received all day. Everyone else had offered business platitudes or strategic sympathy, but she was sorry in a way that reached past my defenses and touched something raw.
“I don’t need your pity.”
“It’s not pity.” She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell her perfume—something light and floral that belonged to garden parties and innocence, not to the hallway outside a killer’s apartment. “It’s—”
“It’s a mistake.” I opened the door wider, not to invite her in but to show her the full picture of what she was dealing with.
The knife in my hand, the gun visible in its shoulder holster, the controlled violence that lived just under my skin.
“You have no idea what you’re walking into.
I’m not safe tonight, Anya. I can’t stop myself. ”
She should have run then. Should have seen the warning for what it was and gotten as far away from me as possible. Instead, she lifted her chin in that gesture of defiance I remembered too well and said, “Then don’t stop.”
The words hit me like lightning, electric and devastating and completely impossible to ignore. In three steps, I was across the threshold, slamming my hand against the wall beside her head and trapping her between my body and the cold concrete of the hallway.
“Every time you’re near me, I lose control,” I said, my voice rough with want and warning in equal measure. “Every fucking time.”
Her breath hitched, but she didn’t try to escape. Didn’t push me away or demand that I step back and remember why this was impossible. Instead, she looked up at me with those eyes that held secrets and said, “Then lose it.”
Something inside me snapped.
My hands found her face, fingers tangling in her hair as I pulled her mouth to mine and kissed her like I was drowning and she was air.
It was nothing like the careful, controlled kiss we’d shared five years ago—this was raw and desperate and consuming, fueled by grief and want and twenty-seven years of believing I was alone in the world.