Chapter 5 – Barbara
I spent the entire day trying to convince myself that last night had been a mistake.
It didn’t work.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him tensing under my hands, the way he’d looked at me like I was something precious instead of broken. Kirill. His name had become a prayer I couldn’t stop repeating, even as guilt churned in my stomach like acid.
Sebastian had called me a whore that morning.
Said it coldly through the phone while I stood in Kirill’s penthouse, still wearing the evidence of what we’d done on my skin.
And maybe he was right. Maybe that’s exactly what I was, someone so desperate to feel something other than fear that I’d thrown myself at a stranger and pretended, just for a few hours, that I could be someone else.
Someone free.
I was pacing my bedroom in bare feet and a silk robe when my heart suddenly stuttered in my chest. Some primal instinct made me move to the window, pulling back the curtain just enough to see the front gate.
A black SUV rolled up the drive, sleek and dangerous and moving with purpose.
The driver’s door opened, and Kirill stepped out.
He looked furious. Deliberate. Every line of his body screamed determination and barely controlled rage. He was wearing dark jeans and a fitted jacket, and even from this distance, I could see the tension in his jaw, the way his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.
He was coming for answers.
And I had nothing but lies to give him.
“Shit.” I was moving before I could think, feet hitting the marble floor of the hallway as I ran toward the stairs. “Shit, shit, shit.”
What was he doing here? How did he know where I lived? Had Sebastian…?
No. Sebastian wouldn’t have told him. Sebastian didn’t even know Kirill existed. Which meant Kirill had figured it out on his own. Had connected the dots between my panicked lie about a break-in and whatever he’d found at the Kamarov mansion next door.
Because, of course, the Bratva mansion was next door. Of course, my life couldn’t be complicated enough without adding Russian organized crime into the mix. I should’ve known when Kirill was hanging out with Drew at a Bratva-owned club.
I hit the bottom of the staircase just as voices echoed from deeper in the house. Male voices….
The security command room.
My bare feet made no sound on the cold marble as I hurried down the hallway, my robe flowing behind me like a ghost. I should’ve stopped. Should’ve gone back upstairs, changed into something that didn’t scream I just rolled out of bed thinking about you. But I couldn’t help myself.
I needed to see him. Needed to know what he knew.
Needed to see if he was looking at me differently now. Like I was the whore he likely thought I was. Like I was something dirty and used and not worth his time.
The command room door was open, spilling harsh fluorescent light into the hallway. I stopped just outside, pressing my back against the wall, trying to calm my racing heart.
“…consistent pattern,” Kirill was saying, his voice cold and clinical. Professional. Nothing like the rough whisper he’d used in my ear last night when he’d told me I was beautiful. “Every two weeks. About twenty seconds on repeat.”
“That’s impossible,” Marcus, our head of security, argued. “The system’s top of the line. It would’ve flagged any tampering.”
“Your system’s five years old and running on outdated firmware.” Kirill’s tone made it clear what he thought of that. “A decent hacker could loop your footage in their sleep. This one’s just been smart about it. Small windows. Consistent timing. Made it look like natural surveillance footage.”
My blood ran cold. He knew. He fucking knew about the loops Sebastian had forced me to create, the twenty-second windows that let him slip in and out of the mansion without anyone noticing.
The windows that had taken me months to learn how to program, hours of watching YouTube tutorials in the middle of the night, terrified my father would catch me.
“Someone’s forging your recordings,” Kirill continued. “Has been for a while, based on the pattern degradation. You’ve got a ghost in your system.”
A gasp escaped my lips before I could stop it.
The room went silent.
Then Kirill’s head turned, those sharp blue eyes finding me in the doorway with the precision of a sniper locking on a target. For one suspended moment, we just stared at each other. His expression shifted from professional detachment to something I couldn’t read, surprise, maybe. Recognition.
Just like last night, my skin prickled with awareness.
My heartbeat stuttered and raced, pulse pounding in my throat.
Even across the room, even with Marcus and two other security guards between us, I felt the pull.
That invisible thread that had dragged me onto the dance floor, into his penthouse, into his bed.
But this time, he looked away.
The dismissal hit me like a physical blow. He turned back to the monitors, jaw tight, fingers flying across the keyboard like I didn’t exist. Like I was just another piece of furniture in a house he was being paid to secure.
“You need a complete overhaul,” he said, still not looking at me. “New system, new protocols, new everything. This setup’s compromised beyond repair.”
“We can handle that,” Marcus said, shooting me a confused glance. He probably wondered why the boss’s daughter was standing in the doorway in a robe, looking like she’d seen a ghost.
“Contact Kamarov if you want it done right.” Kirill stood abruptly, shoving his laptop into his bag with controlled violence. “I work for them. They’ll arrange everything.”
He was leaving. Just like that. Going to walk out without acknowledging me, without asking the questions I could see burning in his eyes, without….
He moved past me like I was invisible, his shoulder nearly brushing mine. The scent of him made my head spin. Made me want to reach out, grab his arm, demand he look at me.
But I didn’t.
I just watched him storm down the hallway toward the front door, his footsteps echoing on the marble like gunshots.
The door slammed. The SUV’s engine roared to life. And then he was gone.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, my legs suddenly shaky. Relief washed through me, followed immediately by something that felt suspiciously like disappointment.
He knew about the loops. Knew someone had tampered with our security. And he’d looked at me like he knew I was somehow involved.
Which I was.
God, I was so fucked.
***
I waited until Marcus and his team had left the command room before pulling out my phone with trembling fingers.
Me: Don’t come to my room anymore. They know about the loops. The recordings are no longer safe.
I hit send before I could second-guess myself. Sebastian would be furious, but I didn’t care. Let him be furious. Let him threaten and scream and wave that goddamn video around. At least he couldn’t sneak into my room anymore. At least I’d have that small mercy.
The phone buzzed almost immediately.
Sebastian: You stupid bitch. You think you can just cut me off? You think I won’t find another way?
My hands shook as I typed back.
Me: I’m trying to keep us both from getting caught. The Bratva installed the system next door. They KNOW.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. Finally:
Sebastian: Fine. But you still owe me. And I always collect.
I threw the phone onto my bed like it burned, wrapping my arms around myself. My reflection in the mirror caught my eye, pale skin, tangled hair, shadows under my eyes that no amount of concealer could hide. I looked haunted. Looked like exactly what I was.
A prisoner in my own life.
The sound of footsteps in the hallway made me freeze.
Not the heavy tread of security. Not the soft shuffle of housekeeping. These were deliberate. Angry. Moving with purpose.
My bedroom door burst open, and Kirill filled the frame.
He’d come back. Or he never really left.
He looked like violence barely contained.
His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping.
His eyes blazed with fury and something darker, something that made my stomach drop and my pulse spike.
He shut the door behind him with a control that was somehow more terrifying than if he’d slammed it.
Then he moved.
Three long strides, and I was backed against the wall, his hands bracketing my head, caging me in. He was so close I could feel the heat radiating off him, could see the way his chest rose and fell with barely controlled breathing.
“Why?” The word came out as a growl. “Why did you sleep with me if you already had a boyfriend?”
My mouth went dry. “I don’t—”
“Don’t.” He leaned in closer, his nose almost touching mine. “Don’t fucking lie to me again, Barbara. I saw his name on your screen. Bass. Heard the way he talked to you. The way you shook just answering his call.”
Shame burned through me because I couldn’t tell him.
Couldn’t explain about Sebastian or about the video, about the nightmare I’d been living for five years.
How could I? The moment I opened my mouth, it would all come spilling out—the fact that I was so monumentally fucked up that I’d let my own brother destroy my life.
“It’s complicated,” I managed, hating how weak I sounded.
His laugh was sharp, bitter. “Complicated. That’s your explanation?”
“What do you want me to say?” My voice rose, matching his anger. “That I made a mistake? Fine. I made a mistake. Last night was a mistake. This”—I gestured between us—“was a mistake.”
“Bullshit.” He was so close now I could see the flecks of darker blue in his eyes, could count his eyelashes if I wanted to. “You don’t kiss someone like that if it’s a mistake. You don’t come apart in their hands and scream their name if it’s a fucking mistake.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. My body. Everywhere. Because he was right, and we both knew it.