Chapter Eleven - Janice
I leave the office late, later than I should, given everything that’s happened this week. Diana left hours ago, shooting me concerned looks that I pretended not to see. Marcus departed at six with reminders about tomorrow’s client presentation.
The rest of the team trickled out one by one until it was just me and the cleaning crew, fluorescent lights humming overhead while I tried to lose myself in campaign strategy that refuses to come together.
Anything to avoid going home to an empty apartment where I’ll replay the feeling of cold metal against my throat.
By the time I finally pack up, it’s past eight. The building is almost empty, security guard barely glancing up as I sign out.
The parking garage echoes with my footsteps, every sound amplified in the concrete space. My car sits in the corner where I left it this morning—a lifetime ago, before Dimitri’s message arrived demanding I come to his office tomorrow.
I haven’t responded yet. Don’t know how to respond to a summons that feels more like a threat.
I unlock the car, slide behind the wheel, start the engine. NPR plays softly through the speakers, some interview I’m not processing. I pull out of the garage and merge into sparse late-night traffic, heading toward my apartment in Brooklyn.
Three blocks from the office, I notice the car.
It’s a black sedan, tinted windows, staying two cars back. Nothing unusual about it—half the cars in Manhattan are black sedans with tinted windows.
I take a left. The sedan takes a left. Coincidence. Has to be coincidence.
I accelerate slightly, changing lanes. The sedan matches my movement, maintaining the same distance.
My pulse kicks up. I tell myself I’m being paranoid, that Dimitri’s threats have me jumping at shadows. This is New York. People drive the same routes, make the same turns.
I take another left, then a quick right down a side street I don’t normally use.
The sedan follows.
Fear settles cold and heavy in my chest. This isn’t paranoia. Someone is following me.
I press the accelerator harder, weaving through traffic that’s thinning as I get farther from Midtown. The sedan keeps pace, no longer pretending subtlety. It closes the distance between us, aggressive and deliberate.
My hands shake on the wheel. I fumble for my phone, trying to dial 9-1-1 while watching the road, but it slips from my fingers and lands somewhere in the passenger footwell.
The streets are emptying now, fewer cars, fewer witnesses. I don’t recognize this neighborhood. It’s all industrial buildings, closed businesses, the kind of area that’s deserted after dark.
Exactly the wrong place to be right now.
I take a sharp turn, tires squealing. The sedan follows easily, and now I can see there are two of them. A second black car has appeared from a side street, boxing me in.
This is really happening..
Is this it, the consequence he promised?
I accelerate again, pushing my aging Honda past speeds it wasn’t designed for. The engine whines in protest. One of the sedans pulls alongside me, and I catch a glimpse of the driver; it’s a man I don’t recognize, face expressionless, purpose clear.
The second sedan cuts in front, brake lights flaring.
I slam my brakes, but it’s too late. My car skids, tires screaming against asphalt. I wrench the wheel hard, managing to avoid a full collision but losing control completely. The car jumps the curb, crashes into a chain-link fence, and stops with a violent jolt that snaps my head forward.
Pain explodes across my chest where the seat belt catches. The airbag deploys with a sound like a gunshot, powder filling the air, making it impossible to see or breathe.
I claw at the seat belt with numb fingers, panic overriding rational thought. I have to get out. Have to run.
Car doors slam outside. I hear footsteps approaching.
I finally get the seat belt unlatched, shove the door open, stumble out onto pavement that tilts under my feet. My legs won’t hold me properly. Everything hurts.
Three men stand between me and any possible escape route.
They’re armed. Guns raised, pointed directly at me.
Terror freezes me in place. This is real. This is actually happening. I’m going to die here, alone on a street I don’t recognize, and no one will know what happened.
“Please!” My voice comes out broken, barely audible. “Please, I don’t—”
“Get in the car.” The closest man gestures with his gun toward one of the sedans. His accent is thick, Eastern European. Russian, maybe.
Dimitri’s people.
This is punishment. This is what happens when you cross men like him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, hating how my voice shakes. “I’m sorry, please let me go.”
“Now.”
He takes a step closer, and I see his finger tighten on the trigger.
This is it.
Then gunshots explode through the night.
The man in front of me jerks backward, red blooming across his chest. He drops, and I’m screaming, scrambling away from the body, from the blood that’s suddenly everywhere.
More gunshots. The other two men turn, firing at someone.
I catch sight of Dimitri.
He moves like violence personified, gun raised, face completely expressionless. Two shots, precise and devastating. Both men fall.
I’m on the ground, don’t remember falling, hands pressed over my mouth to contain screams that won’t stop coming.
Blood soaks into my clothes—it’s not mine, I think, but I can’t be sure.
Everything is shaking. The world has narrowed to the bodies on the pavement and the man standing over them like death itself.
Dimitri lowers his gun, slides it into a shoulder holster I hadn’t noticed before. Then he’s moving toward me, and I scramble backward on instinct.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me.”
He ignores the command, hauling me to my feet with hands that are surprisingly gentle given what they just did. “Are you hurt?”
I can’t answer. I Can only stare at the bodies and shake.
“Janice.” His hand cups my face, forcing me to look at him instead of the carnage. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know. I don’t—”
He runs his hands over me quickly, efficiently, checking for injuries I can’t feel through the adrenaline. His fingers come away bloody, and my stomach lurches.
“Not yours,” he says, reading my expression. “You’re fine. Bruised, probably, from the crash, but fine.”
Fine. The word is absurd. Nothing about this is fine.
A sleek black car pulls up—not the sedans that chased me, something else. The back door opens, and Dimitri guides me toward it with a hand at my back.
“Get in.”
“Who were they?”
“Get in the car, Janice. Now.”
His voice leaves no room for argument. I climb in on legs that barely function, and he slides in beside me. The driver pulls away before I’ve even processed that we’re moving.
I stare out the window, watching the scene disappear behind us. Three bodies on the pavement. My crashed car. Evidence of violence that just evaporated like it never happened.
“Someone will handle it,” Dimitri says, following my gaze. “The bodies, your car, the police reports. It’ll be clean.”
“Clean,” I repeat numbly. “You just killed three people.”
“I just saved your life.”
“From who? From what?” Hysteria edges into my voice. “Were those your people? Was this you punishing me for—”
“Those weren’t my people.” His voice hardens. “They were Volkov men. Yes, they were coming for you, but not because of me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand. You need to stay quiet and let me handle this.”
The car speeds through empty streets, heading somewhere I don’t recognize. My hands are still shaking uncontrollably. I press them together, trying to stop the trembling, but it spreads through my entire body.
Shock. I’m going into shock.
Dimitri shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it around my shoulders. The leather smells like him—expensive cologne and something darker underneath. The weight of it grounds me slightly, pulls me back from the edge of a complete breakdown.
“Where are we going?” I finally manage.
“Somewhere safe.”
“My apartment is close by.”
“Isn’t safe. They know where you live, know your routines. They’ve been watching you.”
Terror spikes fresh and sharp. “For how long?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes!”
He looks at me then, really looks, and something in his expression softens fractionally. “I don’t know. Long enough to plan an abduction. Long enough to know you’d be alone tonight.”
“Why?” My voice breaks. “Why would they…? I’m nobody.”
“You’re connected to me. That makes you leverage.”
“We’re not connected. You made that very clear four years ago.”
“Apparently not clear enough.” His jaw tightens. “Someone noticed you in my office. Someone started asking questions. And the Volkovs decided you were valuable.”
“The Volkovs?”
“Rival family. I recently… declined an arrangement they’d proposed. They took it personally.”
Declined an arrangement. The careful phrasing doesn’t hide what he means.
“A marriage arrangement,” I say. “They wanted you to marry someone, and you refused.”
He doesn’t confirm or deny, just turns back to the window.
“So they came after me? That makes no sense. I’m nothing to you.”
“They don’t know that.”
The implication hangs heavy between us. The Volkovs think I matter. Think I’m important enough to Dimitri that taking me would hurt him.
They’re wrong. Have to be wrong.
Don’t they?
The car pulls into an underground garage, descending several levels before stopping. Dimitri exits first, scanning the space with practiced efficiency before gesturing for me to follow.
I do, because what choice do I have? My car is totaled. My apartment isn’t safe. Three men just tried to kidnap me, and the only reason I’m alive is because the man who threatened to kill me days ago decided to save me instead.
Nothing makes sense.
We take an elevator that requires a keycard, rising to floors I stop counting. When the doors open, it’s directly into a penthouse I recognize.
I’ve been here before. Four years ago. The night everything changed.
“No.” I back away, hitting the elevator wall.
“You can, and you will.” Dimitri steps out, holding the door open. “This is the most secure location I have. You’ll stay here until the threat is neutralized.”
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
“I have a job. A life. I can’t just disappear.”
“Your job is working for me. Your life nearly ended twenty minutes ago.” His voice gentles slightly. “Janice. You’re safe here. That’s all that matters right now.”
I want to argue. Want to demand he take me home, let me handle this myself, stop acting like I’m his responsibility.
My legs give out halfway through forming the words.
Dimitri catches me before I hit the floor, lifting me easily despite my weight. He carries me into the penthouse, past the living room where we’d kissed, past the windows overlooking a city that suddenly feels hostile and dangerous.
He sets me down on a couch in what I think is an office, and I curl into it immediately, pulling his jacket tighter around myself.
“I’ll have clothes brought up for you,” he says. “Food, if you can eat. There’s a guest room down the hall.”
“Don’t leave.”
The words escape before I can stop them. Pathetic. Weak. Everything I swore I wouldn’t be around him.
Dimitri pauses, something unreadable crossing his face. Then he sits in the chair across from me, close enough that I can see him but far enough that he’s not crowding.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You killed them.” My voice sounds distant, disconnected. “You didn’t hesitate, either.”
“Yes.”
“Have you done that before?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Enough that I stopped counting.”
I should be horrified. Should be running from the man who just admitted to being a killer.
Instead, I’m grateful he was there. Grateful he knew how to handle violence I couldn’t even process.
I’m broken. Have to be broken to feel anything except horror right now.
“Why did you save me?” I ask.
“You’re mine.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.” His voice is absolute. “Whether you accept it or not. Whether I want it or not. You’ve been mine since the moment you walked into that warehouse four years ago and looked at me like I was worth knowing.”
“That’s insane.”
“Probably.”
“So why—” My voice cracks. “Why do I feel safer with you than I have in four years?”
Dimitri leans forward, elbows on his knees, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he looks almost vulnerable.
“You know what I am. What I’m capable of. You know that anyone who tries to hurt you has to go through me first.” He holds my gaze. “I’m a monster, Janice, but I’m your monster. Monsters are very good at protecting what’s theirs.”
I close my eyes, exhaustion crashing over me in waves I can’t fight. Blood on my clothes. Bodies on the pavement. The memory of gunshots and Dimitri’s expressionless face as he killed without hesitation.
My life just shattered again.
The only person left standing in the wreckage is the man who destroyed me once before.
“Get some sleep,” Dimitri says, voice distant. “We’ll talk in the morning.”