Chapter 33 Neve
Neve
I opened my eyes.
Atlas Cavalho was sitting in the chair across the room, elbows on his knees, watching me like I was a problem he couldn’t solve.
His expression was unreadable—some mix of fascination, calculation, and a darkness that could only be attributed to predators.
His hair was mussed from dragging his hands through it.
His shirt hung open at the collar. He looked like he hadn’t moved in hours.
My stomach knotted. He had been watching me while I slept. The realisation unsettled me. My pulse jumped, and I hated that he saw it.
He stood slowly, like he didn’t want to startle me—but his size alone was enough to send a warning shooting through my veins. He approached the bed, stopped at the side, his gaze dragging over the bandages on my arms and the bruising at my throat.
“You were shaking,” he told me quietly.
I swallowed hard. I might have killed a man, but I had no delusions about how intimidating this man was.
“Why are you watching me?”
His jaw ticked. “To make sure you don’t jump out the window. It’s a steep drop.”
“Why?”
A long silence. His eyes locked on mine, steady and cold. “Because I don’t trust you not to do it.”
Trust? You want to talk to me about trust, buddy? I wouldn’t throw you any further than I could throw a dagger.
I pulled the blanket tighter around myself, suddenly hyperaware of every bruise, every cut, every weakness on display. The room felt too bright, too exposed.
“Stop staring at me,” I whispered.
“I can’t.” His words were simple, like it was a fact he didn’t enjoy admitting.
Before I could respond, a knock interrupted the quiet in the room.
Atlas stiffened. A man walked into the room unannounced.
He looked so much like Atlas that he could only have been his brother.
He was younger. Rougher. A crueler kind of beautiful than Atlas, smirking like sin as soon as his eyes landed on me.
“Well, sleeping beauty is awake,” he commented. “Good. Saves us the guesswork.”
My throat tightened. “Guesswork about what?”
“That depends,” he replied, leaning against the wall. “On whether you’re planning to stab my brother through the chest the first chance you get.”
Atlas shot him a look. His brother only grinned wider.
I pulled myself upright, ignoring the pull in my ribs. “Give me a knife and I’ll be sure to aim right.”
The brother laughed, a harsh, delighted sound. “I like her.”
Atlas didn’t smile. He continued to stand there staring at me, tension radiating off him.
“Enough, Marcello,” he snapped. “Get out.”
Marcello shrugged. “Fine. Text me if she tries to kill you.”
He left as loudly as he had arrived, shutting the door too hard behind him.
Silence settled again. Heavy. Watching.
Atlas dragged a hand over his face, rubbing the bridge of his nose like the weight of everything was finally catching up to him.
“Don’t mind him. He’s an asshole.”
“So are you,” I pointed out.
His eyes lifted to mine. Cold. Tired. Unflinching. He didn’t contradict me. Instead, he took the hit like he deserved it. He stepped back, giving me a sliver of space.
“If you’re thinking of escaping, don’t try anything.”
My spine went rigid.
“The front door locks from the outside,” he revealed. “The elevator needs a key. And unless you want to gamble with a twelve-story fall…” He tilted his chin toward the wall of glass overlooking the city. “…that’s the only other exit you’ve got.”
I kept my gaze pinned to him, refusing to even glance at the window behind me. Refusing to let him see the flicker of fear tightening my throat.
“Why are you doing this?” My voice barely made it out. It felt scraped raw.
“It’s for your own good.” His tone was controlled, maddeningly steady. “Because out there?” He jerked his chin toward the skyline—toward a freedom that wasn’t real. “Isn’t any safer for you than in here.”
I swallowed hard, my throat constricting. “I thought you said Sokolov was dead. If he’s gone, what else is there to worry about?”
Atlas didn’t hesitate. “The fact that he’s dead,” he remarked flatly, “makes things worse for you.”
The words hit me like a slap.
“When he wanted you dead, it was personal,” he continued, his voice dangerously low. “But now that he’s gone, everyone connected to him wants blood. They don’t care how or why. They only care that you’re the reason two Sokolov brothers are in the ground.”
My breath snagged. I didn’t need him to explain it. I’d lived enough violence to understand what came next. There had been consequences when I’d killed Viktor’s brother in that alley. There would be consequences now. Worse ones, much deadlier.
Atlas stepped closer, not enough to touch, but enough to make my pulse stumble.
“Trust me when I tell you that you’re safer in this room than you would be anywhere else in the city.”
I swallowed hard, my throat constricting. “And why do you care? What difference does it make to you if I live or not? By my calculations, you’d be better off if I were dead.”
“Perhaps. But you’re not leaving now. When the threat is contained, you can leave. Hell—” his jaw flexed “—I’ll walk you to the curb myself.”
He said it like the words tasted bitter on his tongue. Like the idea of me leaving dug under his skin.
Anger simmered in him, sharp and sudden, and I wanted to scream back that it had just been a kiss—if that was what was eating at him. But it hadn’t just been a kiss. Not to him. Not to me. Not to the part of me still shaking from how easily I’d forgotten who he was.
He turned toward the door, paused like he was fighting with something inside himself. Something he refused to say aloud. Then he stepped out.
The latch clicked behind him.
And the silence that followed hit like a verdict.
This wasn’t a prison. But it wasn’t freedom either. I was suspended here—caught between worlds, between truths, between the man who should have killed me and the man who had kissed me yesterday like I was the last breath he had left.
I wasn’t safe anywhere.
Not with him.
And definitely not with myself.
I didn’t move until the door clicked shut behind Atlas and his footsteps faded down the hall.
Then I pushed myself upright, every muscle screaming in protest. The room tilted, but I caught myself against the wall and forced it to stop spinning.
I eased the door open just enough to let the sounds slip through, then leaned in close, my cheek pressed to the cool wall as I listened in silence.
“I know who she is.”
It was the younger brother, Marcello. His voice cut through the quiet. My stomach dropped.
“You know nothing, Marcello,” Atlas hissed back.
“Why didn’t you kill her fifteen years ago, Atlas?”
Blood roared in my ears so loudly I barely heard Atlas’s breath—slow, controlled, betraying nothing… except the truth he refused to voice. He didn’t deny it.
“I kept my mouth shut,” Marcello’s voice was tight. “Not for you. For the family. But don’t stand here and pretend I’m blind. You owe me that.”
A pause. A shift in weight. Leather creaked. Someone let out a tense breath.
“I owe you nothing,” Atlas bit out.
Marcello scoffed. “No? You don’t have a merciful bone in your body. Yet this girl—this Trimboli—has you completely undone.”
My heart stuttered painfully.
Atlas spoke low. Steady. Frigid. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I haven’t seen you this invested in a woman since—”
“Don’t you say it!” Atlas roared. “Don’t you fucking say her name!”
My pulse kicked hard, violent, like it wanted to burst straight through my chest.
“Did you think you could replace her?” Marcello’s voice softened—just a touch, and I was almost fooled into thinking he had a human side. “There’s a reason you spared her, Atlas.”
“Mercy is a word people use to absolve themselves of guilt. Don’t delude yourself into thinking otherwise, little brother,” Atlas spat.
Silence spread thick and heavy. A wire pulled taut. One wrong move and it would snap.
Marcello sighed quietly. “I wouldn’t have been able to put a bullet in a kid, either. Regardless of what her father did.”
What her father did.
I tossed the words around in my head. I let them roll off my tongue and trickle through my veins. What did my father do?
There was another beat of silence as sirens sounded faintly from the street below. The air hummed with tension.
“So tell me, Atlas. What are you planning to do with her?”
Footsteps shifted—someone was moving around the room. I didn’t expect Atlas to answer, but when he did, his answer was as unexpected as it was confusing.
“…I have no idea what to do with her. But she survived my presence twice. So I wasn’t going to let death take her.”
Marcello let out a bitter laugh. “Bullshit. You know exactly what you want to do. You just can’t say it out loud.”
A low growl escaped Atlas, what sounded like a dangerous warning, but Marcello ignored it.
“You’re in deep, brother. Deeper than you think.”
A harsh exhale followed. It was Atlas’s. Frustrated. Cornered. Exposed.
Then silence.
And I was frozen behind the door, my heart pounding so hard it hurt. Every word sank like a stone in my gut.
He had spared me once.
He hadn’t come back to rescue me—he had come back to finish the job he couldn’t do all those years ago.
And now?
Now he wasn’t sure he could do it.
I closed my eyes. Of course. Of course this was my life.
I pushed away from the door and sank onto the edge of the bed. My heart rammed against my ribs like it was trying to escape my chest. Too fast and violent. Too real.
A bitter smile ghosted across my mouth. How poetic would it have been if this was my escape?
Let the Russians storm the building and tear through walls and men.
Let them kill Atlas and all his soldiers.
They’d do the dirty work while I walked out through the smoke, stepping over the ruins of their empire.
But that fantasy died before it even formed. Because I knew better.
My hands shook as I folded in on myself, my forehead pressed to my knees, trying to breathe through the panic clawing up my throat.
The past had found me. The present was a trap. And the future? The future looked like a war I was already losing.
Not against the Russians or whatever was left of the Sokolov empire. But against Atlas Cavalho—the most dangerous monster I’d ever known.
And now I was trapped in his den. With no way out.