Chapter 25
JILLIAN
“Take you down another level / And get you dancing with the Devil”
— “Wicked Games” by The Weeknd
It’s late when he finally shows.
He comes through the front door this time. I didn’t even bother locking it. I just watch as the knob rotates slowly. Then the door swings inward, and a tall figure steps through.
I take my time drinking in the sight of him.
He really is beautiful, but in the way a knife or a bird of prey is beautiful.
Black boots on my hardwood floor, chunky and cruel.
Dark jeans. A fitted black jacket, zipped to the sternum, with the collar turned up.
His hands are bare tonight, no gloves. I can see his long fingers and prominent knuckles, with a tattoo on the back of one hand and a thin scar across the other.
He’s tall enough that he has to duck his head coming through the doorframe, and when he straightens, he fills the entryway in a way that makes my apartment feel half its actual size.
A fit, narrow waist spreads out into broad shoulders. There’s not an ounce of anything wasted on him. No useless gym muscles or anything of the sort. His neck is exposed above the collar, and there they are: my scratches, still healing, four parallel lines of scabbed red against pale skin.
I drag my gaze higher, up to a jaw I’ve only ever felt with my fingers, hidden now behind black fabric. Cheekbones I’ve never seen.
And then the mask, the same one as always. Black, fitted, covering everything from the bridge of his nose to below his chin. Above it, those pale gray eyes find me in the dim kitchen light.
I know what’s behind that mask now. I know the name and the face and the corner office on Sixth Avenue it inhabits.
He doesn’t know I know.
Until I smile devilishly and say, “Hello, Kir.”
He stops.
“Kir Lazarev,” I say again, just to be certain so there’s no confusion. “CEO of Lazarev Global. Son of Lukas and Elena.”
He stands there for a long time. Five seconds, ten. Then he reaches up with both hands and peels the mask off his face, pulling it over his head and letting it drop to his side.
Now, at last, I see him. All of him.
Kir Lazarev, standing in my apartment with nothing left to hide behind.
He’s exactly what the portrait promised and nothing like it at all.
The painting got the bones right, the sharp jaw, the high cheekbones, the straight, proud nose.
But it missed everything that matters. It missed the way his mouth sits slightly uneven, the left corner tugged down by the constant scowl.
It missed the hollows under his eyes, bruised purple from what I’m guessing is roughly the same amount of sleep I’ve been getting.
It missed how young he looks without the mask.
Thirty, maybe. Not much older than me.
His hair is pushed back but messy, like he’s been running his hands through it. There’s a nick on his jaw, just below his ear. A shaving cut, ordinary and human.
Part of me is almost disappointed. I didn’t realize until now that I wanted him to be ugly. If the mask came off and revealed something monstrous, that would make all of this easier to categorize and dismiss.
He’s not ugly, though. Not at all.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid of what’s about to happen.
I don’t like feeling like I’m beneath him, so I stand up. “I went to your office today,” I inform him. “You didn’t even bother to slap a Band-Aid on the back of your neck? Congratulations, you’re officially the worst assassin in the history of organized crime.”
He still doesn’t say anything.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I continue.
“I have an email drafted on my phone right now. It’s got everything I’ve gathered.
Your name in big fuckin’ red letters, plus the break-ins, what you did to Elliot, the bloody message on my bathroom wall.
And then, of course, all the info on Giovanni Ochoa and the bones in Astoria. All of it.”
I pull my phone from my pocket and hold it up so he can see the screen. The email is right there, composed and ready, Doug’s address in the TO field.
“One tap,” I say. “That’s all it takes. One tap and this goes to a man who will have it in front of the legal team before you make it back to Sixth Avenue.
And then it’s not just me you’re dealing with.
It’s the New York fucking Times.” I take a deep breath.
“So you’re going to answer my questions.
Every single one. Or I press send and your whole world comes apart. ”
He still hasn’t moved or spoken. He just watches me with those gray eyes, and waits.
Until, finally, he speaks. “Put the phone down, Jillian.”
I blink. “Were you not listening to a word I just said?”
He starts to take a step toward me, but I thrust the phone out into the space between us and he stops in his tracks.
“Jillian… I’m saying this for your own good: Put the phone down.”
“‘My own good,’” I repeat. “That’s rich, coming from you. Since when do you give a shit about what’s good for me?”
“Since the beginning,” he says solemnly.
There’s something in his face that’s too torn-up to be lying. Slowly, I lower the hand clutching my phone and squint at him. “What are you talking about?”
“The fact that, if you press send on that email, you’re going to get hurt in a way that makes what I did to Elliot look like a love tap.”
A chill steals over me, raising goosebumps all over. “I don’t understand.”
Kir takes another half-step in my direction. “I’m trying to explain, if you’ll let me. Just put the phone down, alright?” He spreads his hands wide as if to show he’s not holding any weapons. “I swear to God, I’m not here to hurt you. I’m trying to protect you.”
Still frowning, I carefully put the phone on the table. I keep it face-up and within reach, though, just in case. “Explain,” I say bluntly.
Kir juts his chin at the chairs. “Can we sit?”
“No. Explain.”
He sighs and lets his hands flop by his side. “My father ordered me to kill you.”
I’m at a loss for words. There’s a level of depravity here that I didn’t expect even in my wildest dreams. One of New York’s most powerful and infamous billionaires ordered his own son, the CEO of the company that bears their family name, to come hunt me down and slaughter me in my own apartment…
“About a week and a half ago,” he continues, “after your friend Rae was publicly humiliated at the Lazarev gala, my father got pissed that I tried to intervene to protect her. We argued. He doesn’t like being challenged, my father.
” Almost unconsciously, one of Kir’s fingertips floats up to touch what I can see now is a yellowish, fading bruise ringed around his eye.
“That’s when he gave me the kill assignment.
He’d learned that you were working on a story about our family, and he wanted it buried. ”
“And yet here I am,” I say, still shook. “Breathing.”
“Yeah. Here you are.” He exhales hard through his nose. “I couldn’t do it. Obviously.”
“You sure as fuck came here with the intention of doing it,” I remind him with an angry stamp of my foot.
“Yes, I did,” he confesses. “I walked into your apartment that first night ready to do it because you weren’t anything to me. Just a name on a piece of paper. That’s it. That’s all.”
He scrubs a hand over his face. The mask dangles from his other fist, forgotten.
“And then you bit me.” A disbelieving huff of air escapes him.
“You couldn’t see, you couldn’t move, you had no weapon, no plan, no way out—and you bit through my glove and tried to break my ribs with your elbow.
You weigh, what, a hundred and thirty pounds?
And you fought me. Like you’d rather die on your feet than beg on your knees.
” He chuckles under his breath. “I’ve watched people twice your size beg me for their lives.
Grown men, dangerous men, but they fold the second they understand what’s happening.
” He looks at me with so much soul in his eyes that it takes my breath away.
“You didn’t fold. You got angry. And something inside me just..
.” He makes a fist and then opens it, slowly, like releasing something he’ll never get back. “Broke.”
His throat works hard and he shakes his head.
“I was fucked from that moment, Jillian. Completely and permanently fucked. I knew it right away. I went home that night and I couldn’t wash you off me.
I could still smell your perfume on my hands, and I inhaled you like a fucking drug.
I needed it. Needed more. You infected me with a sickness, and Jillian, and the only cure was more of the thing that caused it. ”
Looking away from me out into the darkness of the city beyond my window, he keeps talking.
“So I came back for more of it. Not just to your apartment, although yes, of course, I came here. But also to your coffee shop. To your date with your neighbor. I stood outside in the cold for an hour and watched you eat dinner with another man, and I felt rage like I’ve never known before.
I beat him half to death in a bathroom because he sat across from you and smiled at you, and the worst part—the worst fucking part, Jillian—is that I liked it.
I liked the sound his face made against the tile.
I liked the way he looked at me when he understood that you were not his to smile at.
I’m a sick fucking bastard and you made me like this, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Do you hear me? You’re mine, little fox. ”
His voice has dropped to a feral snarl as he advances closer and closer. My breath is trapped in my chest.