Chapter 21 Sera
SERA
We’ve been driving for a while, no signs that any one is chasing us. Alik still has me flattened to the leather seats. His chest feels like hot iron and, as oddly wonderful as the weight is, I’m starting to suffocate. “Get off. Can’t breathe.”
The next instant he’s gone. My lungs grapple for oxygen and I push into a sitting position. Alik stares at me from the other side of the SUV. If it wasn’t for the distracting way his trigger finger is tapping the side of his gun, I’d say he looks oddly calm, almost detached. “Are you hurt?”
I do a mental catalogue of my body. My arms are sore from being jerked around on the dance floor, it feels like there’s bruising on my hip where that guy gripped me too tight, and my feet are scraped up, but otherwise I think I’m okay.
I tell Alik as much. He grunts but still scans my body over and over as if I could’ve missed something.
The longer he studies me, the hotter I feel, even though my already flimsy PJs have been reduced to a mess of ripped and sodden fabric.
I know the man doesn’t have x-ray vision, but I fold my arms over my chest anyway.
No need to let him know how my body is reacting to his inspection and make this night even more humiliating than it’s already been.
Once Alik is convinced I’m relatively unharmed, he turns forward and stares dead ahead for the rest of the drive. The silence inside the SUV is oppressive. I’m practically crawling out of my skin by the time we reach the mansion.
Dimitri pulls up to the front entrance and Alik opens his door before we’ve come to a stop.
He gets out, stows his gun, but otherwise doesn’t move, standing silently by the SUV until I slide across the seat and gingerly drop my bare feet to the gravel.
No sooner am I out of the vehicle than I want back in again, back into the warm, dark space where Dimitri is a buffer between us.
A buffer that vanishes when the other man drives off, leaving me with no choice but to follow an obviously enraged Alik into the house.
Inside, everything is quiet and dim. There aren’t any signs of the minions typically stationed around.
No hum of conversation as they stand guard over every possible exit.
Not even the housekeeper I sometimes find hovering nearby, ready to whisk away my coat before I have the chance to take it off, or pounce on a light switch so I don’t have to spend a second in the dark.
The grand foyer, the hallways that extend off it, the rooms that open out to either side—every space is empty, the lights low, the mood ominously quiet.
The click of the front door closing echoes around us. So does the tap of Alik’s shoes as he whirls and backs me against the hard surface so fast I barely have time to realize what’s happening.
Alik slams his palms against the door, arms braced on either side of my head.
We’re so close I can’t help but inhale the smell of him, earthiness, sweat, and unbridled frustration.
His breathing is even, almost inaudible, but his muscles are locked tight and his eyes are boring into mine like he’s trying to reach the center of the earth.
“What. The fuck. Did you think. You were doing?”
His voice is hostile, condescending. I’ve been in a state of shock since we left the club, but his question breaks me out of my trance and suddenly I’m so mad I’m shaking.
“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” I spit back.
“At a place like that, with people like that? With a woman like that? I don’t think having a bimbo give you a tonsillectomy with her tongue is going to get us the answers we’re looking for. ”
Alik ignores my taunt. “Is that what you were looking for—answers?—when you ignored my direct orders and left the fucking car and Dimitri and ran into that place without any protection whatsoever?! Pizdets! That was too fucking reckless, Sera! And exactly why I should never have let you go!”
“Let me go?” I screech, volume unhinged.
“Let me go?! I don’t need you to let me do anything, you asshole.
I’m a grown woman and I’m done having people tell me what I can and can’t do, especially people who hang out at the same filthy place as—” I cut myself off.
I don’t want to talk to Alik about Renzo di Salvo.
Definitely not when I’m so mad I can barely see straight.
Alik’s gaze sharpens. “At the same places as who, Sera? Who did you recognize?”
“Nobody,” I lie. “Nobody but that harpy you were feeling up for all the world to see.”
“You recognize her? You know her?”
“Yes, duh. She came here to the house. The woman in gold. The one freezing her tits off when she picked you up wearing nothing but that teeny tiny dress. She’s the same one you were making out with at the club.”
I swear I see disappointment on Alik’s face before his expression goes blank. “So, you’ve never seen her before tonight?”
“No. Have you?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Why?” Alik’s gold-shot hair shifts tauntingly as he tilts his head to the side. “Why does it matter, moya voitelnitsa?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t.” I clench my jaw, refusing to back down as he stares at me. I can’t let him see how jealous I was when I saw him touching her, kissing her, that woman who will always be more beautiful than me.
“You’re wrong, you know,” Alik steps away, taking my ability to stand with him.
I sag against the door, knees trembling. “About what?”
“About what you can and cannot do.” Alik props his hands on his hips, his suit jacket tenting open in the process.
More buttons on his white dress shirt must’ve come undone during our escape from the club.
I hate that I can’t stop fixating on the exposed part of his chest. I’m staring at the hard line of his collarbones when he says, “You can only do the things I let you, Sera. That’s what our arrangement means.
You don’t get to go anywhere, do anything without my explicit agreement.
The only things you get to do, are the things I let you. Or have you forgotten?”
A whirlwind of homicidal feelings whips through me. “What, because I’m your prisoner? Your captive?”
He shrugs, so unbothered by my rage. “You said it, not me. A deal with the devil, remember?”
“Porco Dio! I really hate you.”
“Good. That makes us even.”
“What?” I’m caught off guard by his sudden vehemence. “You can’t hate me. I haven’t done anything to you.” I barely repress the impulse to stomp my feet. He’s called me a child once; I don’t want to give him ammunition to do it again. “What could I possibly have done to make you hate me?”
“You,” he says, taking a menacing step forward, “are the reason I almost lost Rocco Pagano.”
“I didn’t ask you to save me.”
“But you’re happy to blame me for not doing it sooner,” he levels back.
“I lose either way. Not that you care.” The animosity pouring off Alik is sudden and intense, the polar opposite of our explosive attraction in the pool.
He dismissed me then. Did the same in his gym.
He was all over that woman at the club. He doesn’t want me, doesn’t care for me beyond the arrangement we’ve made.
Rationally, I know it. But that doesn’t make it any less painful when he continues, voice unforgiving, “And tonight—I was so close to getting that fucking Albanian. I almost had him, but then you showed up and everything went to hell.”
I can see the pulse pounding in the base of his neck. The sweat gathering at his hairline. There’s a solid two feet between us. I have the space to run away, but something about the way he’s staring at me glues my feet to the floor.
“Dimitri told you to stay in the fucking car.” He cuts the gap between us in half. Thank God the door is keeping me upright, otherwise I’d drown in the storm brewing in his eyes. “You should’ve stayed in the fucking car.”
“Why, because you hate me so much you can’t stand being around me? Because I’m so useless I can’t possibly help you hunt these people down!? I’m more a part of this than you are, Alik. These people took me. Were going to sell me. Fuck. They still want to own me.”
“Oh, trust me. I am aware.”
Something about Alik shifts in that moment, but I’m too caught up in my own emotions to notice.
“I’m a part of this fight whether you like it or not.
I’m not standing on the sidelines, not letting you decide how involved I get.
I’m not some broken little girl who needs protecting, Alik.
I’m as much a part of this world as you are, not some weakling to toss aside and ignore. ”
“No, moya voitelnitsa, you aren’t weak.”
I’m vaguely aware that Alik’s hands are now fisted at his side.
That his eyes have tipped past the boiling point, the pale blue the hottest part of any fire.
“Then stop treating me like I am. Stop keeping me locked away. I’m strong, Alik.
I know you’ve only ever seen me when I’ve been beaten down, but I’m not that person. I’m a fighter. Let me help you fight.”
The man in front of me is vibrating with an emotion I can’t identify.
He said he hates me, but the look he’s giving me doesn’t resemble any kind of hate I’ve ever seen.
I watch him, transfixed, as he swallows, then says, “You are a fighter, moya voitelnitsa. One of the strongest I’ve ever known.
But being strong doesn’t mean you’re invincible.
Being strong doesn’t stop you from getting hurt.
From getting killed. That’s what almost happened tonight.
You went into that club without any idea of the hell you were rushing into, and you were attacked.
Almost mauled to pieces. And I’m so fucking mad at you. ”
Alik looks worried, sounds genuinely distraught, and is absolutely furious. I can’t process the contradictory signals he’s giving off, my brain and body picking up two entirely different wavelengths. “And that’s why you hate me?”