Chapter 6 Ilya #2
As the week passes, I memorize her routine.
The next morning, I watch her get up and disappear into her bathroom.
I’ve mapped every inch of her apartment from this position and studied the layout obsessively—I know where every room is.
The only views I don’t have are of her bathroom and kitchen, which means there are sixteen minutes and twenty-five seconds in her morning routine where I can’t see her.
For six minutes and ten seconds of that, she’s in the bathroom, leaving me with nothing but my imagination and the memory of how she looked last night, stepping out in a towel, her wet hair leaving dark spots on her shoulders.
I take a drink of cold coffee and force myself to look away from her windows.
Ten minutes and fifteen seconds later, she’s in her living room, eating something from a bowl while standing. She’s wearing her athletic gear again, and that’s enough to spur me into action.
I change into black joggers, a black long-sleeved shirt, jacket, and a black beanie. I text Kazimir to follow me at a far distance, and head downstairs just in time to emerge and see Mara walking toward the coffee shop.
I pause across the street, waiting until she comes out, and then I resume following her.
I’ve never followed a woman like this before, but I’ve needed to tail plenty of people in my life.
She’s no different. I follow her all the way to Central Park, where she takes off along a running path.
I follow her at a discreet distance, my blood pumping hard not from the exercise but from the thrill of what I’m doing right now.
When her run is finished, she goes back to her apartment.
I make it upstairs to mine just in time to watch her peel her sweaty workout clothing from her body, my heart pounding from the exertion and the anticipation of trying to get upstairs before I missed out on her undressing.
My cock throbs as I watch her strip naked, and I can feel pre-cum slicking the shaft, my balls painful from days now of arousal with no release.
I reach down, allowing myself one squeeze and a stroke through the fabric of my joggers, hissing in pleasure from the contact even through layers of fabric. God, it’s going to feel so fucking good when I finally come, when she and I masturbate together, coming at the same moment. And after that…
The desire is almost too heady, the need too intense. The thought of the pleasure I’m going to experience with and give to her is almost too much.
When she comes out of her shower, she’s in that white towel again—I wonder, as I watch her, if I’m going to get hard every time I see a white bath towel for the rest of my life, like some kind of perverted pavlovian response—and she changes into her uniform of a black skirt and sweater.
Once she’s left her apartment and disappeared into a taxi, I focus on the next part of my day.
Last night, I had my men install hidden cameras around the exterior of her building, giving me a view into the main gallery area and her office. Right now, it’s only her assistant there—Claire, I think the name I was given was—but within a half hour, I see Mara enter the building.
I feel that thrill again. My men were efficient and professional—the cameras are functionally invisible, and the feeds are encrypted and routed through enough servers that they're untraceable.
One camera covers the main gallery floor. Another, her office. The third watches the entrance.
I watch the footage for the next few hours.
She talks with her assistant, walks around the gallery floor, and then heads into her office.
She sits at her desk for a long time, reviewing documents, and then partway through the afternoon I watch her conduct a meeting with a client.
There’s a sense of satisfaction as I watch her standing in front of a painting with the middle-aged man, knowing that I’m viewing him without his knowledge. It makes me feel like a god.
She stays at the gallery for an hour after she’s technically closed and her assistant has left, and I watch her restlessly, ready to see her come home and find out if her routine remains the same.
She's beautiful when she works, confident and knowledgeable. At work, she's in control.
I want to take that control away from her.
Christ.
I go down to get something to eat from that same restaurant after she leaves, intending to be back upstairs in time for her to arrive home.
I’m back at the window by the time she’s in her bedroom, and I watch her undress again, savoring the burn of arousal through my veins like a drug I’m slowly becoming addicted to.
She has no idea I'm watching—that I’ve been watching her for two days now, that I have every intention of continuing this.
By Wednesday night, I feel confident that she follows a strict routine—breakfast, coffee, a run through Central Park, back to her apartment for a shower, work, and then more work on her couch while eating something quick.
Sometimes it seems to be something she made herself, other times she orders out—almost always Thai food, I discover.
I know her running route, and that she finishes her run in thirty-five to forty-three minutes depending on how crowded the park is.
I know she always goes to the same coffee shop.
She’s always leaving her apartment and arriving back at the same times.
I've memorized the rhythm of her life in forty-eight hours.
But tonight—Wednesday night—it’s slightly different.
After she comes home, I watch her change, but this time it’s not into lounge pants and a t-shirt, like usual. Instead I watch her put on a long, silky rose-pink skirt and a matching lace-trimmed camisole, throw on a leather jacket and boots, and put on jewelry I can’t see.
Jealousy thrums through me. She’s meeting someone, I know it. My jaw tightens, and I stand up on instinct, grabbing a leather jacket to throw on over my long-sleeved shirt and jeans, shoving my feet into boots and grabbing a baseball cap to hide my face before heading out of the penthouse.
Kazimir is outside. He looks at me confusedly, and I shake my head.
“I’ll be fine on my own. I’ll call you if I need you.”
He looks uncertain about the order, but he just nods. “I’ll be downstairs, then,” he says calmly. I rented an apartment for him on the floor below while we’re here.
I make it downstairs just as Mara is exiting the building, and I flag a cab with my heart pounding, needing to not lose her. If her cab leaves before I can follow, I’ll have a difficult time—if not impossible—finding her. I haven’t had any way to bug her phone yet.
Thankfully, a cab stops for me seconds before she flags one down herself. “Follow that cab,” I tell the driver, who shrugs and does as I ask. “If you can get to where they’re going without losing them, there’s a hundred-dollar tip in it for you,” I add, and he speeds up.
I follow her to an Italian restaurant in Little Italy, where I see her walk in and greet a man seemingly waiting for her in the lobby. My jaw tightens instantly, my nails digging into my palms as I repress the urge to follow her in and drag him away from her by his scruff.
Instead, I wait long enough for them to go to their own table, before walking in and surveying the dining room quickly before requesting an empty table on the opposite side of the restaurant. I slip the hostess a hundred-dollar bill, and she’s happy enough to sit me wherever I want to be.
I watch the dinner unfold with a growing irritation. The man is clearly into her, and I want to take him to some deserted place and carve out his eyeballs for having the temerity to look at her with the desire that I clearly see there. But what I see from her calms me, at least a little.
She’s not interested. He checks what I imagine most women’s boxes would be—he’s classically handsome, tall, clearly wealthy from his clothing—but there’s no spark in Mara’s eyes as she looks at him.
No desire written on her face. What I saw when she looked at me is entirely absent from her expression throughout the entirety of the dinner.
But when he walks her out and attempts to kiss her, getting her cheek in return, I can’t help myself.
I follow him as he walks away from the restaurant.
He walks all the way to a nearby parking garage, where he approaches a black Mercedes.
There’s no one else around, but I pull my cap down low over my eyes in case of security cameras.
There’s no one in the NYPD or anywhere else with enough money or influence to keep me from paying them off if I were to get into trouble, but I want to keep a low profile here.
Besides, I imagine that Sergei has a decent number of the NYPD in his pocket, and I’d rather not clash with him—or make him aware that I’m here.
If I’m lucky, he’ll never realize that I’ve strayed onto his turf.
Even though I’m not really here to do business, another pakhan in his territory would raise his hackles. And understandably so. I have no intention of causing trouble with him.
I slip a knife from my pocket, palming it as I follow Mara’s date to his car. Just as he reaches the taillights, I take two quick steps forward, pressing the point of the blade against his back.
“Don’t turn around,” I growl, keeping my voice low and affecting as much of an American accent as I can manage, erasing the Russian from my voice. “Or we’ll find out if seven inches of serrated steel can cut through your fancy fucking peacoat.”
To his credit, he obeys, and he doesn’t shrink. “If you want money, my wallet is in the left pocket,” he says calmly. “There’s three hundred in cash in there. You can have it.”
I snort. “I don’t need money.”
“Then what is it?” He doesn’t turn around. Whatever his profession, he seems almost to have expected this. Cop, maybe? Detective? I wince. I don’t want to cross the law this early, even if I can buy them. It causes trouble I don’t need right now.