Chapter Three
Audrey
“What do you think you’re looking at, huh?”
The brawny man standing by the door like a bodyguard crosses his arms and doesn’t look away.
He looks like the manager I had back at Cascade.
The only difference is the absence of the tattoo on the side of his neck and longer blonde hair that sits in a neat cut below his neck. But he looks just as intimidating.
Irritated, I toss my stress ball at him and watch with delight as it bounces off his arm and down to the floor, rolling off to a corner of the office I won’t bother exploring.
He gives me a look that says he wishes he could kill me, then mutters something under his breath in Russian.
I guess it’s a privilege that he doesn’t storm over here to strangle me, simply because his boss won’t let him, but it doesn’t make me any less anxious about being trapped in here.
It’s the second day since the cops raided Velour. The second day since the false allegation that I was the one who tipped them off. And Igor has me locked in his executive office at the nightclub.
Instead of locking me up in a basement or tying my hands to a ceiling with chains, on his orders, every day he reports to work, I have to be escorted to his office by one of his men.
What do I do in the office?
I sit by his desk and stare at the wall like a prisoner questioning her life choices. It’s either that or choosing to annoy the hell out of whoever the designated guard is for the day.
Yesterday, it was some old guy the others called JJ.
Today, it’s blondie. But I’m bored already and I really need to leave, or else I might go crazy.
Tugging on my Velour-branded white tee, I rise to my feet, and blondie raises a suspicious brow.
I cock my head to the side. “Where’s your boss? Tell him I’m fed up and I’m leaving. You can’t keep me locked in here doing nothing. No TV. No food. Nothing! You’re all crazy.”
Blondie stares hard enough to let me know he’s not playing around. “Sit the fuck down.”
There’s no chance I’m backing down. “What if I need to pee?”
“Consider this your last warning,” he grits out, and right after he mumbles something in Russian, Igor appears at the doorway.
Blondie visibly pales in his presence. He tries to greet his boss, but stutters, and I swear I feel the temperature in the room drop when Igor speaks back to him in their language.
The guy bows his head as he leaves the room, and Igor closes the door behind him.
I know something weird just happened, but I don’t try to find out what it was.
Instead, I keep my gaze locked on my captor.
Igor circles his desk, looking like a delicious meal with the long sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up halfway.
He runs his fingers through his hair and then sticks both hands into his pockets, glaring at me like I’m a bug under his leather shoes.
“I was gone for a few seconds and you’re already causing trouble.” He tilts his head to the side, mirroring the same move I made earlier, and stares at me like a disappointed parent scolding his child. “Is trouble your trademark, Audrey?”
I ignore the instant flutters that erupt in my belly—a familiar reaction to the sound of my name rolling off his tongue—and focus on the blatant lie he just told.
Bewildered, I squint and shake my head to be certain I heard right.
“Did you say gone for a few seconds?” He doesn’t even blink in response, which drives me to the edge.
“You haven’t been here for hours. But you know who has?
That’s right, me. I’ve been in here all day, staring at the boring piece of monochrome art on your plain walls and almost losing my mind. ”
If he’s offended by my insult, he doesn’t show it. He doesn’t even address it. It’s straight to business with him, like it always has been.
He lifts a finger from his pocket and points it at me. “I didn’t sell my boss to the cops twice,” he graciously reminds me. “You did, so you deserve to be serving time in here.”
I chuckle dryly. “That’s what this is, huh? Serving time for a crime I didn’t commit?”
“Prove it to me.”
I simmer with rage, feeling my insides boiling.
“But I have,” I stress wearily. “We went through this yesterday. I told you how I got here. Lola? Your manager? She’s the reason I have this job.
I was working the local bar by the beach and she happened to be the special guest we were hosting one night.
Lola was pleased with my services, so she talked to my boss and extended an offer to work at an elite nightclub.
The pay sounded good. I couldn’t refuse and my boss, at the time, had no problem with it. The end.”
My chest heaves by the time I’m done talking, and a cloud of silence settles between us.
Igor neither moves nor makes a sound. And worse, his face stays placid, with no emotions betraying his stoic expression.
After an awkward moment of uncomfortable silence, he shrugs lazily. “Sounds pretty convenient to me.”
I drag a hand through my hair, groaning in frustration. “So you’re still saying I’m lying?”
“I’m saying I don’t believe in coincidences, Audrey.” His voice gets a pitch higher, finally exposing a sliver of his frustration. “You did it once. You had motive. You still have motive. All you’re trying to do is mess with me.”
“For God’s sake!” I snap. “Not everything is about you. This is a coincidence; it just happens to be a bad one. When Lola offered me this job, I didn’t know you owned the place.
If I had even the slightest idea that accepting the offer would lead me back to you, I’d have turned it down in the speed of light. ”
I might be imagining things, but when Igor’s jaw ticks, I think I see a flicker of something uncertain in eyes.
It doesn’t matter. I’m too bitter to care about how much impact my words may have.
“You know something, Igor?” I say. “If you’re looking for who to blame for this, blame yourself.
I’m not the one who approached me in that hallway at Cascade.
You did. Fine, I’ll admit I had a crush on you.
A silly, stupid crush that made me do things I honestly regret.
But you put everything in motion. And with the way it ended, you shouldn’t find it hard to believe that I want nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with you. ”
Hands in his pockets, he crosses his desk and circles me like a predator. His gaze darkens by the second as his anger rises to the surface.
“Say whatever you want. I won’t believe you.”
I bite down on my lip to keep myself from speaking. It would be better to ignore him, to pretend his disbelief doesn’t sting, but my efforts to keep quiet don’t work.
“Who cares what you believe, asshole?” I retort. “It’s just sad that you’re not as smart as I thought.”
“The insults won’t get you far. Tell me who you’re working with, Audrey,” he presses, eyes hard like a glacier. “I’m not fucking playing with you. Give me their names.”
“Why don’t you go talk to Lola? See if I’m making things up?”
“I don’t doubt how you got the job. What I want to know is how the police knew where to find the tons of marijuana I stored in a room only four people knew about?”
“How on Earth should I know?”
Angrily, he grunts, circling me as he steps closer, until my back nearly brushes his desk.
And like he did at the back of the building on the night of the raid, his hand plants on my hip and he leans in, his voice dangerously low.
“Tell me, Audrey,” he whispers into my hair. “Who did you speak to that day?”
I hate that my body reacts to his touch, my breath hitching when his fingers briefly graze my waist as he shifts.
My pulse races violently despite my anger. The heat between us feels identical to the charged moment we shared on the night he threw me out of his life.
“You really want to know?” I whisper back, eyes twinkling with mischief. “It was some guy who was hitting on me. He asked for my number and I said I’d think about it.”
To my amazement, he laughs. It sounds dark and promises evil things he’d love to do to me. Maybe taping my mouth shut, for a start.
“You think this shit is funny, don’t you?”
“That’s what you get. Since you won’t let me go, I’ll gladly feed your paranoia.”
His jaw tightens, but I notice something subtle—hesitation flickers in his eyes, like doubt beneath the fury.
If he truly believes I betrayed him again, he wouldn’t waste time keeping me trapped in a room to interrogate me.
I learned the hard way that Igor Nazarov is a ruthless beast whose name puts shadows to flight.
He would have ended me without a second thought if he really believed I’d betrayed him again.
That realization unsettles me more than his anger, because it means he’s conflicted, and uncertainty makes powerful men unpredictable.
And as he finally steps back, wearing a blank expression, I understand one terrifying truth:
He doesn’t trust me. But he doesn’t fully believe I’m guilty either, and that space between suspicion and desire is far more dangerous than hatred.