Chapter 2 Leonid
Leonid
I've killed hundreds of men.
This one doesn't make me blink.
Senator Walsh crumples to the floor, a neat hole in his forehead, and I feel nothing. Less than nothing. Satisfaction, maybe, that another disease has been cut from the world.
But Lily—
Lily, on her knees, shaking, covered in his blood—
She makes me feel something I haven't felt in decades.
Protective.
The word echoes through me like a warning bell. I've spent fifty years building walls. Refusing attachments. Keeping everyone at arm's length because attachments are weakness, and weakness gets you killed.
My parents taught me that lesson when I was twelve. Watched my father put a bullet in my mother's head, then turn the gun on himself. If you love nothing, nothing can destroy you.
I've lived by that ever since.
And now a nineteen-year-old girl with green eyes and a blood-splattered dress is making me want to tear down every wall I've ever built.
Dangerous.
I tuck the gun back into my holster and crouch in front of her. Slowly. Carefully. The way you'd approach a wounded animal.
"Lily." I keep my voice quiet. "Look at me."
She's staring at the body. At the blood pooling around his silver hair. Her whole body is trembling, and there are tears cutting tracks through the blood on her face.
She's beautiful.
Stop it.
"Lily." I reach out, touch her chin, tilt her face up. Her eyes finally meet mine—wide, terrified, still in shock. "I need you to breathe."
"You killed him," she whispers.
"Yes."
"You just—you just—"
"He trafficked in human beings. Sold children to the highest bidder." I don't soften the words. She deserves the truth. "Men like him are a disease. I'm the cure."
She stares at me. Processing. I can see the thoughts moving behind her eyes—fear, confusion, something that might be relief.
"Come," I say, standing. Offering my hand. "You need to get cleaned up."
She takes it.
Her fingers are cold, trembling, but they wrap around mine and hold on. Something shifts in my chest. Something I don't want to examine.
I pull her to her feet and lead her away from the body, away from the blood, toward the bathroom at the end of the hall. Behind us, I hear my men entering the penthouse. They'll handle the cleanup. They always do.
Right now, I have more important things to focus on.
The bathroom is white marble and soft lighting. I turn on the tap, test the temperature, let the tub fill while she stands in the middle of the room looking lost.
There's blood on her dress. On her face. In her hair.
His blood. On her.
Rage builds in my chest, hot and familiar. Not at her—never at her—but at the circumstances that brought her here. At the Hendersons who sold her. At the traffickers who kept her. At the senator who thought he could use her as a bargaining chip.
I contain it. Lock it down. She doesn't need my anger right now. She needs calm.
"I'm going to help you undress," I tell her. "I won't touch you inappropriately. I just need to get you clean."
She nods. Doesn't speak.
I approach slowly, giving her time to object. She doesn't. Just stands there, shaking, while I reach for the straps of her dress.
The silk slides down easily. Pools at her feet. Underneath, she's wearing nothing but plain cotton underwear—practical, cheap, probably provided by whoever prepared her for auction.
I keep my eyes clinical. Professional. But I see everything.
The bruises.
Old ones, yellowing on her ribs. Fresh ones, purple on her thighs. Finger-shaped marks on her upper arms. A particularly nasty one on her collarbone, the one I noticed earlier, still dark at the edges.
Four weeks of captivity written on her skin.
"Suka," I mutter under my breath. The Russian curse feels inadequate for the fury building inside me.
She flinches.
"Not you," I say quickly. "Never you. The people who did this."
I guide her toward the tub. Help her step in. The water is warm—I checked—and she sinks into it with a small sound that might be relief.
I kneel beside the tub and reach for a washcloth. Wet it. Start with her face, gentle strokes wiping away the blood. She closes her eyes and lets me work.
"I don't understand what's happening," she says finally. Her voice is small. Broken.
"You're safe. That's what's happening."
"But I'm still—" She swallows. "I'm still owned. By you now."
The word owned should bother me. It doesn't.
"Yes."
Her eyes open. Green and searching. "What do you want from me?"
I pause. Consider the question. Consider my answer.
"I don't know yet," I admit. "I've never wanted anyone before."
"Then why keep me?"
The honest answer is: because I can't let her go. Because something about her green eyes and her trembling voice and her ridiculous dream of having a family reached into my chest and grabbed hold of something I thought was dead.
But I don't say that. Not yet.
"Because you want a family," I say instead. "Someone who wants to keep you. And you'll never get that unless someone gives it to you."
"Why would you—"
"Because I can." I dip the washcloth into the water, wring it out, start on her shoulders. "And I'm going to."
She's quiet for a long moment. I wash the blood from her hair, careful not to pull. Watch the water turn pink, then clear again as I rinse.
"The senator said men like you take what you want," she says finally. "Use it up. Throw it away."
"The senator was a fool who assumed everyone shared his appetites." I meet her eyes. "I've never taken an unwilling woman in my life. I'm not starting now."
"Then what—"
"You'll stay here. With me. I'll keep you safe. Give you whatever you need." I set the washcloth aside. "And in return, you'll be mine. Not as a slave. Not as property. But as someone I've chosen to protect."
"Why?"
The question hangs between us. I don't have a good answer. Don't have any answer except the truth I'm not ready to admit.
Because you looked at me and asked for a family, and something in me broke.
"Because I can," I repeat. "And because I want to."
It's not enough. I know it's not enough. But it's all I can give her right now.
I dress her in one of my shirts—soft cotton, warm, hanging past her knees—and lead her to my bedroom.
She stops in the doorway. Looks at the bed. Looks at me.
"I'm not going to touch you," I say. "You'll sleep here. I'll take the couch."
"I—" She wraps her arms around herself. "I don't want to be alone."
Something cracks in my chest. A wall I've spent decades building, developing a fissure.
"Then I'll stay."
I guide her to the bed. Pull back the covers. Wait while she climbs in, curling on her side like she's trying to make herself as small as possible.
I should leave. Should go to the couch, put distance between us, maintain the walls that have kept me safe for fifty years.
Instead, I sit on the edge of the bed. Close enough that she can feel my presence. Far enough that I'm not threatening.
"Try to sleep," I tell her.
"I can't."
"Close your eyes anyway."
She does. I watch her breathing slow, watch the tension gradually drain from her shoulders. She's exhausted—four weeks of captivity, the auction, the senator, the execution. Her body is giving out whether she wants it to or not.
After twenty minutes, her breathing evens out. She's asleep.
I should leave.
I don't.
I sit there for hours, watching her sleep, trying to understand what's happening to me. This girl—this nineteen-year-old orphan with nothing and no one—has walked into my life and upended everything I thought I knew about myself.
Dangerous, I think again.
But I don't move.
She wakes screaming just after four a.m.
I'm there before she's fully conscious, hands on her shoulders, voice low and steady. "You're safe. Lily. You're safe. It was a dream."
She's gasping, crying, clinging to my arms like I'm the only solid thing in the world. "Don't leave. Please don't leave."
"I'm not going anywhere."
I shift onto the bed properly. Pull her against my chest. She buries her face in my shirt and sobs—great, wracking sobs that shake her whole body. I hold her through it, one hand on her back, the other in her hair.
I've never held anyone like this. Never comforted anyone. Never wanted to.
I want to now.
"I've got you," I murmur against her hair. "You're safe. I've got you."
She cries until there's nothing left. Then she just breathes, face pressed to my chest, fingers curled in the fabric of my shirt.
"Stay," she whispers.
I shouldn't. Every instinct I've honed over fifty years tells me to pull back, maintain distance, protect myself.
"I'll stay," I say instead.
I hold her until dawn breaks over Severny Harbor, gray light filtering through the windows. She sleeps. I don't.
I just watch her.
And I realize, with a strange ache in my chest, that I've never had this. Someone sleeping beside me. Someone who needs me. Someone to come home to.
Fifty years I've lived alone. Told myself it was safer. Told myself attachments were weakness. Built an empire of solitude and convinced myself it was enough.
But this—her warmth against my chest, her breath soft and even, the quiet domesticity of simply being with someone—
This is what I've been missing.
Not sex. Not companionship. Something deeper. Someone who fills the silence. Someone who makes the penthouse feel less like a fortress and more like a home.
Dangerous, I think. But the word has lost its teeth.
I know, with a certainty that terrifies me, that everything has changed.
The first days blur together.
She wakes screaming every night, and every night I'm there. Holding her. Whispering promises I never thought I'd make. You're safe. I've got you. I'm not going anywhere.
The second morning, I notice she's still wearing my shirt. The same one from the first night. She has nothing else—no clothes, no belongings, nothing but what the traffickers dressed her in for auction.
I make a call before I leave for work.