Rafferty
I follow her headlights through the dark for twenty-two minutes.
She drives carefully. Too carefully. The kind of precise, deliberate driving that tells me she's concentrating on the road because concentrating on anything else will break her. I stay two car lengths back and keep my hands loose on the wheel and my mind on the things I noticed at dinner.
The shaking wasn’t nerves. Nerves come and go in waves.
Hers was constant, a low-grade tremor running through her hands that she couldn't stop no matter how hard she pressed them against the table.
That's physiological. Exhaustion, malnutrition, sustained stress.
The kind of shaking your body does when it's been running on adrenaline for so long it's forgotten how to stop.
That black dress was bought for a body she doesn't have anymore. It hung off her shoulders and gaped at the collarbone. She didn't eat. Didn't order. Said she wasn't hungry, but her hands trembled harder when the food arrived, like the smell of it was making her sick.
The flinching. Every time her phone buzzed in her purse, her whole body tightened in a full-body brace, like she was waiting to be hit.
And then the tears. That single drop on the white tablecloth. The way she said "someone worth marrying" like she'd rehearsed the worst thing she could say about herself and still couldn't deliver it without her voice breaking.
Something is very wrong with Nadia Semakina. And it has nothing to do with me.
She turns through a set of iron gates and I follow her up a long driveway lined with mature trees.
The house at the end is large, well kept, warm light spilling from the downstairs windows.
Cars in the drive. A family home. Not modest, not extravagant.
The kind of place where people gather and stay.
The Semakin estate. Her father's house. Her family roots.
She parks and I pull in beside her. She doesn't get out. I can see her through the window, hands still on the wheel, staring straight ahead. The porch light catches the side of her face and I can see the tracks where her makeup has smeared.
She can't go inside like this. I know that before she does. Whatever is waiting for her behind that front door, whoever is sitting in those lit rooms, she can't walk in shaking and crying and pretend she's fine.
I get out of my car and walk to hers. Tap on the passenger window. She startles, then reaches across and unlocks the door. I open it and lean down.
"Come sit with me for a minute."
She looks at the house. Then at me. Then back at the house. I watch her calculate. How long before someone looks out the window. How much time she has before her father comes to the door. How many lies she'll need to tell if she walks in right now versus five minutes from now.
"Okay," she says.
She gets out of her car and follows me to mine. I open the passenger door for her and she slides in. I get behind the wheel and we sit in the dark, her family's home glowing twenty yards away, close enough to see the shadows of people moving through the rooms.
The silence is heavy. She's gripping her own hands in her lap, fingers laced tight, knuckles pale. I can hear her breathing. Shallow, deliberate, the way someone breathes when they're trying not to fall apart.
"You said I should find someone else," I say. "Tell me why."
"I already told you. I'm not—"
"You told me what you think of yourself. That's not a reason. Give me the real reason you think I should walk away."
She closes her eyes. A tear slips out from under her lashes and tracks down her cheek. She doesn't wipe it away this time. It’s like she's too exhausted to bother.
"There's someone from my past," she says. Her voice is barely there. "He has photos of me. From when I was eighteen. And he's been using them to make me pay. For three years."
I don't move. I keep my hands on my thighs and my expression level while I let her talk.
"He was my boyfriend. The only boyfriend I’ve ever had.
" She's staring straight through the windshield.
"I thought I was going to marry him. I was eighteen and I was so in love with him that nothing else existed.
He asked me for photos and I sent them because I wanted to prove that I was serious.
That I was all in. That he was the only one for me. "
She swallows hard. I hear the click in her throat.
"I went to his apartment on my nineteenth birthday.
I was going to sleep with him for the first time that night.
My first time. I'd planned it for weeks.
I had this dress and I'd bought new underwear and I felt beautiful.
For the first and last time in my life, I felt beautiful.
" Her voice splinters like dry wood. "When I got to his, he was in bed with someone else. "
My hands curl into fists on my thighs. Slowly, below her line of sight.
"He laughed at me and I left. I didn't think about the photos because I was too destroyed to think about anything.
Then a month later, the first message came.
A photo I'd forgotten existed and a line about how it would be a shame if it got around.
" She wipes her nose with the back of her wrist. "I paid.
And I kept paying. Every dollar I could scrape together.
My savings are gone. My college fund is gone.
I work sixty-hour weeks at the restaurant to keep up with his demands, and they keep getting bigger, and I can't do it anymore. "
She turns to look at me. Her eyes are swollen and red and full of something I recognize. Shame. The kind that eats you from the inside. The kind that makes you believe you deserve what's happening to you because you made one mistake when you were too young to know better.
"He wants five thousand dollars by tomorrow.
I don't have it. There’s nothing left. He's going to send the photos to my dad.
" Her gaze flickers toward the house. Those warm, lit windows.
Her father somewhere inside, the good man who thinks his daughter is thriving.
"That's why you should find someone else, Rafferty.
Because I'll bring all of this down on your family. And you don't deserve that."
The silence in the car is absolute. I can hear the engine ticking as it cools. I can hear the wind pushing through the trees along the driveway. I can hear my own heartbeat, slow and steady and completely at odds with what's happening in my brain.
I look at this woman. Twenty-two years old. Sitting in my car in her father's driveway, shaking, starving, telling me her worst secret because she thinks it's a kindness. Because she thinks she's warning me. Protecting me. Like I'm the one who needs saving in this situation.
She's been carrying this alone for three years.
Living in a house full of people who love her, walking past them every single day, and not one of them knows.
The loneliness of that is staggering. Not the loneliness of isolation.
The loneliness of proximity. Of being surrounded by warmth you can't touch because your hands are too dirty.
"What's his full name?" I ask, somehow keeping my voice level and the rage out of it.
She blinks. “Kyle Whitfield."
"Where does he live?"
She stares at me. I watch the confusion cross her face. She told me the worst thing she's ever done, and I'm asking for an address.
"Ridgemont. Near the university. He was a student when we dated but I think he dropped out. He still lives in the area." She shakes her head. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to walk you to your door. You're going to go inside and tell your family dinner went well, and you're tired. You're going to drink some water, eat something if you can, and go to bed. Try to sleep."
"Rafferty—"
"And tomorrow, when you wake up, this will be over. All of it. Do you understand me?"
"You can't just—"
"I can." I hold her gaze. The car is dark and her face is wet and something in my chest that I've never felt before is pulling so hard I can barely breathe through it. "And I'm going to."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "Why?"
It's the smallest word. The most telling thing she's said all night. Not why will you do this, but why would you? Why would anyone? She's been alone with this for so long that she can't fathom someone stepping into it willingly.
"Because you're going to be my wife," I say. "And nobody touches what's mine."
The sound she makes isn't a sob. It's quieter than that. A release. Something clenched too tight for too long finally letting go, just a fraction.
I get out of the car and walk around to her side. Open the door. Offer my hand the same way I did in the restaurant. Open palm, steady fingers.
She takes it.
I walk her to the front door of her father's house. The porch light is bright and warm, and I can hear voices inside. Family. Life. Everything she's been drowning next to.
"Please eat something," I say. "Even if it's just toast."
She nods. She's still holding my hand. Her fingers are cold and thin and they grip mine like I'm the only solid thing left in her world.
"Thank you," she whispers.
I let go of her hand. She opens the door and warm light floods out. I catch a glimpse of a hallway, a staircase, the sounds of people who have no idea what their daughter or sister has been surviving.
The door closes. I stand on the porch for three seconds. Then I turn and walk back to my car.
I call Liam before I've left the driveway.
"I need an address. Kyle Whitfield. Lives near the university in Ridgemont. Probably a dropout."
"What's going on?"
"I'll explain later. Get me the address."
Liam is quiet for a beat. Then: "Give me ten minutes."
I pull through the gates and turn toward Ridgemont with my hands steady on the wheel and something far worse than anger settling into my bones.
He's not Bratva, which means he's not protected by anyone or anything. He's an ordinary, pathetic man who has spent three years bleeding a woman dry because he can. Because she was eighteen and in love and trusted him, and he turned that trust into a weapon.
Tonight, he finds out exactly what happens when the woman he's been destroying belongs to an Orlov.