Chapter Nadia
Nadia
I close the front door behind me and stand in the hallway with my back against it, letting the sounds of my family wash over me.
The TV is on in the living room. My brother Timofey is arguing with my sister Darya about something.
I can hear my mother's voice from the kitchen, telling them both to keep it down.
Normal sounds. Safe sounds. The soundtrack of a house that doesn't know its eldest daughter just sat in a stranger's car and told him the ugliest truth she's ever spoken out loud.
"Nadia? Is that you?"
My mother appears in the kitchen doorway, dish towel over her shoulder, reading glasses pushed up on top of her head. She smiles when she sees me, then the smile falters.
"How was dinner, sweetheart?"
"Good." I force the word out steady. "He's nice. I'm just tired."
She studies me the way mothers do. The way that makes you feel like your skin is made of glass. "You look pale."
"Just a long day at work,” I offer. “I'm going to make some toast and head to bed."
"I can make you something proper. There's leftover—"
"Toast is fine, Mom. Really."
She watches me walk to the kitchen. I feel her eyes on my back the whole way. I keep my spine straight and my hands tucked into the pockets of my coat so she can't see the tremor.
I make toast because Rafferty told me to.
Two slices. I butter them standing at the counter, and I eat them slowly, chewing and swallowing like it's a task on a list rather than something my body needs.
The bread sits heavy in my stomach. My throat tries to reject it twice, but I force it down because he said to eat, and for some reason that feels like the only instruction I'm capable of following right now.
Timofey wanders into the kitchen while I'm finishing the second slice. He's twenty, loud, permanently cheerful. The opposite of me in every way that matters.
"So? Is he terrifying? Does he have neck tattoos? Did he bring a gun to dinner?"
"Go away, Timofey."
"I'm just asking. Darya and I have a bet. She thinks he's tall, dark, and brooding. I think he's short and mean."
"He's tall." I rinse my plate. "And he's not mean."
"Tall and not mean.” He nods thoughtfully. “Darya wins, then." He steals a piece of bread from the bag and shoves it in his mouth untoasted. "You okay, Nad? You look rough."
"Thanks."
"I mean it. You look like you haven't slept in a week."
"I'm fine. Long shifts." I kiss him on the cheek because if I don't do something normal, he'll keep asking. "Goodnight."
I make it to my room, close the door, and sit on the edge of my bed in the dark.
My phone is in my purse. I can feel it like a heartbeat. Kyle's deadline looms. Five thousand dollars I don't have. And somewhere out there, Rafferty Orlov is driving through the night because I told him a name and an address, and he said this ends tonight.
Panic that I just handed my worst secret to a man I met three hours ago makes my back prickle. I just gave a Bratva enforcer the name of a man who is blackmailing me. I can’t see this ending well for anyone.
I take off the black dress. Pull on an old t-shirt and shorts. Crawl under the covers without washing my face or brushing my teeth because I simply don't have the energy.
I lie in the dark and replay it. The way he listened without interrupting.
The way his expression didn't change when I told him about the photos. He didn’t show any shock, or disgust. I don’t know what I expected, maybe a lecture about what kind of girl sends pictures like that.
He just sat there, steady, absorbing it all without judgement.
Because you're going to be my wife. And nobody touches what's mine.
I press my face into the pillow and cry quietly, the way I've learned to do it. The way you cry when your bedroom shares a wall with your little sister's and the walls in this house aren't thick enough for honesty.
I fall asleep with my phone still in my purse and Rafferty's voice in my head, and I sleep deeper than I have in months.
I wake up to sunlight.
That's the first thing I notice. Actual sunlight, warm across my face, which means I've slept past my alarm. I grab my phone from my purse on the floor and check the time. Nine fourteen. I haven't slept past seven in over a year.
No new messages from Kyle.
I stare at the screen. Refresh my texts. Check my email. Nothing. The silence where his threats should be feels too loud.
I sit up slowly. My head is clearer than it's been in days. My hands are still shaking, but it's softer now, a murmur instead of a shout. The toast from last night is still sitting in my stomach like a small act of disobedience.
The house is quiet. A note on the kitchen counter in my mother's handwriting: Dad and I are at the Lenkov's for brunch. Back by 2. Timofey is at Misha's. Darya is at work. There's food in the fridge. Please eat, sweetheart.
Please eat. Everyone keeps telling me to eat. I pour a glass of orange juice and drink it standing at the counter, staring out the kitchen window at the driveway. My car is where I left it last night. The space beside it, where Rafferty's car was parked, is empty.
I think about calling him. I don't have his number. I realize with a strange jolt that I told this man everything and I don't even have a way to reach him.
I shower. Wash the ruined makeup off my face. Pull on jeans and a sweater and tie my hair back. I have a shift at Rosa's at noon and I need to leave by eleven thirty. A normal day. A routine I can follow.
I'm standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth when the doorbell rings.
My stomach drops. Kyle. The thought comes fast and irrational, because Kyle has never come to the house, but the fear response doesn't care about logic. It fires the same way it always does, full voltage, instant.
I rinse my mouth and walk downstairs on legs that feel unreliable. Through the hallway. Past the kitchen. I can see a shape through the frosted glass of the front door.
Tall. Dark jacket. Still.
I open the door.
Rafferty is standing on my porch in the late morning light.
He looks like he hasn't slept. His jaw is tight and there's a shadow of stubble across it that wasn't there last night.
His dark hair is pushed back and slightly disheveled, like he's been running his hands through it.
The first, and somewhat irrational, thought that crosses my mind is how beautiful he looks with the sun behind him. Like a fallen angel.
His knuckles on both hands are split. The skin across his right hand is swollen and darkening around the joints, and there's a cut across the left that's crusty with dark, dried blood.
There's a bruise forming along the edge of his jaw. Fresh. Blue at the center, purple at the edges.
He looks at me with eyes that are calm and certain and completely at odds with the damage on his hands.
"It's done," he says.
I grip the doorframe. "What?"
"Every photo. Every device. Every copy. Every backup. Gone. All of it." He holds my gaze. "He will never contact you again. Do you understand? It's over, Nadia."
I can't breathe. I'm standing in my parents' and this man, this man I've known for less than a day, is standing on my porch with blood on his knuckles telling me that the nightmare I've lived inside for three years is finished.
"How do you—" My voice breaks. "How do you know he won't—"
"Because I made sure." His voice is quiet and absolute. "He understands what happens if your name ever crosses his mind again. He believes me. Trust me when I tell you, he believes me."
A sound comes out of me. Something between a gasp and a sob, caught halfway in my throat. My knees buckle and I grab the doorframe harder just to try and stay upright. Rafferty steps forward and catches my elbow. His grip is gentle and totally at odds with the state of his hands.
"You did this for me," I whisper. "You don't even know me."
"How well I know you is irrelevant. No one should go through what he has put you through."
"You could have walked away. Last night, in the car, you could have agreed with me. Found someone else. Someone without—"
"I don't want someone else."
The words stop me. They settle into the space between us like something solid. Something I can lean against.
I look up at him. His face is serious. Bruised. Tired. Beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with angles or bone structure and everything to do with the fact that this man heard the worst thing about me and his response was to drive through the night and destroy it with his bare hands.
"You're beautiful," he says. Simply. Like it's a fact. Like it requires no emphasis or argument. "And you owe no man anything. Not Kyle, or your father, or the Bratva and the stupid bloody council." He pauses. "Not even me."
I reach up, take his face in both my hands, and kiss him.
He goes still for exactly one heartbeat, where his whole body is rigid and he lets me choose this. Then his hands find my waist pulling me into him as he kisses me back. Hard. Deep. A kiss that tastes like coffee and copper and something that feels dangerously like the beginning of everything.
I pull him inside and kick the door shut behind us.