Chapter 14
Lidiya
He’s such an arsehole.
Why did he have to be sweet and bring me the bedding while I’m stuck in the bathtub, terrified of getting out in case something bad happens? Why? He should’ve hauled me out and driven me home, but no. He has to be reasonable about my trauma.
Arsehole.
An arsehole who just killed three men to stop them from getting to me.
The shaking starts again, this time worse than before.
It hurts. My teeth chatter against each other like castanets, and I clamp my jaw shut so hard it sends a bolt of pain through my skull.
The duvet is warm—obscenely warm, the kind of warm that not even my bedsit radiator could achieve—but my body refuses to register it.
Every nerve is firing on its own schedule, muscles contracting in waves that I can’t control, can’t predict, can’t stop.
Three men came here to take me.
Three men are dead because of it.
I press my face into the goose down pillow and breathe in, trying not to unravel.
I try to think logically. I try to lay it out the way you’d lay out a budget—line by line, neat and ordered, each piece slotting into place.
But the pieces don’t slot. They scatter every time I reach for them, and all I’m left with is the raw, unprocessed fact that someone wants me badly enough to send armed men into a Voronov’s home.
A Voronov.
Even I know what that means, and I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to know as little about the Bratva as possible.
You don’t hear the name Voronov without understanding, on some primal, cellular level, that it means power, violence, and the kind of reach that doesn’t stop at borders or locked doors.
My father knew. He must have known when he borrowed that money, when he signed the devil’s contract.
And now his daughter is lying in a jacuzzi bathtub wrapped in a duvet that feels like being held by a cloud, while the son of that family washes blood off his hands downstairs.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force order into the chaos.
Fact one: someone bid eighty million pounds for me at an auction. Fact two: that same someone, or someone connected to them—one assumes—sent men to Damien’s house within hours. Fact three: I have absolutely nothing of value. No information. No connections. No hidden inheritance. Nothing.
So why?
The question circles like a vulture, and no matter how many times I reach for an answer, all I grab is air.
My parents were ordinary. My father drove a minicab.
My mother cleaned offices. They spoke Russian at home and English everywhere else, and they kept their heads down the way immigrants do when they want to be left alone.
The only extraordinary thing about them was the debt, and even that was depressingly ordinary.
A man borrowing money he couldn’t repay from people who’d never let him forget it.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. It’s high. White. Spotless. The kind of ceiling that’s never had a damp patch or a brown water stain spreading like a bruise from a leaking pipe above. Even his bathroom ceiling is better than my entire life.
A hysterical laugh bubbles up in my throat, and I swallow it before it can escape and turn into something I can’t stop.
The porcelain is warming now, my body heat trapped under the duvet, turning the bath into something almost bearable.
My feet are tucked up, and I can feel the raised bump forming on my head where I cracked it against the jet.
It throbs in time with my pulse, a small, manageable pain that anchors me to something physical when my mind wants to spiral into the stratosphere.
I shuffle around and eventually give up being stubborn.
It’s uncomfortable as fuck in here, even with the cloud soft bedding.
Sitting up, I peer over the edge of the bathtub and make a decision.
Shaking off the duvet, I climb out and stretch my aching legs.
I creep forward into Damien’s bedroom, and my gaze lands on the enormous bed.
It’s three of my single mattresses across.
I glance at the door that he practically kicked off its hinges.
It’s hanging loosely open, and despite the warning signs flashing, I move forward and peek out into the hallway.
Sounds from downstairs reach my ears, and the stench of bleach hits my nose.
I gulp and stumble backwards until my legs hit the bed.
I crawl onto it and bury myself under Damien’s gorgeous-smelling duvet.
His scent surrounds me, and I snuggle deeper into a mattress that feels like it’s moulding to my body.
Within minutes, the exhaustion hits like a freight train.
Not the manageable kind I’m used to, which is the slow, grinding fatigue of double shifts and empty cupboards.
This is something deeper. A soul-level shutdown, my body finally processing the adrenaline dump and deciding, without consulting me, that we’re done for the night.
My eyelids are lead. The pillow beneath my head smells like him, and acknowledging that is admitting that the scent of the man who bought me like cattle is currently the most comforting thing in my world.
I hate myself for this. I hate that his bed feels like safety. I hate that the sound of movement downstairs—his voice, low and clipped, giving orders—doesn’t terrify me anymore. It reassures me. Because as long as he’s down there, nothing is getting up here. He has made that perfectly clear.
Stockholm syndrome.
That’s what this is.
Give it a few hours in a war zone, and suddenly the man with the gun starts looking like a guardian angel.
He’s not. He’s the man whose family has been draining me dry for months, and my father before that. He’s part of the reason I live in a hovel and barely eat. He’s the reason I can’t afford to heat my home. He’s… not the monster I made him out to be. But if he isn’t, then what is he?
Sleep takes me before I can come up with an answer.