Chapter 26
Lidiya
Alisha’s gaze slides over my dress, my boots, my coat.
She is pricing it up in her head; I can see it written all over her face.
I’m already uncomfortable knowing how much these items cost Damien, but it really was a case of wear them or wear my old black, taped-up dress.
My pride is slipping after being in his world for only a few days.
But one thing I can’t deny, is that these clothes give me confidence. They give me confidence that I have never possessed in my entire life. I harden my gaze and slide it over her in the exact same assessing way she is doing to me.
It forces a reaction I wasn’t expecting.
She flinches.
Not a big one. Not the dramatic recoil of someone who’s been caught red-handed.
It’s small. A micro-twitch at the corner of her left eye, the kind of tell you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it.
But I am looking. For the first time since I’ve known her, I am actually looking at her, and what I see makes my blood spike.
She’s afraid of me.
Not of Damien. Not of the broad, silent man who followed us in. Of me. The woman she poured lattes with, the woman she watched count tips with shaking hands, the woman she nudged toward an auction like it was a fun night out.
She’s afraid because I’m not supposed to be standing here. I’m supposed to be somewhere else entirely, and the fact that I’m not has thrown a spanner into something she was counting on.
“Nice place,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Pick up some extra hours?”
Alisha’s smile tightens. “My parents’ house.”
“Obviously,” I sneer, feeling Damien’s hand land on my lower back. I don’t fight it. It’s a power move that makes Alisha step back slightly.
“And you,” she scoffs nervously. “Pretending to be so broke and moping about like your life was ending.”
“I wasn’t pretending. You, however, are hiding something. Why did you want me at that auction? Did Madam Orlov pay you to steer me towards it?”
I know I’m steamrolling over everyone to have this conversation. I’m sure Damien had plans on how to conduct this conversation. But right now, I don’t care. This is my life. My betrayal. And she’s going to answer me before anyone else gets a turn.
Alisha’s composure fractures another millimetre. Her gaze darts to Damien, a quick, hunted flick to the Bratva man, then back to me. She’s looking for the exit strategy that isn’t there.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. “I told you about it because I thought it would help you.”
“Help me. Help me do what exactly? Drag myself out of poverty?”
Her eyes flash. “Looks like it worked. You owe me.”
Ignoring the jab I knew was coming, I ask, “How much did she pay you?”
“No one paid me anything.”
“Two cash deposits,” Damien says, his voice is so flat it could level concrete. “Recent. Large enough to flag. Want to try again?”
The silence stretches long enough that I can hear the tick of an antique clock somewhere deeper in the house, counting down the seconds she has left to lie.
“That money is from brand deals,” she says. “I’m an influencer. I get paid for content.”
“Content,” Damien spits out before I can. “The kind of content where you befriend vulnerable women and funnel them into auctions run by a woman who traffics people in evening wear?”
The word traffics lands like a grenade. Alisha’s face drains of colour.
“Traffics?” she exclaims, looking horrified and scared. “I didn’t know any of that! I didn’t know what she was doing. I was told it was a legitimate companion auction for charity.”
“Told by whom?” I ask.
“This guy. He contacted me on one of my socials months ago. Told me he could get me a big influencer contract if I helped him out with something.”
“Something?”
“You,” she says. “He wanted me to keep tabs on you until the time was right. He took ages to get back to me. I thought I was going to have to work at that dump forever.”
Damien moves swiftly, gripping her upper arm enough to make her squirm. “What guy?”
“Dmitri Sarkov,” Alisha’s voice pitches high enough to crack.
She tries to wrench her arm free, but Damien’s grip doesn’t budge.
Her eyes are wide now, the mask fully gone, and underneath it she looks exactly like what she is—a twenty-something rich girl who got in over her head and is only just realising the water is full of sharks.
“Dmitri Sarkov, the fixer?” Damien exchanges a look with Kirill over my head.
Fixer?
“What? He said he worked for Gucci. Had credentials. I looked him up. I did my research.”
“And you didn’t find it weird he asked you to get a job in a dump café and keep tabs on me?” I ask, incredulously. Even I am not that stupid. Okay, if he offered me a ton of money, I suppose I would’ve. “You have money,” I grit out. “Why did you agree to this?”
“My parents are threatening to cut me off. Have been for years. I dropped out of uni and haven’t found my place in the world yet.”
If looks could kill, she’d be six feet under now.
Uni? Place in the world? Cut off? Is she for fucking real?
“Your parents are threatening to cut you off,” I say slowly, tasting every word like it’s gone rotten.
“So you took a job spying on me—a woman who couldn’t afford toothpaste—because some guy on Instagram promised you a brand deal. ”
“It wasn’t like that,” she starts.
“It was exactly like that.” My voice is quiet, which surprises me.
I expected to scream. I expected the fury to come out hot and loud, the way it does with Damien.
But this is different. This is cold. This is the kind of anger that settles into your marrow and stays.
“You watched me count coins. You watched me skip lunch because I couldn’t afford it.
And the whole time, you were reporting back to someone who wanted to what, exactly? What was the purpose of all of this?”
“I don’t know!” Her voice cracks. “I swear.”
“And the cash deposits?”
“Ten thousand each. One when I started at the café. One when I confirmed you’d signed up.”
Twenty thousand pounds. That’s what my freedom was worth to her. Ten thousand pounds and a promise from a man who works for people who carry cyanide capsules in their teeth.
“The job at Lucy’s got my parents off my back. Were they happy it was a café waitress job? No. But they figured I was learning the ropes. I let them think that.”
I shake my head. I have no words. Not because I’m angry or upset anymore. I’m worn out. People bitch and complain when they only have themselves to blame. They don’t know what it’s like on the other side.
“Are you in trouble?” she asks quietly, her voice really small.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“Anything else you can tell us would help,” Damien says, trying his hand at being diplomatic, but failing miserably. The menace his stance portrays is enough to make Alisha tremble in her designer slippers.
“He sent me updates,” she says, and her hand goes to her pocket before she catches herself and glances at Damien. “On my phone. I can show you.”
She pulls out her phone with shaking hands and scrolls through what looks like a DM thread.
Damien takes the phone from her without asking, and she doesn’t protest. He reads, his face betraying nothing, then holds the screen toward Kirill, who photographs every message with his own device in rapid succession.
“These are instructions,” Damien says. “Not conversations.”
“He wasn’t chatty,” Alisha mutters.
“When was the last contact?”
“Two days before the auction. He told me the date was confirmed and to make sure she signed up by noon.”
“And after the auction?” I ask. “Nothing?”
She shakes her head. “Radio silence. I messaged him three times. Nothing. It’s like he vanished.”
“He didn’t vanish,” Damien says. “He went dark because the operation didn’t go to plan.
” He hands the phone back to her, and I can see the disgust rolling off him in waves.
“You’re going to stay exactly where you are.
You’re not going to contact him again. You’re not going to post about this.
You’re not going to leave London. If Sarkov reaches out, you answer, and you tell Kirill immediately.
” He pulls a card from his jacket and sets it on the hall table beside a vase of white peonies. “That number. Day or night.”
Alisha takes the card with fingers that won’t stop trembling. She looks at me, and for a second, something that might be genuine remorse crosses her face. “Lidiya, I didn’t know—”
“Don’t,” I say. The word is clean. Final. I don’t want her apology. An apology from a woman who sold me out for twenty grand is not required. “Just don’t.”
She closes her mouth.
Damien’s hand finds my lower back again as we turn toward the door, and this time the warmth of it doesn’t just steady me—it anchors me.
His touch is becoming something my body expects instead of something it rejects.
I let it stay because right now, in this hallway that smells like expensive candles and privilege, I need something solid, and he is the most solid thing in my world.
We’re halfway to the car when I stop on the pavement. The damp London air hits my face, and I breathe it in like I’ve been underwater.
“You okay?” Damien asks beside me, and his voice has lost the edge it carried inside. It’s quieter. Almost careful.
“No,” I say honestly. “But I wasn’t okay before, so at least I’m consistent.”
He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t try to fix it. He just stands there on the pavement with his hand still on my lower back, letting me breathe, and the restraint of it is more devastating than any comfort he could offer.
Twenty thousand pounds. That’s what Alisha valued my life at.
I was worth twenty thousand pounds to a woman who stood next to me five days a week and never once asked if I was okay.
“The club,” I say, because if I stand here any longer, I’ll start crying on a Mayfair street, and that’s not happening. “The Ashlar. Are we still going?”
Damien studies me for a moment, and I can feel him calculating whether I’m stable enough. Whatever he sees must pass muster, because he nods once and opens the car door.
I slide in. He follows. Kirill starts the engine before the door closes, and we pull away from Alisha’s parents’ pale stone monument to generational wealth, and any anger I had towards her, turns to pity.