9. Artem
Artem
I consider leaving the moment I spot Luc Nero in the crowd. He isn't hard to spot. He has box seats too, and he brought the tackiest bouquet of flowers with him, so he'd be particularly difficult to miss.
It's not hard to watch him. He looks nowhere but at the stage. His eyes are on Katya with an obvious hunger, and that is why I decide to take my chances and stay. Because he could ruin every part of my plans. That's what I tell myself as I remain in my chair.
I've known about Luc Nero and his infatuation with Katya. After all, I saw the pictures of them in her apartment. He was one of the few people who made it to her mantle.
I leave before the end of the performance, making sure that Katya will see me before Nero.
I don't want to be sidetracked. The Nero family runs one of the most powerful Italian outfits on the East Coast. Adrian Nero would know every significant player in the New York Bratva.
Whether Luc shares that intelligence is the variable I cannot calculate from across a stage.
He could know exactly who I am.
He could know nothing at all.
When Katya finishes and moves into the wings, she comes to me first, surrounding me with the warm scent of her body and the heat of the stage still on her skin.
I know I made the right choice. Luc Nero wants her, but she's not interested.
I can tell by the way she molds herself to me.
He's here, and yet she's not even thinking about him.
I try to get her out as quickly as possible because this is a calculated risk I'd rather not extend. But I can feel the moment she spots him—her body stiffens against mine, and I keep my face neutral, preparing for whatever move he makes.
He ignores me almost completely as he focuses on Katya. He thrusts the bouquet at her, missing the way her nose wrinkles. She doesn't like overtly fragrant things. One would think he'd know this, considering he's allegedly her best friend.
Lacey appears at my elbow with a smile designed to occupy me. I ignore her.
When Luc does glance at me, I wait. He doesn't recognize me. In fact, he barely does more than look before dismissing me entirely, clearly assuming Katya won't choose me now that he's arrived.
And from the way she calls me her friend and scurries off with him, I'm a little fucking pissed off that he's right.
Because that shouldn't bother me. He's not working to impress her. He's been her friend for years and doesn't know her favorite flower. And yet here she is, disappearing into a corridor with him while his silly friends try to entertain me.
I watch her like a hawk. She is gone exactly four minutes and thirty seconds. Long enough for an argument. Short enough that she didn't let him finish everything he wanted to say.
Spoiled boys like Luc Nero are unable to fathom a story where they aren't the hero. And Katya bristles at anyone overtly controlling. One must guide her, as I have. She won't take lightly to his intrusion.
Still. I don't like this.
Too many variables out of my control.
When she returns, shoulders tense and eyes too bright, I'm not relieved. I'm livid.
What did that little shit do?
She tries to put a smile on her face. The anger in my voice makes her tense further, and I have to take a breath in an effort not to go after him and force an apology. Luc Nero doesn't matter.
He's done me a favor by making her vulnerable. He's pushed her further into my arms.
That's what I tell myself, even as I watch her take a shaky breath.
"He thinks he knows what's best for me," she says.
"He's in love with you."
She looks startled—which tells me she knew this and has been declining to know it.
"He's not?—"
I reach out and touch her jaw, briefly, my thumb tracing her lower lip. Her soft skin parts and the feeling of her breath against my fingertip goes straight to my cock. "And who can blame him."
She's breathless before I've barely touched her.
"Come," I take her hand. "Let's get you out of here."
The restaurant I choose is French, small, in the Village. Low lighting, private tables, the kind of place where conversations don't carry. Subtle and intimate—the type of place you bring a woman you're trying to make feel chosen.
I'd planned it out so perfectly, and yet Nero nearly ruined it.
Katya is quieter in the car than normal. She plays with a small fray on the sleeve of her coat and bites her lip, deep in thought. She's thinking of him, not me. It adds to my desire to kill him.
More than once, I almost put a call to Pyotr to handle it. But I know that's unnecessary.
Luc Nero is no threat.
And if I play this right, it's an opportunity. I need to separate her feelings from my operation. They are a means to an end.
And yet.
I do not like how obviously hurt she is.
"Do you want to talk about it?" I ask after we order.
Reluctantly, she does. She tells me how she and Luc became fast friends, clinging to the idea of a found family. But where she never saw him as more than a brother, he developed feelings. Not that they stopped him from flirting unseriously over the years.
I hold back a snort of derision. Just like a Nero—not a single ounce of follow-through or responsibility. Gemma is the only one of the bunch I respect.
"I love him. Just not romantically," she tells me. "And I hate that I hurt him." A small tear escapes, and I want to kiss it off her cheek.
Instead, I take her hand.
"You can't manufacture feelings that aren't there." I mean it as strategic comfort—something to loosen the guilt so she stops carrying it and starts focusing on me. "It's not fair to him, and it's not fair to you."
"He'll get over it."
"Will he?"
Probably not. Men like Nero don't recalibrate easily. But that's not her problem to solve.
"If he were serious about you, he would have made a move years ago." I press my fingertips into the soft points of her wrist, just slightly. "A man doesn't let the woman he loves escape him."
Her breath catches, and her pupils dilate. "How do you know so much about this?"
"Don't all Russians know about love?"
She laughs. Genuine. Surprised out of her.
The conversation lightens. She lets me redirect her, and I'm good at redirection. By the time the food arrives she's talking about auditions and places she wants to travel, and the sharp edges of whatever Nero said to her have softened into something she can manage.
Her eyes sparkle now, with a mix of desire and excitement as she talks. I've been focused on not taking her on this table, on keeping my cool, and I realize I've lost the thread of what she's saying entirely.
That doesn't happen to me.
"Do you want to have coffee back at my place?" she asks, her voice soft.
I get the check.
Her apartment is quiet. The radiator ticks. She smells like stage makeup and something underneath it that is simply her, and when I lean down to her neck she exhales slowly, her hands coming up to grip my lapels.
I'm in control of this, I remind myself, as I press her into the wall, rocking into the soft heat between her thighs.
"Oh God," she moans, leaning back. Her nipples are hard against the silk of her dress, and I lean down, unable to help myself as I draw one into my mouth through the fabric.
Her hands tangle in my hair as she moves against me, and I want nothing more than to rip her underwear off and thrust home. To show her who she belongs to.
But I am in control.
So instead, I kneel before her and pull her dress up. Her thong comes into view, wet with arousal, and I groan at the sight of it. I press my face against her and inhale.
"Artem, please."
She's trembling. I look up.
"What do you want?"
I expect shyness. I don't get it. "Fuck me with your mouth. Please."
Her hands come up to her own breasts, and all control vanishes.
Her dirty words have undone me, and I'm ravenous.
I rip the thong from her body, the elastic snapping against her skin, and then my mouth is on her.
She's so sweet I can't help it. Her hands tangle in my hair, holding me to her, as though I'd be anywhere else.
I work her clit, sucking and worrying the bud until it doesn't take more than minutes before she screams my name, her head falling back against the wall as the orgasm hits.
I stay with her until the trembling stops, holding her close as I rise from my knees, pressing my lips to her temple, her hair, the curve of her jaw.
The intimacy is strategic. I need her to feel held. To associate safety with my presence.
That's what I tell myself.
She turns in my arms and looks at me with an expression I wasn't prepared for. Not gratitude. Not desire. Something quieter than both, with no tactical value whatsoever.
It lands on me anyway.
"You're still dressed." She reaches for my belt, and I stop her.
"This was about you."
She starts to argue, and I stop her the way I always stop her—not with force but with certainty, my thumb tracing her cheekbone. There's no rush, I tell her. We have time.
We have time.
The words sit differently than I expected them to.
I leave when I should leave. I kiss her goodnight. She asks if I want to stay and I tell her soon, which is true, though the reasons are no longer entirely the ones I started with.
On the street outside her building I stop and look up at her window.
The light is still on. She's still awake up there, in her small apartment with the scuffed floors and the music box and the photographs of people who love her.
I stand there longer than I need to.
The operation is proceeding exactly as planned. She's falling. The timeline is ahead of schedule. Everything is working.
I press my hand to my sternum briefly, the way I've been doing for weeks now, and feel the gold bracelet against my wrist.
Irina's bracelet.
I drop my hand.
This is what justice requires.
I walk away.