Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Vivienne
I'd been staring at that goddamn blinking cursor for five hours straight.
"Delete. All trash." I jabbed the backspace key, watching my fifteenth opening dissolve into nothing.
My fingers hovered stiff above the keyboard, brain stuffed with a water-logged sponge—heavy and useless.
Mary pushed through the door with an elegant tea service, setting the tray carefully on the desk corner. She took in my near-bald state with concern. "Ms. Cole, are you alright? Should I have the kitchen brew you some honey water?"
"I'm fine, Mary." I waved her off weakly. "I just need some... goddamn inspiration."
Once Mary closed the door, I snapped the laptop shut with a sharp crack and collapsed against the chair like a deflated balloon, eyes closed.
"Sighing at a screen won't write anything worth reading."
That familiar, rough-edged voice came from the doorway.
I opened my eyes. Nikolai leaned against the doorframe in nothing but a black henley, top buttons undone.
None of that high-and-mighty Pakhan posture. He crossed to me, knuckles rapping my cluttered desk.
"Grab a jacket." He caught my dead-eyed look, something like resigned indulgence flickering in those slate-gray eyes. "Taking you out for some fun."
I didn't have the energy to ask where. My head was too full of tangled plotlines. I grabbed a leather jacket, threw it over my tank dress, and followed him like a ghost to the armored Bentley.
The car headed east, out of Washington's gleaming districts, finally turning down a dim back alley where even the streetlights flickered. We stopped outside a dilapidated Russian boxing gym. Half the neon sign was dead, buzzing with static.
Inside—worn heavy bags, makeshift rings. The air thick with old sweat and leather.
A Russian man with a face like ground meat and a clearly broken nose leaned against the ring, smoking. His gait limped badly—right leg wrecked by some old injury.
But even hobbling, that top-tier killer's blood-soaked aura couldn't be hidden.
"Look who it is." The man exhaled gray smoke with a dry, rasping laugh. None of the trembling fear other subordinates showed Nikolai. "The Pakhan bringing a woman to this sweaty shithole."
Nikolai didn't bristle. His palm settled naturally against my lower back, tone flat with familiarity. "Kostya. Watch your mouth."
The man called Kostya limped over, hawk-sharp bloodshot eyes scanning me up and down. Suddenly, he grinned—meaningful, knowing.
"This the 'little writer' who had you destroying sandbags at dawn?" Kostya scratched his stubbled jaw, eyes gleaming with mockery. "The one screaming at the airport wearing a pink dick headband?"
My eyes went wide. I whipped around to stare at Nikolai. "You told him about the pink dick headband?"
Nikolai's expression went black. His hand tightened on my waist.
"Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Cole. I'm Kostya.
" He ignored Nikolai's murderous glare entirely, extending a callused hand with gleeful malice.
"Heard you nearly put old Volkov in an ambulance at the Maryland estate?
Well done. This guy's lived thirty years surrounded by nothing but profit-calculating corpses.
About time he had an actual living person around. "
I raised an eyebrow, shaking his hand. I liked this unfiltered hardass.
"Nice to meet you, Kostya." I drew out the words deliberately. "So our great Pakhan also acts like a lovesick teenager, pounding sandbags when his feelings get hurt?"
"More than that!" Kostya roared with laughter, nearly choking. "That morning his punches almost broke my ribs, just because—"
"Kostya."
Nikolai cut him off coldly. He pulled me into his chest, tall frame blocking all eye contact between Kostya and me, voice dark as a storm. "I didn't bring her here to listen to you air my dirty laundry. Open the door."
Kostya shrugged, hands raised in surrender, grin uncontrollable. "Alright, alright. You're the boss. Enjoy yourselves."
He limped to a row of beat-up lockers at the back, pressing an unremarkable piece of rusted metal.
The heavy locker slid open, revealing a scarred soundproof iron door.
The moment it opened, we stepped into another world.
A massive sensory assault hit like a tsunami. Deafening heavy metal mixed with the crowd's frenzied roars. The air thick with cheap beer, sweat, tobacco, and that adrenaline-spiking scent of blood.
Jesus Christ.
I held my breath.
Beneath this boxing gym—an underground fight pit.
Or more accurately: a real illegal no-holds-barred fighting ring hidden in the deepest basement of a legal gym.
A massive crowd swarmed the central octagon cage welded shut with chain-link, waving fistfuls of cash.
Inside the cage, a brutal fight neared its end.
No gloves. No rules. Even the referee's count was just theater.
A tattooed bald brute had his opponent pinned against the rusted fence, pounding him like a starving hyena.
That unfiltered sound of bone and flesh colliding cut through even the deafening metal music.
I clearly saw a wad of blood and spit, along with half a broken tooth, arc through the harsh spotlight and splatter against the chain-link less than six feet from me.
The pinned man didn't even scream. He slid down the fence like a boneless rag doll. But the victor didn't stop—he added a vicious kick to that already mangled face.
The crowd didn't recoil in horror. They exploded into even more hysterical roars, bills flying like snow toward the cage.
This wasn't competition. This was primal underground slaughter.
My stomach lurched violently. My fingertips went ice cold.
But beneath that visceral nausea, my writer's nerve thrummed with something disturbing—a trembling, perverse excitement.
Pure savagery. Pure conflict.
Nikolai's expression stayed dark. He didn't spare the carnage half a glance.
He blocked the sticky, crazed stares with his broad shoulders, hand firm on my lower back, guiding me through the adrenaline-drunk mob.
"Where are we going?" I swallowed.
Nikolai glanced at me. "Taking you somewhere you can find inspiration."
He led me expertly through a dim corridor to a second-floor VIP box with a perfect view.
Inside, the light was low. One-way bulletproof glass muffled most of the chaos.
Nikolai pressed me into the leather sofa, hands braced on either armrest, looming over me. The irritation faded from his face, replaced by cold, aggressive intensity.
"Stay here. Don't wander." He yanked open his henley collar with one hand, those slate eyes gleaming dangerously. "Keep your eyes on that cage, writer. I'll give you your inspiration myself."
Before I could process that, he'd turned and strode out, door slamming shut.
I sat frozen. What? He was leaving me alone in this blood-soaked underground fight pit?
I walked to the one-way glass, staring down in confusion.
They were dragging the bloody loser out like a dead dog. Workers hosed down the vivid bloodstains on the cage floor.
What was Nikolai planning? He said he'd give me "inspiration"—was he going to interrogate some Marchetti informant in that cage?
Some brutal Bratva execution ritual?
Imagining brain matter splattered everywhere made my stomach clench. But disturbingly, beneath that biological fear, my writer's instinct was hooked by that extreme tension.
The box door opened silently.
A waiter in a crisp black vest entered expressionlessly, carrying a tray with iced soda water and elegant caviar canapés—absurdly out of place amid the cheap beer and sweat stench outside.
"Excuse me..." I cleared my throat tentatively. "Where did Mr. Volkov go? Is there... some special match happening in that cage?"
The waiter set down the tray with mechanical precision, face like a human mask.
"My task is only to ensure your comfort, ma'am." He bowed slightly, tone devoid of inflection. "As for the rest, you'll see soon enough."
He left no room for questions, exiting briskly. The door locked again.
This airtight suspense clawed at my heart like a cat!
I gulped down ice water irritably, pressing my face back to the glass, staring at the empty cage.
Minutes crawled by. After maybe twenty minutes, the crowd's restlessness spread. Gamblers started pounding the rails impatiently.
Suddenly, every light in the underground pit went out.
Half a second of eerie silence. Then the crowd erupted in roars, whistles, and stomping ten times louder than before. The floor beneath me vibrated like some dangerous beast was about to be unleashed.
A brutal spotlight slashed through the darkness like a sword, hitting the rusted cage.
With a tooth-grinding metallic screech, the chain-link door opened slowly.
I squinted at the figure stepping into the spotlight from the darkness. The next second, my pupils contracted, heart skipping a beat, breath stopping completely.
Nikolai.
Shirtless, revealing that scarred, explosively powerful torso.
No suit. No men. His usually slicked-back hair fell loose over his high brow bones. And beneath those brows, those gray eyes burned with unmasked violence and killing intent.
Dangerous. Focused. Terrifyingly formidable.
His opponent—a muscle-bound heavyweight—charged like an enraged bear. Nikolai didn't even blink.
He dodged the deadly hook with cold precision. Then that black-wrapped arm moved too fast to track, a crushing punch landing squarely on the man's jaw.
The crowd gasped collectively.
But the knockout I expected didn't happen.
The tank-like brute spat out blood and broken teeth, fully enraged. He roared like a wild animal, charging at Nikolai again like an out-of-control freight truck, trying to pin him with sheer mass against the fence.
Nikolai didn't retreat. He ducked the grapple with agility, his black-wrapped elbow slamming into the brute's unguarded ribs.
I swear I heard bone snapping through the deafening metal music.
The brute howled, massive body buckling. Nikolai gave him no breath. He grabbed the back of the man's neck brutally, knee driving upward, smashing that meaty face straight into his kneecap.
Blood exploded under the harsh spotlight, splattering across Nikolai's broad chest and that old knife scar.
I pressed against the glass, legs weak, forgetting how to breathe.
Watching that man in the cage radiating lethal testosterone, my stomach stopped churning. Instead—a scalp-tingling tremor shot from my tailbone straight to my brain.
No tailored suit to hide behind. No Pakhan restraint or elegance. Right now, he was nothing but a pure Siberian alpha wolf ruling death itself.
Sweat dripped from his silver hair, running down his defined abs into those dangerous black pants.
Every punch, every movement made the dormant muscles in his back and arms coil tight—a destructive, savagely masculine force.
This was too dangerous. He was a fire that could burn you to ash. An abyss one look would doom you to forever.
But I couldn't look away.
My mouth went dry. My heart pounded in rhythm with his strikes. My veins felt like molten lava.
That extreme violence, combined with my bone-deep submission to and hunger for that raw power, created a lethal chemical reaction.
Writer's block? Fifteen deleted drafts? All incinerated by this blood-rush.
I wanted to record his every move. I wanted to possess this unrestrained beast entirely.
The fight ended with his opponent unconscious in a pool of blood. The whole thing—under three minutes.
The cage door opened. Amid deafening, roof-shaking roars, Nikolai slowly raised his head.
His silver hair soaked with sweat. Those slate-gray eyes cut through the harsh spotlight, locking precisely onto my VIP box. Even through bulletproof glass, I felt that pinning, predatory stare.
His lip was split, bleeding. But he flashed me an arrogant, devastatingly sexy smirk.
My sanity snapped.
I spun around, heels clicking, and ran like hell out of the box—straight toward him.