Chapter 8 Alina
Alina
The lock clicks behind him, and I sit there on the floor for a long moment, staring at the door, my hands shaking. He is doing it on purpose now. He knows I don’t like it, and he is torturing me with it.
Then I look down at the holdall.
He packed my tampons. He packed my hoodie. He went through my underwear drawer with those sexy, inked hands and chose things for me like he already knows me, like he’s been studying me from the inside out.
I stand up and dump everything on the bed, before I turn to the wardrobe and open the doors.
The scent of him hits me in the face. Aftershave that smells like darkness and sex.
My insides shiver as I take in his clothes, neatly lined up by colour, then by type.
Rows of designer clothes that I run my fingertips over, revelling in the feel of the expensive fabrics.
He is a man after my own heart, even if he would probably rather die than admit it.
I reach for a couple of hangers and slot the jeans through, hanging them neatly before I hang up the t-shirts.
There is something about his order that makes me want to respect it.
My home is chaos. Order is boring. Except when it belongs to Arkady Saranov.
Moving to the drawers, I open the top one with a smile. Socks. Nothing else. He goes commando unless he is some weirdo who keeps his boxers in the drawer under his socks.
Turns out my first assessment is right.
Not a pair of boxers in sight. I’m not surprised and only a tiny bit turned on.
I push all the drawers shut and then reopen the third one down. It’s empty, so I fold my underwear into it with an exactness that would make Dad proud.
There is a photograph at the bottom of the holdall.
The one from Cádiz, when Mina hired a moped she couldn’t drive, and I was laughing so hard I nearly fell off the wall.
I was twenty. I stare at it for a few seconds and then drop it back into the holdall, which I then tuck away on the top shelf of the wardrobe like I’m on holiday.
But that is how I will get through the next minute.
The next hour. This is a vacation in some madman’s mansion, a ten-minute drive from my home.
That’s what I tell myself as I sit on the edge of the bed and pull the hoodie over my head.
It smells like my house. Like jasmine and the vanilla candle I burn when I’m reading.
Like home. I press the sleeve against my nose and breathe until the tightness in my chest loosens enough to function.
I get up and pace the room because sitting still is going to drive me insane.
The room is beautiful, objectively. Soft carpet, dark furniture, a bed that could sleep four.
The sheets are black silk. I press my fingertips against the glass and feel nothing.
No vibration, no draught. Thick enough to stop a bullet.
The courtyard below is paved in herringbone brick with a fountain in the centre gurgling water innocently.
Two men patrol the perimeter in a pattern that looks casual but isn’t.
I time them. Forty-five seconds apart, alternating routes. Arkady doesn’t do anything by accident.
Turning away, I pick up the toiletries splayed out on his bed. I’ve been avoiding the en-suite because the bathroom downstairs was neutral territory, but this one is his. I push the door open anyway because curiosity has always been my fatal flaw, and I might as well lean into it.
Black tile. A walk-in shower with a rainfall head and no door, just a glass panel that would hide absolutely nothing.
A double vanity in dark marble with his things lined up on one side—facewash, razor, aftershave.
I set my toiletries on the empty side, and the sight of my pink cleanser next to his black cologne bottle looks obscene.
Intimate. Is that what he wants? Does he want me slotted into his orderly life where he cuts fingers off like it’s no big deal?
Has he decided now that he is the Saranov pakhan that he needs a woman around to breed with, and I happened to be here already?
Why else would he bring my things to me unless his intention was to keep me?
The thought makes me grip the marble counter hard enough to whiten my knuckles.
No. That’s wild. This is circumstance, not courtship. He’s protecting an asset because letting me die would cause a war with my father that he doesn’t need right now. Not when he’s got a dead pakhan, a faceless killer, and the Met breathing down his neck. I’m logistics. That’s all.
Except logistics don’t get spanked until their skin burns.
Logistics don’t get their tattoos licked by a man who looks at them like he wants to consume them whole.
Logistics don’t get their underwear hand-selected by a Bratva pakhan who definitely knows the difference between La Perla and Agent Provocateur by touch alone.
“Fuck,” I mutter to my reflection.
I splash water on my face and dry it with one of his towels, and then apply my cleanser because routine is the only thing keeping me tethered to reality right now.
Cleanse, tone, moisturise. The motions are mechanical, grounding, a lifeline I cling to while the rest of my world spins off its axis.
When I’m done, I stare at myself in the mirror.
Bare faced with my hair a mess. Mina would cringe.
Jess would shudder. Nadia would die at the sight of me.
I go back to the bedroom and sit gingerly on the bed. His bed. I flop backwards and stare at the ceiling. My skin prickles when I remember his mouth on my skin, licking me.
Three seconds. That’s what he gave himself when he saw his father dead.
Three seconds of grief before the shutters slammed and the machine took over.
I keep coming back to that. What does it take to break him?
Truly crack that icy surface. And do I even want to find out?
Because whatever lives under that control is the thing that cut a man’s fingers off this afternoon without flinching.
It’s the thing that spanked me like I was his to discipline and then licked my spine like I was his to devour.
Two sides of the same blade, and I’m pressing my thumb against the edge like a fool who wants to bleed.
I roll onto my side and pull a pillow towards me.
I bury my face in it and hate myself for inhaling deeply.
My body still hums from earlier. The sting on my arse has faded to a warm ghost, but the memory of his hand hasn’t.
The weight of it. The precision. He knew exactly how hard to hit, exactly where, exactly when to smooth his palm over the heat he’d created. That wasn’t impulse. That was skill.
The thought makes me press my thighs together.
I need to get a grip. I need to think clearly, strategically, like Dad taught me even when he thought he was just teaching me to be careful. Assess the situation.
Fact one: someone wanted me badly enough to put a man on me to do God knows what with me.
Fact two: Nikolai Saranov is dead, executed by someone he either knew or let in willingly by the looks of it.
Fact three: these two events happened within hours of each other, and if Arkady hasn’t already drawn a line between them, he’s not the man I think he is.
Fact four: I am stuck in the bedroom of a newly crowned Bratva pakhan who spanks like he’s had a lot of practice, and my father told me to sit pretty and behave.
I roll onto my back and press the heels of my hands against my eyes until I see white spots.
Fact five: I haven’t been laid in four months, and the last man who touched me was a City banker named Oliver who fumbled with my bra clasp and came in under two minutes.
The comparison between Oliver’s nervous fingers and Arkady’s commanding hands is so stark it’s almost funny.
I sit up and swing my legs off the bed. Enough wallowing. Dad didn’t raise a woman who lies around feeling sorry for herself. He raised a woman who survives.
I cross to the window again and study the courtyard more carefully this time.
The two guards have swapped shifts. New faces, same pattern.
The wall at the far end is maybe eight feet, topped with something I can’t quite make out from this angle.
Cameras, probably. Or razor wire disguised by the ivy.
No one is getting in, and no one is getting out.
The bedroom door is made of reinforced steel and has an electronic lock.
Makes sense. He has to sleep, and that is when they come for you.
Or so I hear. Except Nikolai Saranov wasn’t sleeping when they got him.
He was sitting at his desk. Inside job. It has to be.
If the rumours are true, which I’m guessing they are, he wouldn’t just sit there and let some random arsehole shoot him between the eyes.
I’m itching to discuss this with Arkady, but he would probably laugh at me because he already knows.
Of course he does. He isn’t stupid, and it’s obvious. But that means a fox in his henhouse.
That never ends well.
I walk around the edge of the bed and then spot something on the right side bedside cabinet. It’s a remote control, but not one for a TV or sound system. It’s a call button.
I grin and decide to make Dima lose his rag completely, so he sends Arkady up, and I can at least talk to someone other than myself.
I snatch it up and push the red button. The light flashes once. I push it again. Then again. Then a fourth time. I will sit here all day if I have to. I’ve got nowhere else to be.