Chapter 6
Chapter six
JUDE GRAVES
I wake to a headache that feels like it’s splitting my skull in half. The room is dim, curtains still drawn, Moscow reduced to a gray blur behind glass. My mouth still tastes like alcohol, and the sheets are twisted around our bodies. Adriana is sprawled beside me, naked, one arm across my chest.
I stare at the ceiling for a long moment, cataloging sensations instead of feelings. I’m trying to escape the ability to feel those. I carefully slide out from under her arm. She doesn’t stir, thankfully.
I find my underwear on the floor, pull them on, then my sweatpants.
I don’t bother with a shirt. I just need to breathe somewhere that doesn’t smell like last night.
The living room is quiet, and I cross it barefoot and grab what I came for.
I sink into the couch and rub my face with both hands, elbows braced on my knees.
Morning dose.
My hands know what to do for this little ritual even when my brain doesn’t want to be awake yet. By the time I’m injecting the heroin, my gaze has shifted to the vastness before me out the windows.
I exhale slowly and pull out the needle.
This is the part of the day that always feels the most real to me.
Before expectations. Before I have to perform being someone’s investment, someone’s boyfriend, someone’s property.
I sink deeper into the cushions and let the numbness spread, because it’s easier than thinking.
I’m forcing certain people out of my mind constantly, and they’re honestly hard to keep at bay, sometimes.
I’m hoping it will get easier with time.
My phone rests on the glass table in front of me, screen dark, with the only people texting me being criminals. I roll my shoulders, rubbing my face with both hands.
Footsteps shuffle behind me. I glance back and notice Adriana in the hallway, hair a mess, eyes squinting against the light. She's wearing one of the hotel robes, half-tied and clinging to her hips. She looks rough.
“Jesus,” she mutters. “You look like shit.”
“You're one to fucking talk.”
She pads into the kitchen, rummaging for water, aspirin, anything that might make her head stop pounding. I watch her without really seeing her. This morning feels different. Like I’m settled into this arrangement. Especially after I finally fucked her last night.
My phone buzzes, and I open my eyes to stare at it for a long second before picking it up.
Nolan:
You awake?
I sit up, forearms braced on my knees, and type back.
Yeah.
The reply comes instantly.
Nolan:
Alexei wants confirmation for this weekend. Friday night. His place.
I rub my thumb over the edge of the phone, pulse steady despite the weight settling on my chest.
Okay.
Across the room, Adriana cracks open a bottle of water and groans dramatically. “I really feel like I might die today.”
I snort quietly despite myself just as another message comes through.
Nolan:
Good. Be ready.
My jaw tightens. I picture a place I haven’t seen yet—Alexei’s world here in Russia. My skin crawls just thinking of the kind of home he has here. What poor fuckers are trapped there and working for him every day.
I type back before I can overthink it.
Got it.
I toss the phone onto the table, face down.
Adriana watches me from the kitchen, eyes sharper now. “What?”
“Nolan texted about the weekend shit,” I say flatly.
Her mouth twists. “Already?”
“Looks like it.”
She exhales through her nose, leaning back against the counter. “He doesn’t waste time.”
No. He doesn’t.
I stand, stretching my arms over my head.
I realize something then. I don’t know what I’m doing next unless someone decides.
I suppose that should scare me. Instead, there’s a strange calm in it.
Relief, almost. Like if I don’t have choices, I can’t make the wrong ones.
I’m a character in a video game who’s being controlled by some little fucking asshole with anger issues.
Adriana watches me cross the room, her gaze lingering. “You good?” she asks, not unkindly.
I nod. “Yeah.”
It’s a lie. But it’s an easy one.
The suite has been silent all day. Adriana passed out again not long after forcing down a bottle of water, muttering something about her head before locking herself away in the bedroom and pulling the blackout curtains tight.
I ordered pizza from room service for whenever she wakes up, so neither of us has to worry about it.
I hate the bitch, but less so when she's not hungry.
I sit on the floor in front of the couch, my back against it, the guitar resting across my thighs.
I haven’t written anything in months.
That realization honestly fucking sucks.
Music used to spill out of me whether I wanted it to or not—lyrics scribbled on receipts or napkins, melodies hummed into my phone at three in the morning.
Now there’s just…nothing. Like that once beautiful and alive part of me has gone quiet after all this time.
I start playing anyway, softly at first. Just my fingers, muscle memory doing most of the work. I hum under my breath, not really singing, just letting sound exist. The guitar feels comforting in a way nothing else does these days. It doesn’t ask or demand anything from me, other than presence.
As I play, my thoughts drift backward. They always do in these quiet moments by myself.
I’m twenty again, standing in an LA penthouse with a drink I didn’t pour in my hand.
Nolan is there, his sharp smile telling me how special I am.
Adriana is draped over the arm of a couch, watching me like she already knows what I’ll taste like.
Someone hands me something small and white and says, Trust me.
I did.
I remember the first time I woke up with blood on my hands and no clear memory of how it got there. The panic. The way Nolan talked me down was calm and reassuring. It’s fine, Jude. Accidents happen. You’re safe. I’ve got you. I can make it all go away if you let me.
I didn’t leave my old life all at once. I let it slip away in pieces through missed calls and cancelled plans.
And somehow, every road led back to Adriana’s bed and Nolan’s money.
The guitar vibrates beneath my fingers as I think about all the solo shows I’ve done for the laundering of drugs.
It was always easier when it was just me.
Easier to move things through one name, one face.
I was the talent. The product people wanted to see.
My darkness. My volatility. The way I burned myself alive onstage and called it art.
It always worked. And now there’s Alexei.
The thought makes me cold. Nolan was dangerous, sure. But Alexei is something else entirely. I know, in my bones, that I could die here. Any day. If I displease the wrong man. If I become inconvenient in any way.
My fingers keep moving. And then, without thinking, I start playing “Smother” by Daughter. The first few notes slip out before I realize what I’m doing.
I still immediately. My hands freeze on the strings. My chest tightens like someone reached inside and squeezed. I remember the last time I played this song. The way she looked at me, and listened with tears in her eyes…
I don’t say or even think her name. I hope that one day, I might forget it.
I exhale shakily through my nose and close my eyes.
The guitar suddenly feels too heavy. I carefully set it back in its case, like I’m putting something fragile to rest, and set it beside the couch.
Outside, the city keeps moving along. Inside, the silence rushes back in.
Fuck.