Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hailey
I hadn't left the apartment in three days.
The curtains stayed yanked shut, locking out the weak, washed-out Queens daylight. I stayed curled up on the guest bed in Samantha's place, the blanket pulled to my chin. Buddy lay at my feet, nudging my ankle now and then with a wet nose.
I couldn't even bring myself to comfort him.
My body stayed sore in a way that never let me forget that night—faint purple marks on my wrists where a tie had bitten in, and my collarbone, shoulders, inner thighs covered in the possessive, burning evidence of his mouth. Kisses. Teeth.
None of it hurt as much as what sat in my chest.
When I closed my eyes, Viktor's bloodshot blue stare still hit me like a punch—wild, feral, out of control.
He shouldn't have touched me. Not after I learned his hands were stained with blood. Not after I watched him kill someone in that garage like it meant nothing. I should've run from him like he was the plague.
But when he burst into my room carrying the night with him—rain and gunpowder and danger—and slammed me into the wall like a furious animal afraid of losing what was his, stealing my breath like he meant to grind me into dust... my pathetic little self-control collapsed.
I feared what he was. A butcher in an expensive suit.
And still, the uglier truth gutted me: even if he was a demon crawling out of a pit, the second his lips came down, the second his heat closed around me, my body obeyed him like it had been waiting.
I had been crying. I had been trying to push him off. And when he bit my neck and forced me to say his name, I had wrapped myself around him, shaking.
In that fight—tears, rage, that wrecking-ball need to possess—I found out I couldn't refuse him. I sank with him, all the way down.
What tore me apart wasn't his brutality.
It was the shame. The sick, twisting shame of loving a dangerous man with my whole damn heart.
"Knock, knock, knock—"
Sharp, urgent pounding hit the door.
"Hailey? Open up! I know you're in there. I heard you coughing!" Samantha yelled, keys scraping the lock. "I'm counting to three. If you don't answer, I'm busting this door down. One, two—"
The door flew open. Hallway light stabbed my eyes, and I flinched them shut.
Samantha stormed in with two bulging grocery bags. "Jesus, why is it so damn dark in here..." she muttered, dropping the bags on the floor. She yanked the curtains open, then marched straight to the bed and ripped the blanket off me like she owned it.
My sweater hung loose at the neck, exposing most of my shoulder and arm. The tie marks on my wrists. The dense red bruises and bites on my collarbone and throat.
Her face froze for half a beat. Then one eyebrow lifted, and a wicked grin tugged at her mouth. "Wow. So you and that Russian had a real unhinged weekend." Her gaze flicked over me. "Tie marks? Biting? Since when are you into rough shit, Hailey?"
She reached for my wrist.
I jerked back like I'd been shot, yanking my hand away.
Tears hit before I could stop them.
Samantha's grin died instantly.
Her hand hung in the air, then curled into a fist. Her eyes scanned the marks again, then locked on my bloodshot eyes.
"Hailey..." Her voice dropped, trembling. "Look at me. Tell me this was consensual. What the hell did he do to you?"
I bit my lip hard and shook my head, and everything I'd been choking down for three days broke loose. I covered my face and sobbed until I couldn't breathe.
"That bastard..." Samantha's eyes went red. She shot to her feet, grabbed her car keys off the nightstand, and headed for the door like a missile. "Is he an animal? I'm calling the cops—no, fuck that, I'm going to his headquarters, and I'm shoving these keys down his throat—"
"You can't!" I practically launched off the bed and grabbed her arm. The movement ripped a sharp cramp through my lower stomach, but I didn't care. "Sam. Stay. Please—just stay with me, okay?"
I didn't tell her anything.
When I showed up at her door that morning, limping, I only said Viktor and I had fought. I didn't say garage. I didn't say the gun with a silencer. I didn't say Russian Bratva. I definitely didn't say what happened that night.
I didn't want to drag Samantha into that underground garage full of brains and blood. I didn't want her living like I did—always feeling those blue eyes on her, waiting.
And there was one truth I couldn't admit out loud, not even to myself: if I said it, I'd have to confess I had fallen for a man who killed without blinking. And even after knowing that, I still couldn't let him go.
Samantha stared at me. "Are you seriously protecting that asshole?"
"I just... need space." I let go and curled back onto the bed, hugging my knees. "Please don't go after him. Don't say his name. Just... act like he never existed."
She watched me for a long time. Like she saw the thing stuck behind my teeth, the thing I couldn't say. She finally stopped pushing, tossed her coat onto a chair, sat down, and wrapped her arms around me from behind.
"Hailey, you know you're my best friend, right?"
I buried my face in her shoulder, breathing in her familiar citrus perfume.
"I know. I love you, Sam."
"I love you too, Hailey."
That night she sat with me through three trashy rom-coms, ordered my favorite Thai, and practically forced me to drink a pot of soup she had completely screwed up.
She was the only person in my world who never lied to me—and the only one I never had to brace myself against.
With her there, the dark didn't feel quite as deep.
Over the next week, Samantha burned vacation days and stayed glued to me. She forced me to eat, rubbed bruise cream into my skin on schedule, and used every ounce of stubborn patience to drag me back from that shredded, ugly love.
The marks faded. The aches eased.
I thought I'd survived the worst of it.
Then Tuesday morning came, and I stared at the small box on the bathroom counter, checking the date on it for the seventh time.
My period was late.
Eleven days late.
I ran like Swiss clockwork. Even when Matthew had been cheating and I'd been barely sleeping and dropped ten pounds, I'd never been late. Not once.
I told myself it was stress. Trauma. Depression. A week of swallowing nothing but tears. Of course my body was messed up.
Still, on my lunch break, I wandered into the drugstore on the corner like I was sleepwalking.
The pregnancy test sat in my drawer for two days. I couldn't even open it.
On the third morning, I forced my hands to tear the wrapper.
Two lines.
The world went quiet.
I couldn't hear Samantha calling through the door. Couldn't hear the traffic outside. Couldn't even hear my own heart pounding itself to death.
I was pregnant.
Viktor's.
"Oh my God." I covered my face, and tears poured through my fingers.
I didn't know what to do. How the hell do you carry a mob boss's baby? His world is blood and bullets. There's no room for weakness.
But when I trembled and pressed my hand to my still-flat stomach, something soft rose up anyway—secret, devastating, and tender.
This was a tether. A bond.
The only thing I have left from a hopeless kind of love.
I locked myself in the room and spiraled. The secret sat on my chest like a boulder.
I told no one. Not even Samantha. And I sure as hell didn't tell Viktor.
After he'd said, cold and final, "You're free," he vanished from my life like he'd never existed.
No texts. No calls.
Like that night—the way we'd fallen apart together—had been a hallucination. Like he'd tossed me away like a broken rag doll and moved on.
I was sitting in the corner of the bed, knees hugged to my chest, staring into nothing when a loud crash shook the room and the bedroom door slammed open.
"Enough! Hailey Woods, your pathetic little depression vacation ends today!"
Samantha tore in like a hurricane.
She wore an aggressively bright red coat and Jimmy Choo heels sharp enough to kill. She marched to my bed and yanked the comforter off me in one brutal pull.
"Sam! What the—give that back!" I yelped as cold air hit my skin. I curled in on myself by instinct.
"What the what?" Samantha planted her hands on her hips and glared down at me, brown eyes blazing.
"I'm digging you out of this moldy tomb.
Look at you. Your hair looks like a bird had built a damn nest in it, and your face is whiter than the wall.
That Siberian piece of shit is out of your life—are you seriously going to bury yourself for some loser who isn't worth it?
Get up. Get dressed. Wash your face. We're leaving. "
"I don't want to go..." I hid my face in my knees, voice thick and raw. "Sam, please. I don't want to go anywhere. It's freezing. I just want to sleep."
"Shut it, sweetheart. Your veto power got officially revoked.
" She didn't buy any of it. She spun around, ripped my closet open, and started digging.
"If that trash didn't come crawling back, that's his loss.
Manhattan girls don't rot in a guest room in the suburbs.
We get dumped, we hit Fifth Avenue and smoke our credit cards. "
She yanked out a soft oatmeal cashmere sweater and a pair of dark skinny jeans, then a thick black coat, and tossed the whole pile at my head.
"Ten minutes." She folded her arms and lifted her brows in challenge. "If you don't change, I'll do it for you. I'll peel your pajamas off myself."
I knew I couldn't win.
Under Samantha's bulldozer energy—pushy as hell, laced with real worry—my resistance crumbled. I sighed and dragged myself out of bed.
Half an hour later, I sat in the passenger seat of her red Audi TT.
The heat blasted. Taylor Swift shook the speakers. Samantha sang along at full volume and drove like she had a personal grudge against traffic, hauling us straight into the busiest stretch of SoHo.
Winter New York looked sharp and alive. Luxury windows glittered. People in designer coats moved fast through the cold.