Chapter 18 Ivy
IVY
Come the next morning, when I wake up to a sore body and an even sorer core, the first thing that hits me is how utterly stupid I am.
Last night felt good in the moment, but now, in the gray light bleeding through the curtains, reality presses in hard.
I’m not here because I chose to be. I’m here because Maksim Antonov took me, stole me, because he operates in a world I have no business being in. If I keep letting myself get tangled up with him and his mess, I’m going to end up buried so deep in this mess, I’ll never find my way out.
Or I’m going to wind up dead.
I have to be smart. Strategic.
Finding a way out isn’t going to be easy.
Not when I’m trapped in an unfamiliar mansion in a city I don’t know, surrounded by people who think I’m the enemy or don’t even know I exist. The one place I don’t want to end up in is some basement interrogation room that I know without a doubt that man has.
My getaway needs to be a clean break.
By the time lunch comes, my chance of getting out of here practically falls into my lap.
The staff are busy preparing for some huge dinner tonight, darting in and out of the kitchen with their arms full of platters, barely glancing my way while I’m at the table scarfing down my panini and roasted green beans.
The guards stationed just outside the archway seem more interested in talking among themselves than watching me.
Remaining quiet, keeping myself small among the chaos, may actually be my ticket to remaining invisible.
It’s risky but it’s my only shot.
I wait until no one’s looking, then quietly push my chair back and slip down the hall. My heart’s in my throat as I find one of the side corridors that leads toward the back of the house. Sure enough, one of the service doors is cracked open for ventilation, left unattended.
A tiny sliver of cold air leaks through the gap and kisses my skin, stinging my cheeks, and for a second I hesitate.
But only a second.
Because then I bolt.
The door groans against its hinges as I shove it open and spill out into the frigid air, the sudden drop in temperature hitting me hard. My sweater does nothing against the wind. It cuts through me cruelly, making my teeth chatter, but I don’t care.
I keep running.
My feet sink into the snow with every step, ankles soaked through in seconds. The yard stretches longer than I realized, the back road beyond the iron fence looking miles away despite being maybe thirty yards ahead.
I’m halfway across the yard when I hear shouting behind me. I risk a glance back over my shoulder and my stomach drops—two of Maksim’s guards.
Big ones.
“Shit,” I breathe and push harder, legs screaming as I sprint for the fence.
Climbing it takes the wind out of me, but my adrenaline is working hard, pushing me past my limits when I hear them gaining on me, boots pounding behind me like thunder on the snow-packed earth.
I hurl myself over the top of it and into the street beyond, straight into the path of an oncoming car slowly making its way past the estate. Tires screech, brakes squeal, and the driver leans on the horn as I slam my hands against the hood.
The second the car stops, I dart to the side and yank the door open to the back and throw myself inside.
“Drive!” I shout, breathless. “Go! Go, go, go!”
The driver stares at me in shock, babbling something in Russian, but when he glances up and sees two huge men climbing the fence after me, he gets the message. The car lurches forward so fast, I almost slam into the seat in front of me.
Through the rear window, I watch the guards shrinking into the distance, their faces still shouting threats I can’t hear over the pounding of my own pulse.
Holy shit, I did it.
My fingers tremble in my lap, soaked with cold, numb at the tips.
As relieved as I am, a deep dread settles in my stomach, making the shaking in my hands worse.
Because now that I’m moving, now that I’m in this car and the guards are no longer in sight, another thought creeps in… cold and insidious.
I just fled from a man who doesn’t tolerate disrespect.
And this is one of the most disrespectful things I’ve ever done.
Those words echo in my skull like a warning siren, looping over and over with each heartbeat that punches against my ribcage while I try to collect my breath.
I did the one thing he probably never predicted I’d do. The one thing people in his world don’t get to do unless they are welcoming the kiss of death.
But I have no choice.
Getting away from Maksim means saving my life. I already have a target on my back from whoever pulled my information before I came here. Spending more time with his Bratva, more time with him, means that target only grows bigger by the day.
There isn’t a lot in my life I have to live for, but damn if I’m going to go down without a fight.
The driver drops me off a few minutes later on a busy street and speeds away, probably figuring that whatever trouble I’m in, he wants no part of it. Fine with me, I don’t need him. Now, I just need distance.
The snow’s falling heavier now, melting as soon as it hits my overheated skin.
As long as I can make it back to Sergei’s and grab my things, I can be gone.
I don’t care where as long as it’s nowhere near here.
Anywhere is better than staying here, trapped under the thumb of a damn Bratva, even with the apparent target on my back.
What I didn’t think about, and what I realize almost immediately after I walk a block, is that Maksim’s reach doesn’t just stop at his front gates.
He’s got this city wired directly to him, invisible and inescapable.
All it takes is one phone call, and I might as well have a neon sign over my head flashing PROPERTY OF MAKSIM ANTONOV. RETURN IMMEDIATELY.
I’m not even two blocks from where the driver left me when it happens.
Arms like steel wrap around me from behind, jerking me back so hard my feet leave the ground. A cry rips out of me but is muffled instantly by a hand slamming over my mouth. I thrash in the stranger’s grip, throwing my elbow back as hard as I can.
It lands with a sickening thud against something solid, but the man doesn’t so much as grunt. He only tightens his grip until I’m practically crushed.
“Let go!” I try to scream, but it’s lost beneath his palm.
The hand around my waist locks me to him as he drags me down a narrow alleyway between two buildings. The walls close in like jaws, my boots skid against the pavement, desperate to find traction. I claw at him, nails raking across any patch of exposed skin I can reach—a wrist, his fingers.
Nothing deters him.
My mind is white-hot with panic.
The next thing I know, I’m being shoved through the back door of a small building close by, a shop, maybe, straight into a dim storage room cluttered with shelves and crates filled with junk.
The second his grip loosens to shut the door behind us, I twist hard, throwing myself away from him and dropping to the floor. I scramble for the nearest shelf like it’s a lifeline, fingers reaching for anything I can use as a weapon as I pull myself up onto my feet again.
But he’s faster. His hand closes around my upper arm like a vise, yanking me back so hard I crash to my knees. The pain explodes up through my shoulder, sharp and sickeningly familiar.
A sound rips out of me, a half sob, half gasp, as a cold memory resurfaces from my childhood—the diving board accident in sixth grade, the way my arm snapped when I landed wrong on the solid tile below it from slipping.
This is just like that, only worse because this time, the threat isn’t my clumsiness.
It’s a strange man I don’t know or recognize.
I claw at his hand again, trying to dig my nails in deep enough to make him flinch, but he doesn’t. Not even a twitch in his face to give away that I’m inflicting any kind of pain.
A deep sense of fear shoots through me.
Instead, he looks down at me with the kind of expression you’d give to a pile of trash dumped at your front door. Stone-cold. Disdainful. His eyes are so dark, they look black.
“You,” he says, his voice low and accented, each word like a bullet shot through me, “are more trouble than you are worth.”
My throat works around the lump of fear and humiliation lodged there, and I whisper, “Please, let me go.”
It’s pathetic, I know. But begging is the only card I have left.
The worst part is, he doesn’t even acknowledge the plea, just keeps his grip locked like a man holding onto a wild animal as he reaches into his coat.
My stomach plummets then because I see it—a gun, strapped to his hip.
I freeze. Every muscle in my body locks up as cold dread pours over me. There’s no fight left in my limbs, just a flood of instinct screaming, don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t make it worse when his fingers brush over the side of it.
He pulls out a phone instead of unstrapping the weapon, but somehow, that feels worse. I watch, wide-eyed, as he taps the screen and lifts the phone to his ear and says a handful of low, clipped words that I don’t understand.
But I don’t need to. I hear the tone and recognize it for what it is.
He’s reporting in.
I’m being returned back to my owner.
The call ends in seconds. The man slides the phone back into his coat without ceremony, as if this whole thing is just business as usual.
It probably is.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to hold it together despite the tears burning at the corners of them. I made it less than two blocks and Maksim Antonov already has his claws back in me again.
Figures.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, but it feels like an eternity.
When the door to the back of the shop finally opens with a horrendously loud creaking, my entire body flinches.
When I turn, Maksim is there. He is a monolith in the doorway, broad-shouldered and brimming with a quiet fury so palpable, it steals the breath right from my lungs.
The room around me shrinks.
“Thank you, Lev,” he says without looking at the man still holding me by the arm. His voice is deceptively calm. “You may leave us.”
Lev doesn’t argue. He simply tugs me up to my feet and releases my arm and walks away like this is all routine—dragging back runaway girls to their furious keepers.
He leaves the same way we’d come, the door shutting behind him with a screech and a soft click of the latch, sealing me in with the man I’d risked my life to run from.
For a moment, we’re both silent. Unmoving.
I know I should step back and put some distance between us. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to do exactly that—to create space in order to protect myself, to run again if I can—but my feet stay rooted to the ground no matter how hard I try to move them.
His eyes drag over me from head to toe in a slow, deliberate sweep, cataloging everything from the smudges on my jeans from being dragged into this shop, the dirt on my sweater from throwing myself over the hood of that guy’s car, and even how I’m still catching my breath.
He sees the strain in my posture. The shaking in my finger.
He lets me stand there in this awful quiet while he’s deciding exactly how much trouble I’m in. Or worse, exactly how much he’s going to enjoy making me pay for embarrassing him.
I open my mouth to speak, to apologize or… explain or maybe just plead for my life, but he doesn’t let a single syllable leave my lips.
“Don’t,” he says sharply, and my jaw snaps shut like a trap. “I’m not in the mood for your lies today, Ivy.”
He circles me like a panther then, slowly, with his hands fisted loosely at his sides. I can’t help how quickly my eyes dart down to his hip, to the place where his companion’s gun had been strapped and checking to see if he is wearing a matching set.
Relief floods through me when I realize there isn’t one there.
But it only lasts for a moment
“Tell me something. Did you really think you could disappear and I wouldn’t find you? That this city, my city, would protect you from me?”
My throat tightens.
“You don’t know what you’ve done, running away like that,” he murmurs, and for a second, there’s something softer beneath his voice. Sadness, maybe. Or disappointment. But it vanishes as quickly as it comes.
“Please,” I choke out. “Let me go.”