Chapter 6 #2
“Why not?” I shrug. Rafail stares at me for a moment, then puts his fork down and asks again.
I wipe my mouth with the cool blue linen napkin, toy with my water glass, and answer.
“I hated being poor. For a while I believed that my parents left me because they didn’t want to struggle with the financial burden of having a child they couldn’t afford. ”
“How long before you realized?”
That snaps my attention back to him. “Realized?”
“That they were just selfish assholes.”
“Hmph,” I smile. Then lift my glass to him, and he clinks his with mine. “Too long. And by the time I did, it didn’t matter anymore. I had my grandmother and she has always been more than enough.”
He nods. “Still, if you really wanted to be super wealthy, you could have chosen acting, modeling, singing–”
“If you heard my singing, you would not have added it to the list.” He gives me a smile that almost makes me forget he’s the big bad wolf.
“I guess, I could have tried a lot of other options. But the truth was my grandmother took me to work with her and I fell in love with business. She managed a small trucking company. She was the only woman on the job, surrounded by all these big tough guys but she held the power. Nothing moved without her say so. I was hooked.”
"Control," he says simply. "I grew up with none. My father was a married man from the Ismailov family. In Russia to be Ismailov was to be royalty. And my mother thought she could replace his princess. Having me was part of her plan. It didn’t work.
I was a vnebrachnyy rebenok, which was a nice way of saying I was a Kopile, a bastard.
He gave me nothing but the name. Everything else I earned. "
“I get that. Growing up with nothing makes you either terrified of losing what you have or desperate to get more."
"And which are you?"
"Both." I take a sip of wine. "Terrified of losing Grandma. Desperate to build a life that's stable enough that I never have to make choices like the one I made at that auction."
His expression darkens slightly at the reminder, but he doesn't comment. Just reaches across the table to take my hand, his thumb stroking my knuckles.
We're halfway through the main course when I excuse myself to the restroom. The ladies' room is as elegant as the rest of the restaurant—marble counters, actual hand towels instead of paper, lighting that makes even post-dinner faces look flawless.
I'm washing my hands when the door opens behind me, but I don't pay attention until a male voice speaks.
"You're even more beautiful up close."
I freeze, meeting a stranger's eyes in the mirror. He's older—forties maybe, wearing an expensive suit, and a cloud of alcohol that makes my eyes water. "Excuse me?" I keep my voice cold, professional. "This is the ladies' room."
"I know. I followed you." He moves closer, his hand reaching for me. "Come have a drink with me. Your date won't mind—"
His fingers close around my wrist, and I yank it back. But he holds on, his grip tight enough to hurt.
"Let go." My voice is steady despite my racing heart. "Now."
"Don't be like that. I just want to—"
He's pulling me toward him, using his weight to crush me against the wall.
When I open my mouth to scream, his other hand clamps over it hard enough that my teeth cut into my lip.
He fumbles with his belt with one hand while keeping me pinned, and I understand with crystal clarity why this man followed me into this bathroom.
I bite down hard on the flesh of his palm.
He jerks his hand back, and I suck in a breath to scream, but his fist connects with my face before I can make a sound, an explosion of pain that sends me crashing sideways against the marble counter.
My lip splits open properly now, blood flooding my mouth, stars bursting across my vision.
"Fucking bitch." He's on me again, hand tangling in my hair, yanking my head back hard enough to make my neck scream. I hear the rasp of his zipper—
The bathroom door explodes inward with enough force to crack the frame.
Rafail stands in the doorway, and for a heartbeat the entire world stops. Then his expression shifts from calm to something colder and more lethal than anything I've seen before, and the drunk man's hands go still in my hair.
"Get your fucking hands off of her." His voice is soft. Deadly soft. "Both of them. Now."
The man releases me and I collapse against the wall, legs unable to hold me.
"I was just—we were just—" The guy stumbles backward, hands up. "She came onto me, I swear—"
"Liar." The word drops like a stone. "You followed her. You grabbed her. You. Hit. Her." Rafail’s hand shoots out faster than a blink, closing around the drunk’s throat and slamming him against the wall hard enough to crack the mirror with a loud boom.
"Do you want to watch?"
The question takes a second to penetrate through the ringing in my ears. Watch what? But then I understand: he's asking if I want to watch him kill this man.
I should say no. Should beg for mercy. Should prove I'm still the good person I was before I met him. But I look at the man choking in Rafail's grip—at the smirk that's fading but was there moments ago, at the belt still unbuckled—and I nod. I can’t walk away from this.
He followed me. Hit me. Was going to rape me twenty feet from a dining room full of people and leave.
He's a predator. And Rafail is asking if I want to watch him end that threat permanently.
My split lip throbs with each heartbeat, blood still flowing warm and wet down my chin. I meet Rafail's steel-gray eyes and nod.
"Yes." My voice comes out steady despite the trembling in my hands. "I want him to understand what he tried to do to me."
Rafail's expression flickers with surprise, or maybe approval—before his attention returns to the man whose face is turning purple under his grip.
"You heard her." His voice drops into a register I've never heard before, stripped of anything resembling mercy. "She wants to watch. So I'm going to make this educational."
What follows is a blur of brutal efficiency.
Rafail’s fists connect with the man’s face in a series of blows that sound like meat being tenderized, the crack of bone a sharp counterpoint.
Blood sprays across the marble, and it feels like justice.
The man tries to fight back, tries to beg, but Rafail is methodical, breaking the fingers that grabbed me, the ribs that pressed against me, the face that leered at me.
I watch with a detached fascination that should horrify me.
By the time Rafail finishes, the man is a crumpled, gurgling heap on the blood-spattered marble. I understand something fundamental: I wanted this. I watched a monster get destroyed, and I'm not horrified. I'm not a good person. And right now, I don't care.
Rafail straightens and turns to me, blood coating his knuckles and forearms. His expression shifting from cold killer to something softer when he sees me still pressed against the wall.
"Are you hurt?" His voice is gentle now. "Besides your lip—did he hurt you anywhere else?"
I shake my head, words impossible, and then his hands are on my face—careful despite the blood coating them, tilting my chin up so he can examine my split lip.
"I should kill him again for this," he murmurs, thumb brushing carefully below the cut. "Should make it slower."
"He's already dying." I say. Not a judgement just a fact.
"Not fast enough." His jaw clenches, but then he looks at me. I'm standing here shaking and bloody. "Come. We're leaving."
Daniil appears in the doorway with the kind of timing that suggests he was waiting nearby. Rafail strips off his suit jacket and drapes it around my shoulders despite the blood.
"Take her to the car," he tells Daniil. "I'll handle this."
But I catch his hand before he can turn away. "No. I'm not leaving you here. We go together."
He studies my face for a long moment, then nods. "Together then."
Daniil guides us out through a back exit, and the car is already waiting. I collapse into the back seat, and Rafail slides in beside me, and then we're moving.
My hands are shaking as I dig through my purse for tissues, before finally finding some. When I reach for Rafail's blood-coated knuckles he lets me take his hand.
"It's not mine," he says quietly as I wipe away the evidence.
"I know." I keep cleaning because doing something with my hands helps. "I can tell. You're not hurt."
"Covered in someone else's blood after beating him to death for touching you." His free hand comes up to cup my undamaged cheek. "Are you going to run now? Now that you've seen what I'm capable of?"
"I'm not running." The words come out steadier than I feel. "He tried to rape me and you stopped him. You protected me."
"You watched me kill him." His thumb strokes my cheekbone. "You said yes. You crossed a line tonight, Jana."
"I know." The handkerchief is dark with blood now but I keep working. "And I should be horrified. But he would have done it again. To someone else. Now he can't."
He pulls me against his chest and I let myself sink into his embrace because holding myself together is exhausting.
"You're remarkable," he murmurs against my hair. "Most people would break after what you just went through. But you're here accepting what had to happen."
"I don't feel remarkable." The admission costs me. "I feel like I'm going to shatter if I stop moving. I keep seeing his face when he grabbed me and then seeing it again when you were hitting him."
"Violence leaves marks—on the people who experience it and the people who witness it. But you survived. You're here. You're safe."
"Because of you." I tip my head back to look at him. "Because you came through that door and stopped him."
His expression shifts into something intense and satisfied. "Always. I will always protect you. No matter what it costs. No matter who I have to hurt, kill or destroy."
I don’t know how to respond to that. I don’t want him killing people for me. But I am damn glad he did.
At home Rafail carries me straight to his bathroom despite my protest that I can walk. He sets me on the marble counter and starts the bath running before turning back to me.
"Let me see." His fingers are gentle tilting my chin up under the bright lights, and I watch his jaw clench when he gets a clear view of the damage—the swelling, the blood still seeping, the bruising already starting to darken.
"It's not that bad." The words come out slurred around my injured mouth. "Just split. Will heal."
"He hit you hard enough to split your lip and you're telling me it's not that bad." His voice carries an edge. "I should have made it slower."
"You did enough." I catch his hands, uncurling his fists. "He's dead,” I whisper. “He can't hurt anyone else. It's over. You can't kill what's already dead."
His eyes narrow. “I can find every living relative. Make them know the hurt he caused. Every single one of them dying as I take them apart piece by piece.”
“Or,” I say. “You could take care of me. That’s all I need.”
His eyes hold mine for a long time. When he finally releases me, he puts his forehead to mine, and I barely hear his words. “You’re too good for a man like me.”
I let him undress me. When he lifts me into the bath the hot water finds scrapes I didn't know I had—elbow that hit marble, knees that scraped tile. Every time I wince, his face darkens.
He tends each injury with angry attention, wiping with vicious swipes as if he could clean me not of blood but of the man’s touch. "Stop," I tell him, catching his hand. "It’s over. You saved me."
The words penetrate through his rage, shift his focus. He reaches for the soap and resumes washing me with gentler strokes.
When he's satisfied I'm clean, he helps me from the bath and wraps me in the softest towel before carrying me to his bed.
"Stay here." He strips off his blood-spattered clothes and disappears into the bathroom. When he returns, he's naked and damp and looking at me with an expression I can't read. But I know what I need right now.
"I need you." The words come out raw. "Need you to touch me. Need to feel you instead of him."
"Are you sure? You've been through—"
"I'm sure." I pull him down to me, needing his weight, needing his heat. "Please. I need this."
He kisses me carefully—avoiding my split lip. When he enters me it's slow and careful. The anger is still there, aftershocks that shift beneath his skin. I ignore it, wrap my legs around his waist, and let him pound the rage out, before he drags me into his release.
After, when we're both sated and exhausted, he pulls me against his chest and holds me. His hand skims up and down my side as he cocoons my back.
"You accepted what I had to do tonight," he breathes. "Accepted the violence."
“Accepted but not condoned. I don’t know if I can do that.”
"Fair enough. Just accept that some people are monsters. And that sometimes monsters need to fight monsters."
Fight or kill? I hold that question inside. Still processing. Still deciding if it’s okay to live in a world where you just don’t call the authorities. His arms tighten around me and I hold onto his forearms, carefully avoiding his wrists.
I fall asleep wrapped in a killer’s arms.
Maybe I’m the monster.