Chapter Five #2
“You started the debt. You lied to me about the deadline. You gave Gennady a way to put his hands into my life. Yes. You did those things.”
He sucked in a breath.
I didn’t soften it yet. If I softened it too soon, he would hide inside my forgiveness and call that punishment.
“But I made the choice to go,” I said. “That part is mine.”
“No. Don’t do that. Don’t make it clean.”
“It isn’t clean. None of this is clean.”
“He said you stood on a stage.” His voice broke lower. “He said men bid.”
My stomach twisted.
Vadim’s expression changed. The room seemed to darken around him.
“He said that to hurt you,” I said.
“It worked.”
“I know.”
“He said he won.”
“He did.”
Petya’s breath stopped.
I forced myself to say the rest before he filled the silence with worse. “Gennady manipulated the auction. Vadim came for me, but he got there after the sale was called. He took me before Gennady could.”
“And I’m supposed to thank him?”
“No. You’re supposed to stay alive and stop letting shame drive.”
“I can fix this.”
“You can’t pay Gennady.”
“I can find money.”
“You can’t.”
“I can go to him.”
“You will not go to him.”
My voice hit the walls.
Vadim moved one step closer, then stopped.
I lowered my voice because Petya didn’t need volume. He needed a sister who sounded like she meant every word.
“You’re not going to Gennady. You’re not paying him extra because he thinks I was something he lost. I’m not a broken bottle he gets to charge you for.”
Petya made a ragged sound. “Nadia.”
“No. Listen to me. Gennady does not want money. He wants you desperate enough to walk into his hands. He wants me ashamed enough to believe that what happened last night belongs to him. It doesn’t.”
“Does it belong to Sorin?”
My gaze lifted to Vadim.
He heard the question. I knew he heard it.
His face stayed hard, but something moved in his eyes that wasn’t anger. Not at me.
“No,” I said.
The word landed in the room between us.
Vadim didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away. He only watched me, still as stone, letting me say the thing he had to let me say.
“I belong to myself,” I told Petya. “That was the point you missed before you ever walked into that gambling room. Gennady missed it. Every man in that auction room missed it. Do not miss it too because you feel guilty.”
Petya breathed once. Then again.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked.
“No.”
“Are you saying that because he is standing there?”
“Yes, he’s standing here. No, I’m not saying it because of that.”
Vadim’s mouth tightened at the corner.
“You can talk?” Petya asked. “Really talk?”
“I’m talking.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.” My fingers loosened around the sheet. “Vadim didn’t force me. Not last night. Not like that.”
Petya went quiet for so long I looked at the screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
The words were small.
Petya hated small things. Small rooms. Small men. Small choices. Small apologies that couldn’t carry what they needed to carry.
“I know,” I said.
“No, you don’t.” His voice roughened. “You can’t. I’m sitting here breathing because you went into that place. I can’t make that right.”
“You can start by not making it worse.”
“I don’t know how to sit still with this.”
“You learn.”
“That’s easy for you to say?”
A laugh left me, sharp and tired. “No. It is not easy for me to say from a Bratva penthouse after a virgin auction.”
His breath hitched. He stayed with me anyway.
I swallowed. “I love you. I need you alive more than I need you brave.”
“I’m not brave.”
“You’re angry. That is cheaper and easier. Don’t confuse them.”
Petya muttered something in Russian.
Vadim looked toward the window. His shoulders eased by a fraction.
“Don’t run,” I said. “Don’t call Gennady. Don’t answer any number you don’t know. Don’t leave wherever Lev put you.”
Petya hesitated. “Lev is the bald one?”
“Probably.”
“He looks like he wants to bite people.”
“Then don’t make him want to bite you.”
Petya let out one rough breath. Not quite a laugh. Not peace either. Just enough air to keep him from breaking apart on the phone.
“Nadia,” he said. “This is bad.”
“I know.”
“I’m scared.”
That reached me harder than the crash, harder than the threat, harder than his first reckless promise to kill Vadim Sorin.
My brother, proud and furious and twenty years old, had finally said the cleanest truth in the room.
“I am too,” I said.
“Are you coming home?”
For a second, I couldn’t speak.
My gaze dropped to the silk robe on my thighs, the tray of untouched breakfast, the black glass of the windows beyond Vadim, and the man himself standing in morning light with blood healing across the knuckles he’d split on Gennady’s mouth.
Home.
The apartment with cold floors and bad locks wasn’t safe anymore. Maybe it hadn’t been safe for a long time. Maybe I had mistaken familiar for free because the alternative was admitting how few choices I had left.
“I don’t know when I can see you,” I said. “But I’m not walking back into Gennady’s reach to prove something.”
“Good,” Petya said, so fiercely that my chest hurt. “Good. Don’t.”
“I need you to promise me the same.”
He breathed out. “I promise.”
“Say the whole thing.”
“Nadia.”
“Say it.”
“I won’t go to Gennady. I won’t answer him. I won’t leave the apartment unless Lev’s men take me.”
“Thank you.”
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“Do you hate me?”
The question came so quietly I almost missed it.
My eyes burned.
“No,” I said. “I’m furious with you. I’m scared for you. I may yell at you for several years when we have time. But I do not hate you.”
His breath broke.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too.”
A knock sounded on Petya’s end of the call. A muffled voice said something. Petya answered away from the phone, then came back.
“Lev says I have to hang up because they’re changing my phone.”
“Then listen to him.”
“I don’t like him.”
“You don’t have to like him. You have to survive him.”
“He says the same thing about me.”
This time, the breath that left me almost became a laugh. “That sounds fair.”
“Nadia?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t let Sorin think saving me means he gets to keep you.”
I looked at Vadim again.
His eyes met mine without apology and without defense.
“He doesn’t think that,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
I held Vadim’s gaze. “I’m sure he’s going to hear it if he tries.”
Petya was quiet for a second. “Good.”
The call ended.
I kept the phone at my ear after the line went dead.
My hand had started shaking.
Vadim crossed the room then. Not before. Not during. Only after Petya was gone and the silence left space for me to fall apart if I wanted.
I lowered the phone.
“What did Lev say?” I asked.
“Gennady reached Petya through an old contact from the gambling room. The number is being traced. Petya’s phone is being replaced. He will be moved again before noon.”
“Because Gennady knows where he is?”
“Because Gennady knows he can reach him.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” Vadim stopped in front of me. “It is enough.”
My eyes stung harder. I hated that. “He told Petya I was a loss he had to pay for.”
“I heard.”
“Of course you did.”
“I didn’t listen because I wanted your pain.”
“I know.”
His face changed.
Maybe he’d expected me to fight him there. Maybe I’d expected it too.
I set my phone down on the bed. “Do you think he’ll really go after Petya?”
“Gennady will try to use whatever door he can find.”
“And Petya is a door.”
“To you,” Vadim said. “Yes.”
I looked down at my bare knees below the robe. The silk had slipped open enough to show the inside of my thigh, and a flush crept over my skin that had nothing to do with embarrassment. I remembered Vadim’s hand there while Petya’s broken voice stayed in my ear.
I pulled the robe tighter. The silk dragged across my nipples and made my breath catch.
Vadim saw it.
He looked away first.
“I need to get dressed,” I said.
“Irina brought clothes. They’re in the dressing room.”
“Did she pick them, or did you?”
“I told her warm. Soft. Nothing that made you feel staged.”
My throat tightened before I could stop it. “That’s very specific.”
“The auction house dressed you for men to look at.” His voice lowered. “That will not happen under my roof.”
Under my roof.
The words should have grated.
They didn’t.
I stood, holding the robe closed. “And what happens under your roof?”
“Today?”
“Start there.”
“You eat. You speak to your brother again when it is safe. You tell me what you need. I keep Kask away from you while I end this.”
“End this how?”
His eyes went cold. “Permanently enough that he does not reach for you again.”
A chill moved over my arms.
I had asked. He had answered. I could not pretend I didn’t understand the shape of it.
“Do I get a say?”
“In what?”
“In what you do because of me.”
Vadim’s jaw moved once. “Because of you, I would burn men out of my city until the smoke taught the rest manners.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No. It is what I want to do. The answer is that you get the truth from me before I act where it affects you.”
“Before?”
“When time allows.”
I stared at him.
His mouth tightened. “I will not lie to make that sound softer.”
“Good. I’m tired of soft lies.”
He moved closer by one slow step. “Nadia.”
There was no command in it. No rough little order. Just my name, spoken like a hand held out.
I looked at his hand.
He had not lifted it.
The choice sat there anyway.
I stepped toward him.
Vadim went still.
I touched his injured knuckles first. The skin was swollen across two of them, split where he’d hit Gennady. I turned his hand over, palm up. Heavy. Warm. Capable of so much damage. Capable of holding a glass of water out to me like it mattered whether I drank.
“He bled on you,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The word left me before I could make it prettier.
Vadim’s eyes darkened.
I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the swelling. “Does that shock you?”
“No.”
“It probably should.”
“Why?”
“Because decent women are supposed to be horrified by violence.”