Chapter 4 Not Into Cute Anymore
Not Into Cute Anymore
—Kira—
Valeria’s apartment was a goddamn dream—tall windows stretching from floor to ceiling, sleek Italian furniture, thick designer rugs soft enough to sink your toes into, and modern art splashed across the walls in bold, chaotic strokes that made you stare and think, what the hell is that?
Very Valeria. And the view of the Dnipro made you feel like the whole city was yours to toy with.
Downtown Kyiv, of course. Paid for by the kind of parents who send you abroad to study, then drag you back when you fail at life too hard.
In Valeria’s case, that meant sleeping with too many rich boys in London and doing so much coke she once mistook an electric toothbrush for a vibrator and still didn’t stop.
Her Ibiza-based mom and stepdad shipped her home, dumped her into law school, and threw in a luxury apartment as a consolation prize.
That’s where we met.
First lecture. Ten minutes in and already bored out of our minds.
She leaned over, whispered something wildly inappropriate about the professor, and I laughed out loud, drawing the whole class’s attention to me.
We skipped the rest of the class together and never really stopped after that.
Something about her chaos matched mine in a way that made too much sense.
We clicked instantly.
Later, when we were drunk enough for questions that usually stayed buried, I asked her why she didn’t just go back to Ibiza. Her parents were there. The sun, the parties—everything she actually liked. Sounded a hell of a lot better than Kyiv.
She went quiet for a second.
Then she shrugged, like it didn’t matter.
“Can’t stand him,” she said lightly.
Her stepdad.
The way she said it made something in my chest tighten—too flat, too final. Like there was a whole story sitting behind those three words, and none of it was something you wanted to hear.
So I didn’t ask.
She was a good friend. Not the kind I could count on if I was bleeding out on a sidewalk—unless I asked her to snort something with me first. But she was fun.
Loud. Chaotic. Loyal in her own reckless way.
She didn’t care about rules, didn’t care about limits.
Short, all sharp edges and sweetness laced with arsenic.
Platinum blonde hair cut into a messy bob, bright blue eyes that sparkled with trouble, and the kind of laugh that made boys want to ruin their lives.
She looked like a doll, but she partied like a demon.
There was no off-switch. No brakes. She drank like it was hydration, fucked like it was therapy, and did enough coke to power a small nightclub.
She was constantly asking me when I was finally going to let someone pop my cherry, and when we were drunk, she gave full-blown tutorials—graphic, dramatic, and ridiculous—on how to ride a guy or suck him off properly.
I always laughed. Told her she was insane.
Told her that my standards were higher than ‘he showed up and had a pulse.’ But she never stopped trying to convince me.
This afternoon we were lying on her massive bed, joints in hand, legs tangled like bored heiresses playing pretend. Sunlight streamed through the curtains like it didn’t know we’d been skipping lectures all week.
“You know your father’s gonna explode if he ever finds out you’ve been spending your ‘study hours’ over here,” Valeria said, exhaling a perfect ring of smoke.
“Yeah, well, no one really cares what I do during school,” I muttered, blowing my own smoke toward the ceiling.
People always assume I have guards trailing me like I’m some princess in a bad mafia movie.
I don’t.
Not in school.
Father would never admit it out loud, but he considers the campus neutral ground. Half the students are children of ministers, oligarchs, judges, or men just as dangerous as him. No one is stupid enough to start a war in broad daylight over lecture notes and overpriced coffee.
The university has its own security—discreet, well-paid, and loyal to the families who fund the place. Including mine.
My driver drops me at the gate in the morning. Picks me up from the same gate in the afternoon.
What I do between those hours?
Technically my business.
As long as I’m back where I’m supposed to be when the car pulls up.
Father doesn’t worry about me getting kidnapped on campus.
He worries about me embarrassing him.
And that’s a very different kind of cage.
Valeria rolled onto her stomach, propping her chin in her hands with a grin. “Okay, enough about school. I want details about that shameless little dance you had with Ruslan.”
I groaned. “Oh god, him?”
“What? He’s cute. And he’s coming over.”
I sat up. “Lera! Are you serious?”
She shrugged. “He asked if you were here. What was I supposed to say—no? I thought you liked him.”
I rolled my eyes. “Flirting with him when I’m drunk doesn’t mean I want to date the guy. Or even screw him. Especially not after meeting...”
“Ah yes,” she said, leaning in with a wicked smile. “Murder Daddy.”
I nearly choked on my joint. “Can you not call him that?”
“What? It fits. He’s what—twenty-eight? So, in his prime. Peak dick era. You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of him, would you?”
I gave her a look. “You’re actually stupid. You mean to tell me you missed the six-foot-three walking felony throwing me over his shoulder? And no, I don’t have a photo, and he’s not on social—too busy making bodies disappear, probably.”
She blinked, then snorted. “Girl, I did so many drugs that night I barely remember getting to the club. Let alone your tall, tattooed, terrifying, annoyingly hot babysitter.”
I flopped back against the pillows. “You need to stop doing so much shit. It’s going to kill you.”
“At least I’ll die having fun.”
“You’re insane.”
“And you’re into him.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
She grinned, satisfied. “He’s gonna ruin you.”
I exhaled a thin cloud and whispered, “I really fucking hope so.”
Then the doorbell rang.
Valeria rolled off the bed with a dramatic sigh. “He’s your boy toy, babe. Go perform.”
“Hard pass.”
I stayed sprawled out on the soft silk of her ridiculous bed, the ceiling blurring slightly as the next hit of the joint buzzed in my head. My body was warm, relaxed. My mind? A fucking mess.
I didn’t have the energy for Ruslan. He had feelings for me—I knew that. Grinding on him at the club was a mistake. A dumb, reckless, drunk mistake. But the second Maksym walked in, something inside me snapped. I wanted him to see. I wanted to make him jealous.
It wasn’t rational. The man treats me like I’m a problem he didn’t ask for.
But when he threw me over his shoulder and carried me out of that club like I weighed nothing—fuck, that was the most exciting thing that had happened to me in years.
Every time I see him, something in me lights up.
It’s like my body knows he’s dangerous and wants more of it anyway.
I know what they say about him. That he’s done horrific things, left bodies behind, works in the shadows.
And maybe I should care. Maybe a normal person would.
But I don’t. Probably because I’m not normal.
Because nothing can scare me more than what happened when my father became the most dangerous man in Ukraine and the most wanted man to kill.
The night they attacked our house broke something in me.
Since then, fear just doesn’t work the same.
The sound of heavy footsteps broke through the haze—Ruslan, of course, making an entrance.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. The kind of guy who probably spent more time picking out his outfit than I did.
Always in some tailored, preppy suit like he was on his way to a yacht club meeting.
Expensive watch, a tiny silver ring in his ear, and that brunette, slightly long curly hair that took effort to look careless.
Cute, sure—in the way puppies are cute before they start humping your leg.
He had that slick, effortless charm that used to do something for me back when I was seventeen and didn’t know better. But now? Cute didn’t do it for me anymore. Cute didn’t make my thighs clench or my stomach flutter.
He didn’t even ask before lying down next to me on the bed, his cologne wafting over like he thought it might change my mind about him. I kept my eyes on the ceiling, unimpressed, pretending he wasn’t there.
Then he had the audacity to reach over, pluck the joint from between my fingers, and slide it back between my lips, his fingers deliberately brushing my skin like it was supposed to spark something.
It didn’t spark anything. If anything, it made me want to slap his hand away. Still, I took a slow drag from the joint, then snatched it right back from his hand like it hadn’t happened.
“If you girls want,” he said with a lazy, too-confident grin, looking between us, “I’ve got something stronger.”
Valeria groaned and rolled her eyes. “We still need to get back to school, dumbass.”
“Not now,” he said with a wink. “Just saying. I tried this new stuff once—had me so high I thought I was having a conversation with my dead cat.”
I turned my head, blinking at him. “What the fuck did you just say?”
He laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever told. “She was very wise. Gave great advice.”
Valeria cackled, high and leaning into the pillows like she didn’t have a care in the world.
I shook my head. “I like being high. Not brain-dead.”
Ruslan just shrugged, clearly not offended. “Suit yourself. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
The room grew quiet for a beat. Then he casually threw in, “So where’d you disappear to the other night? Club was half-dead after you left.”
He smirked, clearly annoyed. “What, was it your new father’s prison pet that dragged you out?”
My jaw clenched.
I could make jokes about Maksym. I could roll my eyes at him, maybe even call him an asshole to his face. But hearing Ruslan say it—mocking, smug—set something sharp off in me.