Chapter 11 – Drew
The safe house smelled like old wood and rain-soaked concrete. Nothing fancy, just a two-bedroom setup in a quiet Seattle neighborhood where no one asked questions and everyone minded their own damn business. Exactly what we needed.
I dropped my duffel by the door and watched Cassandra move through the space like she was cataloging exits. Always calculating. Always prepared to run. It made something twist in my chest, sharp and uncomfortable.
“I’m ordering food,” I said, pulling out my phone. “You eat seafood?”
She glanced at me from the window, where she’d been checking the street view. “I eat everything.”
“Good to know.”
I placed the order—crab cakes, octopus rolls, pork entree, enough to make sure neither of us had an excuse to leave tonight. When I hung up, she’d disappeared into her room. The door clicked shut with a finality that felt deliberate.
I stood there like an idiot, staring at that closed door, wondering when the hell I’d become the kind of man who cared about closed doors.
Forty minutes later, I knocked. “Food’s here.”
Silence. Then the door opened, and every coherent thought in my head evaporated.
She stood there in shorts—black, fitted, ending mid-thigh—and a simple tank top that clung to curves I’d been trying not to think about for weeks.
Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders, those blue strands catching the hallway light.
No makeup. No armor. Just her, looking soft and dangerous and completely unaware of what she was doing to me.
My breath stalled in my chest.
“Smells good,” she said, walking past me toward the kitchen.
I followed because my body moved on autopilot when she was near, some primal part of my brain overriding common sense.
We sat at the small table, food spread between us like a buffer zone.
She picked up a crab cake, took a bite, and made this small sound of appreciation that went straight to my groin.
I shifted in my seat, willing my body to behave. But then she reached for an octopus roll, and a smudge of sauce caught on her thumb. Without thinking, she brought it to her mouth and licked it off, tongue sliding across her skin with casual efficiency.
I nearly groaned out loud.
Heat pulsed low in my abdomen, spreading through my veins like gasoline looking for a match. I gripped my fork harder than necessary, focused on the pork on my plate, on anything except the way her lips moved or how her throat worked when she swallowed.
If I said what I was feeling right now, if I let even one word slip, I’d either kiss her until we both forgot how to breathe, or I’d destroy everything we’d been carefully not building between us.
So I kept the mask on. Ate my food. Pretended I wasn’t hyper-aware of every breath she took, every shift of her body, every time her eyes flicked to mine and then away.
“You’re quiet,” she said eventually.
“Tired.”
“Liar.”
I looked up. She was watching me with those sharp brown eyes that saw too much, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. Not cruel. Almost…playful.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She speared another piece of octopus. “I just noticed. You get quiet when you’re thinking too hard.”
“And you get reckless when you’re comfortable.”
Her smile faded. “I’m not comfortable.”
“You’re eating in shorts and a tank top in a safe house with a man you barely know. That’s comfortable.”
“I know you well enough.”
“Do you?”
She set down her fork, leaned back in her chair. “You’re Russian. You’re ruthless. You hate being told what to do. You fly planes when you need to clear your head, and you watch people like you’re waiting for them to slip up.” She tilted her head. “Close enough?”
Too close. Close enough to make my skin itch with the accuracy of it.
“You missed one thing,” I said.
“What’s that?”
I held her gaze, let the truth sit between us for a moment. “I don’t hate you.”
Something flickered across her face—surprise, maybe, or confusion. Then she picked up her fork again and broke eye contact. “Noted.”
We finished eating in silence, but it wasn’t the heavy kind. It was the kind where words weren’t necessary because we were both thinking too much anyway.
After dinner, I stood and started clearing plates. She moved to help, and our hands brushed over the same dish. The contact was electric, brief, but enough to make my pulse spike. She pulled back first.
“I’ll be busy tomorrow,” I said, focusing on the sink. “Meeting some club owners about security upgrades. Might be late.”
“Okay.”
“You good on your own?”
“I survived twenty-one years before you showed up, Drew. I think I can handle a day in Seattle.”
I turned to face her. She was leaning against the counter, arms crossed, guarded again. Always guarded.
“Father Vincent,” I said. “We’re visiting him when?”
Her jaw tightened. “I’m visiting him tomorrow. Alone.”
“Cassandra—”
“Don’t.” She pushed off the counter. “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. I don’t need advice or warnings or whatever protective bullshit you think you owe me.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“Good. Then we understand each other.”
She disappeared into her room, and this time the door closing felt like a wall going up. Permanent. Impenetrable.
I stood in the kitchen, hands braced on the counter, trying to remember why the hell I’d agreed to this trip in the first place.
***
The club was all low lighting and expensive liquor. I’d been here for two hours, sitting across from a club owner named Marcus who talked too much and listened too little.
But the contract was almost finalized. Just a few more signatures, a few more assurances that Bratva would provide the best security in the Pacific Northwest, and I could get the hell out of here.
Then I saw her.
My brain registered her presence before my eyes caught up—some sixth sense that always seemed to know when she was near. I turned my head, and there she was, sitting in a booth near the back. Not alone.
With a man.
He was older—maybe early forties—and wearing a suit that screamed federal employee. They sat close—too close—leaning toward each other like they were sharing secrets. He said something, and she smiled. Not the fake smile she gave clients or the sharp smile she used as a weapon. A real smile.
My blood went cold, then hot.
Marcus was still talking, something about payment schedules and contractor agreements, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. All I could hear was the rush of blood in my ears, the pounding of my heart against my ribs.
She laughed. Actually laughed. Her head tilted back, exposing the long line of her throat, and the man’s hand moved to her arm. Just a casual touch, fingers resting on her forearm, but it might as well have been a brand.
My fingers curled into fists under the table.
“Mr. Kamarov?” Marcus’s voice cut through the haze. “You still with me?”
“Yeah.” I forced my attention back to him, to the contract spread between us. “Payment in installments. Monthly. Standard terms.”
“Perfect. If you’ll just sign here—”
I barely looked at where he was pointing. Grabbed the pen, scrawled my name across the signature line. Every smile she gave the stranger felt like a punch to the gut, every lean-in like a knife between my ribs.
I didn’t understand it. This rage. This territorial, possessive fury that made me want to cross the room and tear that man’s hand off her arm.
We weren’t together. We’d fucked twice, and both times she’d made it clear it meant nothing.
Just scratching an itch. Just two people working something out of their systems.
So why did watching her with him feel like betrayal?
Marcus poured champagne, held up his glass for a toast. I ignored it, downed a shot of vodka instead. Then another. The burn helped, but not enough.
She stood. So did the man. They moved toward the exit together, and something inside me snapped.
I signed the rest of the contract without reading it, shook Marcus’s hand without feeling it, and bolted.
***
She was already inside the safe house when I stormed through the door. I slammed it behind me hard enough to rattle the frame, and she spun around from where she’d been standing in the kitchen, eyes wide.
“Did that man fuck you?” The words came out raw, violent.
“What?” She stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
Maybe I had.
“You heard me.” I stalked toward her. “Did you let him fuck you?”
“Drew, what the hell are you—”
“Answer the question, Cassandra. Did he touch you?”
Confusion flashed across her face, then fury. “What are you talking about?”
I grabbed her wrist, backed her up until she hit the wall. Not hard. Never hard. But with enough force to make my point. “The man in the club. The one you were sitting with, smiling at, leaving with. Did. He. Touch. You?”
Her breath came faster, chest rising and falling. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Answer me.”
“No!” She shoved at my chest. “I didn’t let anyone touch me. Not him. Not anyone. Happy?”
The relief that crashed through me was dizzying, followed immediately by something darker. Hunger. Need. The kind that had been building since the moment I saw her in those shorts.
“Why?” I asked, voice dropping to something dangerous.
“Why what?”
“Why hasn’t anyone touched you?”
Her jaw clenched. She tried to push me again, but I caught her wrists, pinned them gently against the wall on either side of her head. Our bodies were almost flush now, close enough that I could feel her heat, smell her shampoo mixed with something uniquely her.
“Because,” she said through gritted teeth, “I didn’t want them to.”
“And me?” I leaned in, lips brushing her ear. “Do you want me to?”
She didn’t answer. But her pulse thundered against my fingertips where I held her wrists, and her breathing changed, quickened.
I pulled back enough to look at her face. “Cassandra.”