Chapter 3 - Lily
The walls are almost agonizingly white, and the fluorescent light above my head flickers occasionally, straining my eyes even more. There isn’t a single window, but I notice the drain in the center of the floor, and a camera mounted in the left corner.
I don’t even want to know.
My stomach hasn’t stopped aching since the one man hauled me in with something covering my head, only to leave me with cuffs on my wrists and far too many fears ramming against my skull.
At the very least, I want to know where I am, but I have no clue. The room feels cold and almost stale, like it’s underground, but that’s all I can gather.
As much as it looks like an interrogation room, I know full well it isn’t a police station—not after what I saw.
With the metal cuffs inhibiting my movements, I can’t ignore how little control I have over the situation. How I can’t do anything but sit in the metal chair at the table and wait.
I try my hardest to stay calm and breathe through it, but regardless of my efforts, I can’t make sense of what’s going on.
Then the door opens, and my heart nearly stops.
I half expect the other man to come in, but someone else does instead. Someone slightly taller but similar in muscle mass.
As I meet his gaze, I immediately freeze.
My eyes widen, not expecting to see that face ever again.
He stops, too, almost looking like he’s been punched in the gut. Just as stunned, he doesn’t move a muscle.
At first, I half-believe that I’m only imagining things. That I’m hallucinating or something.
But with the way his brows furrow and recognition floods his features, he knows me. And I know him.
And it suddenly makes sense as to why the other man looked so familiar to me. He had to be related to him in some way.
“Mikhail?”
As much as my confusion makes me want to believe it isn’t him, I know it is.
“Lily.”
My name leaves his mouth low and tense, sending a chill through me at the reminder of our night together.
I had never been one to hook up with strangers, but that night, I had a few drinks in my system, and my inhibitions certainly went out the window.
His interest in me had caught me so off-guard at the time, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, even if I should’ve been more careful.
He was a walking dream—he still is.
Wearing dark slacks and a black button-down with relaxed cuffs, he looks both intimidating and more appealing than I’d like to admit.
Even so, seeing him after everything that went down tonight doesn’t make any sense.
I blink back at him. “What are you doing here—what am I doing here?”
Mikhail doesn’t say anything at first. Instead, he sighs, then glances back at the other man while he walks in and closes the door, leaving me alone with the two of them.
Every movement he makes seems deliberate and measured. That night at the club, he was so relaxed and carefree, functioning only on desire.
Now, he looks more stern and somewhat tense.
It was supposed to only be one night. We were both supposed to have fun and never see each other again.
But he’s here in this unfamiliar place, looking at me like I’m a problem he has to solve.
He runs a hand through his dark hair. “I didn’t expect it to be you.”
I have half the mind to laugh, but I hold it in. “I know the feeling.”
Mikhail doesn’t react, showing me this serious side of him that seems almost stark in comparison to how he had been with me before.
With everything clicking in my head, piecing together how I’ve been taken to a secondary location after seeing what happened in the alleyway, and now knowing he’s somehow connected to all of this, I can’t see the man at the club anymore.
Instead, I see someone who isn’t on my side. Who isn’t looking to help me.
He may be vaguely familiar to me, but that doesn’t make him someone I can trust.
That spikes the panic in me, and my throat feels dry.
“What is this? What the hell is going on?”
Staying quiet and almost solemn, Mikhail pulls the other chair out and sits down before running a hand over his mouth. He exhales deeply, as if not wanting to deal with any of this.
“You were in that alley earlier tonight, and you saw something you shouldn’t have.”
My stomach drops, well aware that he’s right. But I don’t like the hidden implications that come with it.
“You think I was spying?” I ask, tone clipped. “I was trying to get home after class—it was a shortcut.”
“And a mistake.”
Blinking back at him, I don’t like the note of finality in his tone. “What, are you with the cops now? Are you going to tell me what alleys I can’t take now?”
He forces out a small, humorless huff. “Do I look like a cop to you?”
Then, the reality of that sinks in.
He isn’t surprised to be here, and he looks far too at ease, like he has spent more than enough time in that room.
My pulse grows louder in my ears, and I take a moment to try and calm it.
“Mikhail…what is this place?”
At first, he doesn’t say anything, but then his gaze seems to say more than his words could.
“You’re in a warehouse my family owns.”
“Why does your warehouse have an interrogation room in it?” I ask, brows pinching together.
“It’s complicated.”
I scoff. “Apparently.”
His jaw tightens, not taking well to the bite in that simple word.
“Look, Lily…you saw something you weren’t supposed to, and that’s why you’re here.”
The reminder makes my heart beat irregularly with fear. “Whatever I saw, it wasn’t clear. It was dark down there. I don’t even know what was happening.”
Mikhail narrows his eyes and leans his forearms on his thighs, studying me closely for any crack in my bluff. “But you did see something.”
I swallow hard and try not to give away just how much I saw. “I saw shadows and shapes, but nothing definite. I wouldn’t be able to describe anything even if I wanted to.”
“But you could try, and that’s the problem,” he murmurs, still studying me.
“I was right behind you…you saw more than enough,” the other man says, not letting my attempt to cover up the truth slide.
I don’t let myself look over at him despite how badly I want to sneer at him for even saying it. Instead, I focus on Mikhail, who lets vague irritation move through his features.
“You watched a man die tonight. Don’t try and erase the facts,” he mumbles, unwavering. “That is why you’re here.”
I stare at him a moment longer, but my gaze is less assessing and more stunned. My heart aches from how fast it beats.
“You say that like you’re dangerous.”
He doesn’t flinch. “Because I am.”
A harsh, cold silence lingers between us, and I still can’t wrap my head around it.
I don’t want to believe the man I kissed at the bar and hooked up with could be so different in reality. How, for a few hours, he didn’t feel like a stranger to me.
But the man in front of me…he isn’t that guy.
He’s sharp and almost frigid, yet he’s so deathly calm about it all. His words leave him like my life is hanging in the balance, and he couldn’t possibly be more nonchalant about it.
After a tense moment, I let go of a breath. “Now what?”
“I told him I’d handle it—make sure you’re not a risk.”
“You told who?” I ask, knowing there are far too many missing pieces in this equation.
“My older brother,” he says simply. “He’s in charge of this operation.”
My blood turns cold. “In charge of what, Mikhail?”
He pauses again, as if mulling over just how much he can say. Then he sighs and sits back in his chair.
“Business that isn’t entirely above the board,” he answers, looking vaguely annoyed to be answering my questions. Then he gestures to the man behind him. “The club we met at…my family owns it. We own a lot of businesses on the Vegas Strip. Some are less clean than others.”
My stomach drops, and the implication weighs heavily on me, and I glance between the two of them.
That must be one of his brothers, then.
“You mean…you’re involved in organized crime?”
He nods.
Everything in me freezes at once, and I have the urge to be sick. “You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
Looking at him, I can feel the full weight of what I’ve done and how little I truly understood. How I hooked up with a man connected to the very thing I despised.
He isn’t just a man with a dark side. He’s embedded in the city’s criminal underbelly, and I somehow found myself wrapped up in it all.
He’s like someone from a movie I’d rather not be part of.
“I can’t be here,” I manage to see, feeling as my throat tightens around the words while that panic looms over me. “I’m a med student. I have classes and exams, and I can’t lose my place. I don’t belong here.”
Mikhail looks at me somewhat sternly, but his features otherwise don’t betray his true feelings. “I know.”
“Then let me go. Please, Mikhail,” I say, hoping it will be enough. “I swear I won’t say anything. I’ll forget it all happened and move on…I don’t even want to remember it.”
His expression is painfully neutral, but the slightest softening in his eyes gives away a flicker of regret, or maybe even pity.
“I’m not planning on hurting you. But you need to understand what’s at risk given what you witnessed.”
“I do understand. I swear,” I insist, clinging to that desperation. “That’s why I won’t say anything. I just want to get back to my life.”
His silence makes my heart clench, and as much as I want to think there’s still a semblance of the man I had sex with left in him, it feels farther and farther away with every passing moment.
“You don’t know me, and I get that, but I’m not a threat to you or whatever it is your family does. Please, believe me.” I continue, just about ready to start begging.
Those deep green eyes I easily got lost in before studying me even longer, and I have no idea what he’s searching for, or what he’s hoping to figure out. But either way, the room is so quiet that it’s nearly deafening, and I just want to run as far as my legs will take me.
Then, he stands, carrying a sense of finality that makes my legs feel weak.
I pull in a trembling breath. “Mikhail—”
Before he can reach the door with a hand poised to turn the handle, he pauses, not quite looking at me. Still, there’s something in his eyes.
For a second, I assume it’s guilt or maybe regret, but when paired with the faintest pull of his lips, it falls into place.
It’s something sharper than satisfaction.
He doesn’t have to voice how the situation isn’t quite as dire as he’s letting on. Or at the very least, he sees an opportunity in my mistake, as he put it.
Just as he opens the door and walks away, I catch the smile curling on his lips while the other man follows him out.
The very look makes my stomach turn.