Chapter 7 #2
“They don’t know that, and they won’t take your word for it.
” He holds my stare. “You have two options. Go home, wait for Eric to show up with a badge, and hope Karpov’s people decide a nightclub hostess isn’t worth the trouble, or they find you before he can protect you.
Or come with me, and I keep you alive while my people handle the rest.”
The offer is insane. The man who just killed my boss in front of me is offering to protect me from the consequences of his own actions.
Every rational thought in my head says run.
Call the police. Call Marisol. Call anyone who isn’t standing in a room with blood on the floor and a suppressed pistol inside his jacket.
The rational thoughts don’t account for Eric.
They don’t account for going home meaning a life where a homicide detective with a badge and a grudge now has a legitimate reason to knock on my door at any hour.
They don’t cover the last time I trusted the system to protect me from Eric, and the system told me to work it out between us.
Adrian extends his hand. It’s the same hand that held my face thirty minutes ago and pulled the trigger just minutes later. I look at it, him, and Dominic’s body on the floor behind the desk.
Viktor is watching from the wall. He hasn’t moved, but his posture has shifted from threat assessment to patience, as if Adrian’s decision to extend his hand instead of issuing an order has told Viktor everything he needs to know about what happens next.
Marisol’s face when she said “do it because you chose it” suddenly comes to mind, the first in a collage of disjointed images, including my mother packing boxes after boyfriend number five, Eric’s smirk when I flinched from his hand, and Adrian stopping six inches from my face in the service corridor, waiting for me to close the distance myself.
I look at his hand, remember the gun in it, and take it anyway.
His grip is firm and warm, and the contact sends a current through me that I’d be ashamed of if shame were something I could afford right now.
Adrian Bugrov just killed my boss, and I’m holding his hand, but the pressure of his fingers around mine doesn’t feel like a cage.
It feels like an anchor, and I don’t know what that says about me or about him, but I don’t have the luxury of figuring it out tonight.
What I know is Eric will come and use Dominic’s death to justify every visit, every phone call, and every concerned look he’s been weaponizing for months.
The badge gives him access I can’t block, and the investigation gives him a reason with which I can’t argue.
Going home means going back to that, and I’ve wasted enough of my life on him and trying to escape him.
Adrian isn’t safe. I know that. Dominic’s blood and body on the floor proves that.
He’s offering me protection from consequences he created, and the offer is as calculated as anything Eric has ever done, except Adrian isn’t pretending it’s something else.
He’s telling me exactly what this is, and the honesty of the exchange is what makes me trust it more than I probably should.
I exhale raggedly before surrendering. “I need clothes from my apartment and to call Marisol.”
“Viktor will arrange the clothes. The call to Marisol happens from a secure line, not your personal phone.” He releases my hand and turns to Viktor, who is already moving toward the door with the laptop hard drive in one pocket and the USB drives in the other.
“Get her out through the rear exit. I’ll follow in ten minutes. ”
Viktor nods at me once. It isn’t friendly, but it isn’t hostile either. He’s accepted the complication and is already planning around it.
I follow him down the corridor without looking back at the office.
I don’t look at Dominic or the blood. I walk past the private room where an hour ago I was making a choice I thought would be the most reckless of my night, and the irony is so sharp it almost makes me laugh.
That choice is only the second most reckless thing I’ve done tonight, and the night isn’t over.
The rear exit opens onto a service alley that smells like kitchen grease and cigarettes.
The bass from the club is a dull pulse through the wall, and I can hear the muffled sound of a DJ transition between songs.
Two hundred people are still in there, drinking and spending money at a club whose owner is dead on his office floor.
They’ll go home tonight thinking they had a good time.
They’ll never know what happened thirty feet from the bar.
A car is idling at the curb, dark and armored with tinted windows, with a man I don’t know behind the wheel. When Viktor opens the back door, I climb into the back seat, and the door closes behind me with a heavy thud that sounds permanent.
I sit in the dark and wait for Adrian. My hands are shaking again, and I press them flat against my thighs until the trembling slows. My phone screen still shows Eric’s missed call. I stare at it for ten seconds, then turn the phone face down on the seat beside me.
The music is still playing behind the building. My shift isn’t over, and nobody knows I’ve left. Adrian isn’t in the car yet.
I don’t let myself think any harder than that. If I do, I’ll open the door and run.