Page 48 of Bound By Debt

Vasya jerks his head at the kid cowering in the corner. He’s in his late teens or early twenties and looks too much like Eva to be anyone but her brother. He watches me with wild eyes.

“He didn’t know this bookstore had any connection to you. Now he does.”

The warning and Vasya’s blue eyes hit me at once. I’ve made an error, let my feelings for Eva overcome my judgment, and revealed a weakness my enemy can exploit.

I didn’t just send Kucherov men to protect the bookstore, either. I came myself.

Fuck.

“Thank you for coming, brother,” I say, instead of dwelling on what could be a deadly mistake. “You were there when I needed you today. As you always are.”

Vasya starts to say something, then stops, his eyes widening as though my thanks surprise him. His mouth opens, then closes, then opens again as he takes a breath to speak.

“Evgeny.”

My name pulls me from whatever Vasya is about to say, and I turn to find Eva standing with her arms folded tight across her middle. She watches me with eyes that gleam suspiciously, her lips are pressed so tightly together they’re white.

Words leap to my tongue to ask if she’s all right, if she’s hurt anywhere other than her head, if Tsepov’s men did anything to her or Katie or her brother.

Instead, I open my arms and enfold her as she runs into them. As she runs tome.

Mine.

The word resonates through my bones and takes up residence as a truth I can’t deny any longer.

18

EVA

“Ican’t.”

“You can, and you will. Am I going to have to force you?”

Evgeny’s voice rumbles from behind a paper menu instead of the laminated ones I’m used to, but this isn’t just any restaurant. This is a fine-dining establishment, apparently one of Vasya’s favorite haunts, according to Evgeny. I don’t know what could fit the label better.

Everyone is dressed expensively or looks expensive. I have no idea how to tell. Soft music plays over the muted chatter and the clink of glasses and silverware. The floor is dark stone tile, the décor modern and angular in deep blues and oranges, whites and blacks.

Flame erupts in the open kitchen before dying down to a sizzle, the scents of onion and garlic mingling with basil and more exotic flavors I don’t recognize.

But most of all, the prices on the menu in front of me tell me this isn’t my neighborhood anymore.

“I can’t. Just this appetizer is thirty?—”

“Choose, or I’ll choose for you.” From across the table, Evgeny pins me with a stare that tells me he’s not joking.

Since that day at the bookstore, life with Evgeny has been… different.

He’s the same man I’ve come to know over the past two months. But he has stopped ordering me around and started asking my opinion. I keep finding his attention on me, his gaze searching like he wants to reassure himself I really am okay.

He sent men the next day to clean up and repair or replace what had been destroyed at the bookstore. He’d tried to talk to Jordan, who promptly ran away after the scene. He’d calmed Katie and promised he’d keep us all safe.

Then he took me home, let me cry, and talked to me quietly and gently until I fell asleep in his arms.

I still have no idea what my future holds.

I’m just… extremely confused. And in danger of falling hard and fast.

“Is everyone ready to order?”