Page 10

I can still feel her pulse.

It doesn’t make sense. I’ve touched countless people in my life—to break them, steady them, kill them. Hands coated in blood and bone. Nothing sticks. Nothing stays.

That subtle tremor beneath my fingers, the stutter of a frightened heart refusing to surrender—it lingers. The memory of heat, of softness, of vulnerability, loops in my head like a curse I can’t spit out. She didn’t pull away. Not right away. Even when I should’ve stepped back, even when I felt my control faltering, I stayed. Pressed too long. Thought too much.

She’s not supposed to matter.

Elise is a means to an end. A pair of capable hands to keep my informant alive. Nothing more.

She’s not nothing. She never was.

Yuri’s breath rattles through the room like wind through broken glass. He looks like death: pale, lips cracked, skin too tight against his cheekbones. He’s stable. Stable enough. And awake.

Boris paces near the doorway as I crouch beside the bed, watching Yuri’s eyes flutter open and drift unfocused across the ceiling.

“Yuri,” I say, low and steady. “You know who I am.”

A breath. A shallow nod.

“Tell me who paid you. Who hired the hit.”

His eyes twitch. He tries to wet his lips, fails. His voice is barely more than a whisper, but I lean in and catch it.

“Viktor….”

Again. I press in.

“Viktor who?”

“Viktor… Morozov.”

I feel the name slide into place like a final piece of a locked door swinging open. Viktor Morozov. That corrupt little shit. I should’ve guessed sooner.

“He said you… you were looking too close… wouldn’t stop… had to… shut you up….”

Yuri coughs, a weak, wet sound. He’s fading again.

“What else did he tell you?”

“Not… not here,” Yuri whispers, eyes barely open now. “He’s… watching… everyone… even….”

The last word dissolves into breath.

It doesn’t matter. I have what I need.

I rise slowly, remove my pistol from the holster at my side, and level it at his forehead. Yuri doesn’t even flinch.

He knows.

One shot. Clean. Efficient. The sound cracks through the room and dies. His eyes are still open, but he’s gone.

Boris doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to. We both know this was inevitable.

“Burn the sheets. Dispose of the body by morning,” I mutter, turning away. “No mess.”

I walk out without looking back.

All I want is silence. One moment to let the satisfaction settle. It doesn’t.

It never does.

I head down the hall, jaw clenched, feet dragging slower than they should. There’s only one place I want to go.

Her room.

Even as I approach, I know something’s wrong.

The door is ajar. Cold air breathes through the hallway like a warning. I push the door fully open.

Empty.

The mattress is unmade. The window—shattered. A jagged hole blown through the glass, snow gathering at the edge.

Blood.

Tiny droplets scattered across the floor, trailing toward the wall. Smears of it on the frame, where she must have cut herself climbing through.

She ran. She fucking ran.

A sound tears from my throat—half growl, half roar—as I slam my fist into the doorframe. Splinters crack under my knuckles.

Rage ignites in my chest, hotter than anything I’ve felt in years. Not because she disobeyed. Not because she escaped.

Goddamn her.

My pulse is thunder. My hands shake. I don’t recognize myself for a moment, don’t recognize this raw, ragged need to find her.

Not for leverage. Not for strategy. For me.

She cut herself getting out. She’s bleeding. The forest is frozen. She’s not dressed for the cold. She won’t get far. She can’t.

“Find her,” I bark to Boris, already storming down the hall. “Now, before the snow covers her trail.”

She ran.

I will bring her back.

No matter what it takes.

“She saw,” I mutter, mostly to myself, though Boris stands stiff at my side. My voice is barely more than a breath, but it turns sharp at the edges—cold, fraying.

He watches me carefully, like he’s waiting for the explosion.

“She saw me kill Yuri.”

“She shouldn’t have been near that room,” Boris says, choosing his words like landmines. “We thought she was still locked down. She wasn’t supposed to know—”

“I don’t care what she was supposed to know,” I cut in, my voice a low snarl. “I care that she’s gone.”

We stand in the dark hallway outside her room—what used to be her room. The broken glass still crunches beneath my boots. The blood she left behind has dried to a dull smear near the windowsill, stark against the wood.

“She saw,” I say again. My jaw clenches so hard it aches. “And she still ran.”

“She’s injured,” Boris offers. “She won’t get far in the cold.”

“She got far enough.”

I slam the door shut with enough force to make the walls shudder. The sound echoes through the house like a gunshot. I spin on Boris, barely keeping my fury in check.

“Find her.”

He nods. “We’ve got men sweeping the woods. She can’t have made it past the ridge. Not in that state.”

“I don’t want guesses,” I growl. “I want her found. I want her crawling on her knees if that’s what it takes. I want her back here before the blood on that fucking floor dries.”

Boris doesn’t flinch, but he doesn’t nod again either. He’s too smart for that. He knows I’m on a thread thinner than a breath, and the wrong word could snap it.

“She’s not just leverage anymore, is she?” he asks quietly.

I glare at him, but I don’t answer.

He waits, then adds, “You could’ve shot Yuri in front of anyone. Why care if she saw?”

“I don’t,” I lie. “I care that she’s gone.”

I see the flicker of doubt in Boris’s eyes, and I hate that he sees it at all.

The house feels suffocating. I can’t breathe in here with the ghost of her still clinging to the walls. Her scent—faint, like soap and antiseptic—still lingers in the room. Her voice still echoes in the back of my mind, cutting and sharp. Her eyes, that last time I looked at them—wide, knowing. Not afraid.

“You think she matters,” Boris says, more a statement than a question now.

“She ran,” I reply, pacing away from him, hands curled into fists at my sides. “She saw me kill a man. She watched me put a bullet in his head like it meant nothing. Then she ran like a frightened fucking animal.”

“You expected her to stay?” Boris asks, baffled.

I stop. Turn back. “I expected her to understand,” I hiss.

That’s the part that won’t stop twisting in my chest like broken glass.

She’s supposed to fear me. Everyone does. I’ve built a kingdom on it. But she looked at me with something worse than fear—like she saw through it. Like she saw the man beneath all the blood and didn’t respect him.

Still… I can’t stop thinking about her.

The way she breathed under my hands when I stitched her up. The shiver that moved through her when our skin touched. The flush at her neck she tried to pretend wasn’t there. I remember the way her eyes locked with mine when I told her not to be useless—and the part of her that wanted to challenge me anyway.

I haven’t stopped seeing it since.

That night, I don’t sleep.

I don’t drink.

I just sit in the dark, the fire low, barely embers, and watch the window.

I picture her out there. Bleeding. Cold. Huddled in the snow with nothing but sheer will keeping her alive.

I don’t want her dead, I want her back.

I want her broken open. I want her walls down, her voice soft, her eyes on me without that fire. I want to know why she got under my skin in ways no one ever has. Why her pain made something twist in my chest. Why her defiance turned me on more than any polished woman ever has. Why I dreamt of her thighs around my waist instead of the blood I spilled.

I want to tear her open until I understand.

Boris returns near dawn, eyes tired, frost clinging to his coat.

“No sign,” he says, shaking his head. “Blood trail ends past the tree line. Either she passed out, or someone found her.”

I rise from the chair, breath slow, calculated.

“Then keep looking,” I say, my voice low, cold.

“Kolya—”

“Keep looking.”

I’m not done with her.

***

Snow crunches beneath my boots, the sound brittle and sharp in the frozen silence. The sun hasn’t fully risen—just a pale smear behind the treetops, leaking silver into the shadows. Boris walks beside me, rifle slung over one shoulder, eyes scanning the brush for movement. The men are spread out behind us, quiet as ghosts, but I don’t trust them to find her.

This time, I’m doing it myself.

Every step deeper into these woods feels like a noose tightening around my chest. I don’t know if it’s anger or something worse—something low and wrong and clawing at the edges of my ribs. I should be focused. Tactical. But my jaw is clenched too hard, and my thoughts keep circling back to the blood on her fingers, the look in her eyes as she ran.

“She couldn’t have gotten far,” Boris mutters, pushing a branch out of the way. “Not bleeding like that. She was already weak.”

“She’s smart,” I say, scanning the snow. “Don’t assume desperation means stupid.”

He glances at me sidelong. “You always talk about hostages like this?”

“She’s not a hostage,” I snap before I can think.

Boris wisely doesn’t respond.

We follow the faint trail of blood—just a few drops here and there, fading into the snow like they’re ashamed to be found. At one point, we stop by a small pine, its lower branches broken. There’s a smear of red on the bark. Fresh. My pulse kicks up. She was here.

She’s close. We move faster.