Page 7

The hours blur.

There are no windows in the room they’ve locked me in—just four walls, a thin mattress on the floor, and a steel bucket in the corner that makes me feel more like livestock than a prisoner. The walls are bare wood, knot-holed and splintered in places. Every sound echoes, and without light to mark the passage of time, I count the seconds by heartbeats. The rhythm changes sometimes, slows or speeds. Usually when I let myself think of him.

Kolya Sharov.

I press the heels of my palms into my eyes, trying to squeeze the thought of him out, but it never leaves for long. I can still feel the way his hand fisted my shirt, dragging me so close I could smell the cold steel of his gun, the burn of alcohol on his breath, and something darker beneath—power, maybe. Violence. Control. It’s not just fear that lingered in my spine after he shoved me back against that wall. It was the heat of him. The way the silence wrapped around us like a fuse, just waiting for the spark.

I hate that my mind returns to it.

Not because I’m afraid—though I am. Anyone in their right mind would be—but because fear would be easier to carry than this. This crawling, unwelcome burn under my skin. This awareness I can’t shake. The memory of the way his eyes locked on mine, not empty or wild but measured. Testing. Like he was weighing what to do with me. Or what I might do to him.

I curl tighter on the mattress, drawing my knees to my chest. My scrubs are still stiff with blood and grime. My hair’s tangled and falling out of its tie. I’ve been left with nothing but my own thoughts for what must be a full day, maybe more. No mirror. No clock. No answers.

The only human contact comes when the door creaks open, just enough for Boris to slide inside with a tray of food. The smell turns my stomach—stew, thick and over-salted, with a chunk of bread that looks like it was sliced with a rusted machete. But it’s warm.

I’m starving.

Boris sets it down without comment at first, his heavy boots thudding against the wood floor. He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching me like I’m some kind of science experiment.

“Didn’t think you’d still be breathing,” he says finally.

I say nothing. I pick up the bread, break it in half, and bite. The crust tears at my lips, but it’s real. Solid. Something to focus on.

He smirks. “You know, you’re the first person to talk to Kolya like that and still have teeth.”

Still, I don’t respond, but the words sink their hooks in deep.

Why do I still have teeth? Why am I still breathing?

I poked the bear. Pushed him. I called him a coward to his face, in front of his men, and he didn’t shoot me. He didn’t even slap me. He pulled me close, looked me in the eye… and then he walked away.

It doesn’t make sense.

Boris chuckles under his breath. “You’ve got a spine. I’ll give you that. Most people break the second he looks at them sideways, but you?” He clicks his tongue. “I think you got under his skin.”

I finish the stew in silence.

He doesn’t press further. After a few minutes, he picks up the empty tray and walks out, the door slamming shut behind him with a dull finality.

Alone again.

I shift on the mattress, lying on my back now, arms crossed over my chest. My eyes stare up at the ceiling, where a single bulb flickers now and then, casting stuttering shadows against the wood. I trace the patterns with my gaze. One knot in the ceiling looks like a bird’s wing, stretched in flight. Another like a spiral, curling inward.

Like a trap.

Why hasn’t he killed me?

Kolya doesn’t strike me as the merciful type. He’s cold. Controlled. When he speaks, he doesn’t waste syllables. When he moves, it’s never without purpose. There’s no chaos in him, but there’s danger. The kind of danger that doesn’t warn you before it strikes.

He could’ve had me shot in the woods. Could’ve left me to die beside Yuri if all he needed was a stopgap solution, but he didn’t. He dragged me here. Watched me work. Now I’m being fed. Kept like a pet.

The rational answer is that I’m still useful. That Yuri isn’t finished bleeding information, and Kolya won’t risk his only medic. That feels too simple. Too clean.

Something in the way he looked at me in that moment—that breath between rage and action—wasn’t simple. It was… curious. Alive.

He wanted to see what I’d do.

Worse, I think he liked what I did.

I shut my eyes.

It’s not attraction. I won’t call it that. He’s a criminal, a killer, a man who threatens women like me with a gun to the head for the crime of doing their job. There’s nothing human in the way he handles people. He doesn’t feel. Not like normal men do.

Yet….

My skin still burns where his hands touched me. My breath still hitches when I remember the nearness, the tension coiled between us like a drawn bow.

It disgusts me. Not just because of what it is, but because I can’t make it stop.

This man owns the walls around me, the floor beneath me, the air I breathe. He’s made it clear that I’m expendable. That my life is a coin he’ll flip the second it stops being profitable.

Still, I lie awake on a bloodstained mattress wondering why the look in his eyes lingers in my chest like a bruise I can’t reach.

I turn my face into the thin pillow, biting back the sound of it all—the ache, the humiliation, the whisper of something sharp and forbidden under my skin.

This isn’t fear, it’s something far worse.

***

They come for me again when the sky outside is dark.

I hear the lock click before the door creaks open, and Boris steps inside, expression unreadable as ever. The hallway behind him is lit by a single lantern, casting long shadows that make everything seem older, colder.

“He’s crashing,” Boris says.

I’m already on my feet before I realize I moved.

They don’t tie my hands this time. I think they know I wouldn’t get far. And if I did, I’d freeze long before help ever found me. Kolya’s men escort me down the hallway in silence, boots thudding against the old floorboards. I know the path by now—the turns, the creaks in the floor, the smell of blood and smoke lingering near Yuri’s room like a ghost that won’t leave.

When I enter, Kolya is already there.

He’s standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, eyes locked on Yuri’s pale, sweat-slicked body. When I step inside, his gaze flicks to me. That same sharp, assessing look. The one that makes me feel like I’m being dissected, every breath catalogued and measured. It scrapes across my skin like a scalpel, and I force myself not to react.

Yuri is worse. I can see it instantly. His breathing is shallow, his lips cracked, skin nearly translucent under the poor lighting. The bandages are damp again, red and seeping. There’s heat rolling off him in waves.

I don’t wait for orders. I move to the table where they’ve laid out supplies and start pulling on gloves.

Kolya doesn’t speak, but I feel him watching.

I don’t look at him.

Not when I peel back the bandages. Not when I begin cleaning the wound again, cursing quietly under my breath as I examine the infection’s spread. I press down gently near the edges and get a burst of cloudy fluid for my trouble.

“He’s septic,” I mutter. “If you’d given him what I asked for—”

“You said he’d live,” Kolya interrupts, his voice calm and cold.

“He might have,” I snap, “if you didn’t ignore half of what I told you.”

My voice echoes sharper than I intend, but I don’t care. He can kill me if he wants. I’m already tired of swallowing my tongue.

Kolya doesn’t reply, but I feel the room shift—like the air itself stiffens.

I grab the syringe and draw up the next round of antibiotics, then reach for the IV line. My fingers are fast, efficient, still trembling slightly from adrenaline. I press the needle in—and slip.

The tip catches my finger. Just a tiny prick. A bloom of red beads on my skin.

I flinch, more from the shock than the pain.

“Shit,” I hiss, dropping the needle onto the tray.

Before I can grab a wipe, Kolya moves.

He takes a single step forward, sudden and almost automatic, like his body reacted before he could stop it. For a second, I swear he’s about to reach for me—like he’s going to check the wound, or maybe grab my hand.

Then something flickers across his face. A wall slams down behind his eyes.

He scoffs and straightens. “Pathetic,” he mutters, voice sharp enough to slice through bone. “You can stitch up a bullet wound but cry over a scratch?”

I freeze. Then slowly, I look up at him, my finger still bleeding. Our eyes lock.

“Better a scratch,” I say, my voice low and hard, “than needing a gun to feel like a man.”

The words hang in the air like a spark just before ignition. Kolya’s face doesn’t move. Not for a second, except when his jaw tightens. His eyes darken.

For one breathless moment, we just stare at each other—something raw and electric pulsing between us. Not just rage. Not just defiance. Something hotter. Stranger. The kind of tension that lives in the breath between a kiss and a slap. My heart slams against my ribs. My mouth is dry.

I hate that it feels like he might kiss me. Or maybe kill me. Either way, I can’t look away.

Then he breaks the stare.

He turns without a word, his coat flaring behind him as he walks out of the room, footsteps vanishing into the hallway with controlled fury.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. My hands tremble now for a different reason.

I patch Yuri’s IV in silence, dress the wound again, wipe my finger and slap a adhesive bandage on it without thought. My thoughts aren’t on the wound. Or the fever.

They’re on him. Kolya.

On the way he looked at me. Like he wanted to tear something apart and couldn’t decide if it was me or himself. On the way he moved toward me before he remembered who he was supposed to be.

I don’t know what scares me more. That he might want to hurt me—

Or that some traitorous part of me wants to be wanted by him.

I stay by Yuri’s side until his breathing evens out again. The fever hasn’t broken, but it’s not climbing either. A fragile middle ground—temporary, dangerous. My hands move on autopilot as I adjust the IV line and check the dressings one last time, but my mind is far from steady.

It won’t let go of Kolya.

The way he looked at me—so sharp, so sudden. Not cold, not this time. Not entirely. There was something else buried there, just beneath the surface. Something he doesn’t want anyone to see, least of all himself.

That flicker. That almost.

Worse than seeing it? Feeling it.

The flutter it sent through my chest, my stomach. The jolt when he stepped forward, as if I’d forgotten how to breathe. I want to pretend it was fear. That it only scared me.

I know fear. Intimately. This was something different.

I clean the needle, dispose of the gauze, then strip off the gloves and toss them into the bin. My finger still aches faintly, but it’s not the wound that stays with me—it’s his voice. That mocking tone. The way he used cruelty to cover what had nearly happened.

To cover care.

I press the heel of my hand to my chest, trying to steady my heart. Then I straighten, wiping my palms on the front of my scrub pants.

He left without dismissing me, but I know better than to wander. I wait at the door, pulse still too high, willing the air to cool the flush I can’t explain.

This isn’t attraction. It can’t be.

I’m a hostage. He’s a monster.

Yet, the second I hear his footsteps again in the hall, my breath catches.

Damn him.