Page 9

Time is strange here. It slips through my fingers without ever really moving. Days pass in slow, muted fragments—hours marked only by meals dropped at the door, by the brief moments I’m summoned to check Yuri’s condition, by the cold that never seems to leave the walls.

Always, always, his eyes.

Kolya Sharov watches me like he’s trying to memorize the angles of my face. He doesn’t speak often, but when he does, his voice is low and deliberate, every syllable weighted. Controlled. Calculated. It’s the silence that says the most. When I move across the room, when I clean an IV line, when I change the dressing on Yuri’s leg—he watches. Always.

At first, I told myself it was vigilance. That he was studying me for weakness, ready to pull the trigger if I stepped out of line. But it’s not that anymore. I feel it every time our eyes meet. Every time I snap at him and he doesn’t snap back. Every time I catch him staring and he doesn’t look away.

The shift is there, in the air between us. Tense. Unspoken. Heavy. I tell myself it’s fear, but fear doesn’t make your stomach flip. Fear doesn’t make you lean in instead of pull away.

Today starts like any other. I check Yuri’s vitals, change his bandages, monitor his breathing. He’s recovering, slowly. His fever’s down. His responses are clearer when he drifts into consciousness. Whatever Kolya wanted from him, he’ll have it soon.

I’m alone in the room with him, humming softly under my breath—something mindless to break the silence. The door creaks open behind me and I glance up, expecting Boris.

It isn’t him. It’s a stranger.

Tall, wiry. Face shadowed under a hood. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t announce himself. Just moves. Fast.

He crosses the room before I can make a sound, and I don’t think—I just act.

I throw myself between him and Yuri.

His hand flashes. A knife. The blade grazes my side, hot and bright and sharp enough to draw blood. I gasp, staggering, but stay upright. I reach behind me, trying to shield Yuri’s body with mine as the man grabs for him.

Footsteps thunder down the hall. The door slams open.

The blood won’t stop.

I press my palm against my side, fingers slick and trembling as I try to keep pressure on the wound, but it’s already soaked through. The warmth of it, the stickiness—it makes my stomach twist. The adrenaline that carried me through the moment is bleeding out of me just as fast, and in its place, a wave of dizziness crashes hard. My legs buckle. I catch myself on the wall, panting, forehead damp with sweat.

Everything swims.

The edges of the room curl in on themselves—wooden walls, peeling plaster, Yuri’s unconscious form blurred in the corner of my vision. My knees hit the floor with a dull thud I barely feel. The pain’s there, sharp and pulsing, but distant now. Far away.

Then there’s shouting. Footsteps. Heavy. Fast.

Kolya.

He appears in the doorway like a shadow made flesh, his coat still swinging from the force of his entrance. One look at me slumped against the wall and his expression changes—just barely. A flicker. The cold, hard mask cracks at the edges, and what slips through isn’t rage. It’s something else.

He crosses the room in seconds.

“Are you trying to die here?” he snaps, grabbing my arm.

His hand is rough, his grip tight enough to bruise, but I don’t fight him. I can’t. He hauls me upright, my legs dragging across the floor as he all but carries me to the nearest chair. I slump into it with a sharp breath, head falling back, vision spotting in and out like a faulty lightbulb.

Kolya drops to one knee, yanking my shirt up without ceremony to inspect the wound. His face is hard, eyes narrowed, lips pressed into a line. But his hands—his hands are steady. Quick. Efficient.

When he touches the edges of the gash, cleaning away the blood, there’s a strange gentleness hidden beneath the motion. A control so exact it almost feels careful. Almost.

“This’ll need stitches,” he mutters, already reaching into a nearby cabinet, pulling out a first aid kit. “Hold still.”

I don’t have the strength to argue. My head lolls to the side as he tears open a packet of antiseptic, douses a gauze pad, and presses it hard to my skin.

I hiss.

“Keep breathing,” he says, not unkindly, but sharp. Focused.

“I’m trying,” I mumble.

He starts stitching. The needle pierces flesh, and I flinch, but not from the pain. From the proximity.

Kolya Sharov is close. Too close.

His breath ghosts against my side, warm and sharp all at once. I can feel the weight of his body kneeling before me, the faint scent of smoke and winter on his coat, the quiet rasp of his breathing as he works.

I study his face while he leans over me. His brow is furrowed, lips pressed in concentration. There’s no trace of his usual cold amusement, no swagger. Just a man doing something he probably hasn’t done in years—and doing it well.

It unsettles me more than his threats ever have.

“You shouldn’t have gotten in the way,” he mutters after a moment. “That knife wasn’t meant for you.”

I swallow, forcing my voice to stay steady. “Yuri can’t give you what you need if he’s dead.”

Kolya doesn’t respond. Just keeps stitching.

Five. Six. Seven careful pulls.

Then: “The man who came for him wasn’t random. Someone hired a hit.”

I blink. “Who?”

He ties the last knot, cuts the thread clean, and presses gauze over the wound. “Someone who doesn’t want me—or the Bratva—finding out what Yuri knows.”

The implications settle like lead in my stomach.

Whoever’s behind this doesn’t just want Yuri silenced. They’re scared. Scared enough to send a killer into a room with guards and locked doors. That means whatever Yuri knows—it’s dangerous.

Deadly.

Kolya tapes the bandage down, then pauses.

For a moment, his hand stays on me. Just resting, the pad of his thumb brushing lightly along my wrist.

I feel it—the heat of his skin. The press of his finger just over my pulse.

My heart’s pounding. He can hear it.

He doesn’t say a word, and I don’t ask. The silence stretches long enough to turn electric, thick with something unnamed.

Then he pulls away abruptly, standing fast like he’s burned himself.

He turns his back to me, one hand flexing at his side, jaw clenched hard. “Don’t be useless,” he mutters, already walking away.

I should be relieved.

My skin still remembers the way his hand felt on mine. My pulse still thrums in my ears. My whole body is flushed and tight, like something inside me has been wound just a little too far.

The worst part? I don’t know if it’s fear. Or something else entirely.

I stay in the chair long after he’s gone.

The pain in my side throbs, each beat of my heart a dull thud under the gauze. He stitched it well—tight, clean, too practiced for a man who pretends he doesn’t care if I bleed out. But it’s not the wound that has me gripping the edge of the chair. It’s everything else.

The feel of his hand on my skin. The pressure of his thumb over my pulse like he could control it just by touching it.

I groan, pressing the heel of my hand against my forehead.

What the hell is wrong with me?

The door creaks again. I brace myself, but it’s him. How long have I been sitting?

Kolya stands in the doorway, coat half off, sleeves pushed to his elbows like he didn’t give himself time to dress properly again. He stares at me. No words.

I narrow my eyes. “Didn’t you just walk out?”

His jaw ticks, and he presses a glass of water into my hands. “You looked like you were about to pass out. Again.”

“I’m fine,” I bite. “No need for the knight-in-shitty-armor routine.”

“You’re not fine,” he says flatly, stepping back into the room. “You’re bleeding, pale, and still haven’t shut up.”

“You stitched me up like a butcher, not a saint.”

“I saved your life.”

I scoff. “I was trying to save Yuri’s.”

That shuts him up. His gaze drops to my bandaged side, then lifts—slowly, deliberately—to my face.

I shift, suddenly too aware of how thin my shirt is, how low it’s riding now with the hem pulled up around the gauze. I should cover myself. Move. Say something.

Instead, I sit there, chest heaving a little harder than necessary, heat pooling low in my stomach.

He takes a step closer. I don’t stop him.

Then he pulls away, expression smug and says, “Drink. You’ll feel better.

I take a hesitant sip, and cringe. It isn’t water; it’s vodka.

***

That night, the air inside the farmhouse feels heavier than usual—thick with smoke, tension, and something else I can’t name.

I sit on the mattress in the dark, one hand pressed to the clean gauze at my side, the other clenched in the blanket draped over my legs. Every movement reminds me of what happened. The way he looked at me.

The heat of his palm on my skin. The way his thumb lingered just a second too long on my wrist, like he didn’t know what he was doing or couldn’t stop himself.

The way I felt it—every nerve lit up, every breath caught in my throat, every rational thought peeled away by the low rasp of his voice, the heat of his body so close I could feel the shape of it through his clothes.

I press my thighs together beneath the blanket, my cheeks hot.

God, what the hell is wrong with me?

He’s a monster.

He kidnapped me. Threatened me. Held a gun to my head.

Yet, there’s a part of me that keeps playing it back—slow, vivid, unbearable. The way his mouth tightened when he looked at my wound. The shift in his voice when he said I wasn’t fine. The flicker of something in his eyes when I said I didn’t ask him to touch me.

There’s something human in him. That’s the worst part.

Not the violence. Not the power. The humanity . It tempts me, and it makes me wonder.

That’s why I know I have to leave.

As soon as Yuri is well enough to survive without me, I’m going to run. I don’t care where. I don’t care how far. I’ll crawl into the snow if I have to. I just can’t stay here long enough to see more of the man beneath the monster.