Page 36 of Refrain (Beautiful Monsters #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHLOE

Piotr left me a single white envelope with my name written on the front. It looks so clean, so harmless. No one would ever guess that it has my soul inside it.

I put off opening it until after I’ve left Grey, when no one is else around to witness my reaction. When no one is around to see me break. He kept the message simple this time, Piotr, scribbling only the name of a hotel, the room number, and a time .

It’s an amusing game to convince myself that he couldn’t possibly have been there, watching through the windows of the bar.

With each attempt, I lose. How soon could I forget his favorite pastime when he wasn’t lording over his club—haunting me.

He’s not here now. I take the gun from my pocket and scan the alley I’m in just to be sure, searching for him behind an old dumpster or a car parked on the side of the road.

But no. Stealth was never his style—and, apparently, he has a more upscale setting in mind for our reunion—a hotel on the north side of the city.

But it’s not just any destination. My heart tightens at the sight of the gleaming, silver facade towering against the skyline like a castle formed entirely of steel.

Once again, nostalgia forms a noose around my soul.

He chose well. Outside of the club, it was our special place, a venue that caters almost exclusively to Piotr’s branch of the Russian Mob.

I clear my mind of everything before I step through the glass doors lined in gold. I’m a blank slate when I cut across the lobby and ride the elevator to the top floor, guided by memory alone.

It’s suicide; I know that. I’m oddly resigned to my fate as I travel down a hallway lined in ebony carpet and ruby-red walls. The memories… They’re harder to bite back here. I can feel him, that harsh, bitter sting of him inside me. In my soul. My head. My body.

That old impulse to escape rears its head once I approach the last door at the end of the hallway.

I can practically feel the word hammering against my skull.

Escape. I can taste it, poised at the back of my throat like a scream.

Run, Ksei. You don’t have to face him now.

You need to be stronger. Faster. Quicker. Braver.

At the moment, I’m just tired, and exhaustion makes me bolder than any bravery.

I don’t bother knocking. I try the handle and find it unlocked. It opens easily, and I step inside while drawing the gun. My eyes instantly hone in on a shadow flung against the wall—someone approaching the entryway from down a dimly lit hall.

My finger finds the trigger. I don’t even bother closing the door behind me. There’s no point in wondering why he’s without some protective thug or bodyguard. Maybe the bastard is ready to die.

The shadow grows larger, gradually taking on the shape of a human figure. But they’re smaller than they should be. Thinner. When they finally appear at the mouth of the hall, it still takes nearly a minute for me to process that the stern-faced blonde in a modest, gray dress isn’t Piotr.

“Welcome,” she says, her accent thick. “He is expecting you. You dress first.” She starts back down the hallway, leaving me to follow. The rest of her words reach me from over her shoulder. “He said you can keep the gun. ”

I don’t move, still aiming the gun at the wall. The woman never calls me or beckons me in farther. It’s like she knows without a doubt that I’ll follow.

And I do , closing the door behind me.

He picked his favorite suite, and I know it well. This scent. These dark, innocuous colors. It’s barely changed in all these years. The walls are still gray. The furniture sleek and modern with a slightly old-fashioned twist, just how he likes it.

The woman is waiting for me in a modest guest room, where a black dress lies in wait on the bed. It’s satin, tailored in his favorite style—a tight shape and a low neckline.

I gesture toward it with a flick of the pistol. “I’m not wearing that—”

“You change first,” the woman insists. She steps back expectantly, refusing to bat so much as an eyelash when the gun is aimed over her chest. The stern set to her jaw reveals all—She’s used to it. “He’s waiting.”

“You can take me to him like this.” I thumb the trigger once, twice. The unsteady sound undercuts the threat. With every second that passes, I might wind up shooting her by accident.

Despite the danger, she just stares back. God, I know the cold, empty look on her face. I recognize the role she’s been forced to play. The slight twitch of her eyes to the doorway gives her away—I stall, she dies.

Maybe I’ve grown since my old days, but Piotr is the only one whose blood I want on my hands.

As if sensing the moment I break, the woman lifts the gown from the bed and approaches me.

I stand there woodenly as she strips Espisido’s jacket from my shoulders and tosses it aside like it’s trash.

She slips the dress over my head without being hindered at all by the gun I’m still pointing at her.

Sighing, she steps back and observes me with a sweep of her gaze.

“Your hair.” She says it almost mournfully, as if merely pointing its state out. Then she retreats back the way we came without another word and turns down another hallway that opens onto an expansive dining room. There, a lone man is sitting at a table set for two.

Unlike the ageless revenant of him haunting my nightmares, he’s grown older in real life. Gray streaks his hair, catching the light while he scans my body from head to toe. Every nerve prickles with recognition. It’s that slow, perusing look I used to live for. The one I almost died for.

The one that threatens to kill me again.

My hand shakes, fighting to keep the gun trained on him as I will myself to pull the trigger. Kill him. Run! I hold my breath, but my nostrils flare to breathe him in anyway. Wolf Blood. My blood. God, he smells the same.

“It’s been a long time,” he says, his accent catching over the syllables in every word. It’s the gentle tone he rarely used, only when at his most content to lull me into a dangerous sense of security. “You still look so beautiful.”

He should look dead. My finger twitches, but for some reason, it won’t bear down.

Yet. My heart beats with more conviction, straining against my rib cage.

Pounding. It hurts. It’s greedy. Only with him so close can it ignore the shackles my brain has strapped around it for all these damn years. Moya lyubov.

“I knew it would be like this,” Piotr says, his tongue lingering over each twisted syllable. “When I saw you again. I thought maybe…” He shakes his head sadly. “I was wrong. This moment. This makes it all worth it.”

He folds his hands and pushes back from the table. I flinch when he stands. He’s just as tall, wearing the same brand of black suit he always did. Everything is tailored, down to the black loafers on his feet. He takes a step toward me.

I finally squeeze the trigger. The deafening roar of the gunshot slams into my eardrums, but Piotr doesn’t collapse in pain like he should, and something made of glass shatters over his shoulder. He doesn’t even blink. He merely sighs. My protector, my lover, my tormentor.

“Put the gun down, Ksei.”

“No.” I grip it tighter. My hand trembles. I can’t keep it steady. I can’t pull on the trigger again, either.

I can’t obey him.

I can’t resist.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. “I just want to talk.”

I want to laugh. I try to, but the only sound that trickles out is weak. A moan. A gasp. “Talk. You want to talk.”

“And you want to hear.” He pauses as if waiting for me to argue. When I don’t, he smiles. That cold, icy smile that used to serve as a focal point of my nightmares. And the highlight of my day. “You came to me for a reason.”

“A good one,” I echo. “I…I came to kill you.”

“Did you?”

My grip on the pistol slips in my sweaty palms. I have to grip it tighter. “I will kill you.”

“Have a seat, Ksenia, and I will tell you the real reason why you came to me.”

I laugh again. The sound echoes off the walls, violent and unsteady. I sound like Arno right before he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Pow. Maybe he had the right idea all along.

“You didn’t give me much of a choice.”

“You’ve always had a choice.” Something in his voice warns me to back away from him. He steps forward.

I scramble back another step. My shoulders strike the wall—there’s nowhere farther to go.

“Put the gun down, Ksei.”

“No.”

He reaches out and I will my finger to pull the trigger. I scream the command inside my head. Kill him!

His palm settles over my hand, the touch electrifying my skin.

He gently lowers the weapon until I’m aiming it at the floor.

There’s no ounce of fear in him. Just a look I know well—possession.

He exudes it in everything he does, from the way he appraises me to how he breathes me in, leaning close so that I can hear each ragged intake of air.

“You fixed your hair for me.” He fingers a tangled lock of it.

I see it happen from the corner of my eye. He still wears the thick, silver ring on the thumb of that hand. I have scars from how deeply the insignia bit into my skin whenever he struck me with it.

“I didn’t even have to ask—”

“Get away from me.”

He doesn’t let go of my hair. If anything, his grip tightens, forcing my head to tilt in his direction. Burning pain creeps across my scalp like an old, forgotten friend.

He inhales me again, and I know what he’ll find—cigarette smoke, spray paint, and Espisido. “You remember how much I loved this color on you.”

This color. “It came out of a box,” I tell him, but the words fall flat. My hair has been blonde for years.

With every salon appointment, maybe I forgot the original shade of it a little more. I see my reflection in the glass window—a girl I last saw ten years ago, her dirty, brown hair limply framing her face while she cowered beneath Piotr Petrov’s scrutiny.