Page 7

It’s been almost a week since I kissed her, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I thought I was just playing around with her when I did it—a power move of some sort. But instead, I got completely lost in it. In her. No one has ever turned me on like that.

It must’ve been because of the tension. The argument. Nothing else.

Except I know that’s not true.

She’s gorgeous. And she’s driving me crazy.

And she hasn’t given up trying to get away.

I imagine she wants to run straight to her father to update him on things. Or to feed him information about my home. I’m not sure, but she must be dying to get back to him. Possibly even just to let him know the plan worked. The debt is cleared, and she escaped.

Mm.

Perhaps I should put this theory to the test.

She’s so desperate to get away—what if I let her think that she’s won? That she’s escaped.

I’m toying with the idea all evening. It’s late and I’ve just climbed into bed. I’m lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling. My men are on high alert, expecting her to make another attempt.

With a smile on my face, I decide that tomorrow, whatever attempt she makes is going to be successful.

Pulling my phone out, I message Roan.

Me: Tomorrow, I want you to start looking into Lara’s background.

I want to know everything about her. Also, I’m going to allow her next escape attempt to be successful, and I’m going to follow her to see what she is so desperate to get back to.

I assume it’s her father, but it will be interesting to see why.

Roan: Yes, sir. I’ll have the guys open an investigation into her tomorrow. Maybe she can lead us to where her father hid the missing 25% of our product.

Me: That’s long gone. And he’s paid his debts. Forget about it. Keep me in the loop about the investigation.

Roan: Will do. Have a good evening, sir.

When I roll over, my face against my pillow, and close my eyes, an image of her comes to my mind.

Her lips swollen from my kiss, her blue eyes glittering with expectation.

My cock throbs thinking of her and I groan in annoyance.

I can’t keep doing this. Night after night, I lie here wanting to go to her room and have my way with her.

She is mine, after all. But that isn’t the way I imagine being with my wife for the first time.

Although the idea of it turns me on wildly.

***

As predicted, in the morning, Lara is already hard at work with another escape plan.

All of the security guys have been told to turn a blind eye and let her slip past, and one of the side gates has been ‘accidentally’ left open and unattended after what looks like a delivery took place for the scullery.

Lara jumps at the opportunity, and in a flash, she’s slipping through the gate in a pair of tight jeans and a dark hoodie.

Her bright pink high-tops are hardly the ideal pair of shoes for being stealth, but I assume she had no idea that she’d actually manage to get away today.

I’m ready and waiting, and as soon as she slips out of the gate, I’m tailing her.

I was even nice enough to leave a convenient pile of cash on the kitchen counter this morning. Nothing over the top. It looks like I just dumped some change there after cleaning out my wallet.

To my surprise, she didn’t even take all of it.

But she has enough to wave down a taxi, and right now I’m sitting in my car, a block or two away from her, watching her climb into the back seat and tell him where to go.

The taxi pulls out onto the road and I keep my distance, but also a watchful eye on them so that I don’t lose her.

We drive far from my mansion into a very dodgy part of town.

“What are you doing here, little one?” I mutter to myself as the cab driver pulls over and she gets out, then turns to stare up at a crappy, derelict building.

Paint is peeling off the side of the building in massive chunks.

There is damp and mold soaking through the brickwork, and every piece of metal is rusted and crumbling.

Outside the building are piles of rubbish bags, tossed aside and forgotten, rotting on the sidewalk.

We’re close to the docks; not the nice side where people sit on their balconies drinking cocktails and watching the yachts, this is the side where the trawler boats come in and dump their catch for the day. I can smell rotting fish guts mixed with the stench of boat fuel.

Is her father hiding here?

I park my car away from the building and walk down the road towards her on foot, keeping to the shadows, close to the buildings, out of sight.

Even a man like Anton would have better connections than this, though.

Besides, I got confirmation yesterday that he booked himself into a hotel on the other side of town.

I’m giving him thirty days to get his shit together and get out of here.

It’s lenient of me, and I’m only allowing him that amount of time because of the deal.

So why is she here?

It’s not to meet her father—so what is it?

As she’s walking towards the entrance of the crumbling building, a man approaches her. A debt collector. I recognize his type straight away.

He blocks her path as she tries to step through the door.

Lara looks flustered and upset.

She throws her hands in the air in exasperation.

I duck down the side alley, close enough to hear the conversation.

“Please, I just need more time,” she sighs.

“We’ve given you enough time. Where have you been? Hiding from your obligations?” he snarls.

“No, I had some issues. But I’m back now, and I’m going back to work, and as soon as I get my weekly pay, I’ll get back up to date.”

“Lara, the boss is tired of your excuses. It’s taking too long. We want the money,” he says.

She nods, looking broken and upset. “I know, okay. I know.”

“You’ve got until the end of the week. This is your last chance, though. The boss says no more after this.”

The man turns away and storms off.

What is he talking about? I wonder who she owes money to.

Lara hurries into the building, and I walk in after her, catching sight of her as she makes her way down a passage on the ground floor.

I have to duck out of sight when she glances over her shoulder.

I follow her to a brown door, coated in grime.

She slides a key into the lock and tugs a piece of paper off the front of the door. For a moment, she just stares at it. I can’t be sure from here, but it looks like she’s crying.

She crumples the paper and throws it angrily against the wall.

The door is stuck, and she has to kick the base of it to get it to open.

Once she’s inside, she slams the door behind her.

I jog towards the piece of paper, grab it from the floor, and then jog away again, not wanting to be seen by her or anyone else.

Outside on the sidewalk, I spread the crumpled page open and my brows knit tightly as I read it.

Eviction notice.

Attention: Ms. L. Abakumov.

Rent not received.

Third and final warning already given on the 17 th of the previous month.

All belongings are to be removed by no later than the 5 th of the current month, or belongings will be forcibly removed.

My eyes skim over the information in disbelief.

This is where she lives?

It can’t be.

This place is a complete shithole. How can she live here when her father has been staying in nice apartments in the city? This doesn’t make sense.

I head back to my car, confusion setting in as I try to figure out what is going on.

Was that debt collector connected to the apartment? I doubt it. She’s already been evicted, so they wouldn’t be bothering to chase her down anymore.

A place as shit as this would be dirt cheap. Yet she’s still been kicked out. I can’t fathom it. If she’s working with her father, she should be coining enough to pay for this dump. A lot nicer than this dump, actually.

Sitting in my car, I wait for Lara to come out of the apartment. When she does, she looks even more upset.

She climbs into a piece of shit car that she has to try four times to start before it splutters to life. When she drives, the back wheel wobbles, dangerously unaligned. It’s a death trap on wheels.

I spend the day following her around town, from debt collector to debt collector, trying to smooth over the issues they clearly have with her.

She’s not hiding from them—she’s trying to assure them that she is planning on paying.

That she isn’t running. But they are getting increasingly aggressive with her, which is pissing me off.

Regardless of whether she accepts it or not, she is my wife. And no one gets to talk to her that way.

If I weren’t trying to stay hidden, I’d be breaking their jaws right now.

Lara has been on the go all day. She looks exhausted.

I feel exhausted just watching her go through this.

The more I watch, the more none of it makes sense.

She hasn’t even tried to make contact with her father. She’s staying in the dodgiest part of town, she’s pleading with debt collectors, she’s being evicted from her shithole apartment—where is the scam? The hidden money? The secret plot cooked up by her and Anton?

I’m in my car watching a massive man trying to intimidate her across the street.

He hasn’t touched her, but if he does, I’m not going to be able to hold myself back. I’m tired of the way they’ve been treating her.

My phone rings and I grunt as I pull it from my pocket.

“What,” I snap, angry at the debt collector I have my eyes locked on.

“Sir, it’s Roan.”

“Yeah, sorry, man, what’s going on?”

“I have a report for you. The information we’ve gathered about Lara.”

“Go ahead.”

“She stays in an apartment near the docks, that shithole area where the crackheads hang out. It looks like she has high amounts of debt that she owes to numerous people across town, and the bookies are after her. She’s been stalked by a number of them after not paying on time. I think they’re pissed off.”

“So, she’s just like her father? What is it, a gambling addiction?”

“No, sir, nothing like that. Her debts are medical expenses at some hospital. The bills are in her mother’s name.

Her mother is deceased. And the remainder of the debts, the ones with the collectors, are actually her father’s debts that he managed to manipulate her into taking over.

All of the bookies have his name in the book, crossed out and then replaced with hers. ”

“Are you fucking serious? They aren’t her debts?” I snarl angrily, my hatred towards Anton tripling in a matter of seconds.

“Dead serious, sir. Also, she lost her jobs a few days ago because she didn’t show up at work without contacting them.”

“Jobs? Plural?”

“She had three different jobs, sir. One at a law firm, one as a data analyst, and one doing translation of various documents after-hours.”

“She lost all three jobs?” I sigh, knowing it was because of me.

“Yes, sir.”

“That fucking dickhead, Anton, has been using his daughter, tricking her into being responsible for his debts.”

“We aren’t really surprised, though, sir. Given the type of man he has proven himself to be over and over again.”

“I know, but I thought she was in on it. Doesn’t she know what her father does for a living?”

“There is nothing to indicate that she has any idea of her father’s ties to the mafia.

And she has no connections whatsoever, other than her connection to her father, which is apparently practically zero.

In her phone records, there is one call from his phone to hers over the past six months.

It looks like she’s cut him out of her life. ”

Shaking my head, I realize that her being at my office building the other night was another of her father’s ploys to dump his debts onto her.

That man deserves to be skinned alive. What kind of a father does that to their daughter?

Their own child? He has to know where she lives, too.

How can a man let his daughter live in a place like that?

It’s so dangerous for her. Just stepping out her front door, she’d be at risk of some asshole taking advantage of her.

I don’t know how she sleeps peacefully at night.

Even I’d want a gun under my pillow in a neighborhood like that.

This entire time, she hasn’t been lying to me. All the times she was asking why I’d taken her and what her father owed me, she genuinely had no idea what was going on.

Guilt sears through me.

Not that this is my fault. I’m not the one to blame, here—her father is. No wonder she cut him off.

And it’s not just her father’s debts she's working three jobs to pay. It’s also her mother’s medical bills. Anton left her to deal with those on her own while eating at luxury restaurants and gambling away every cent he earns with his decent job. He’s disgusting.

And suddenly I’m hoping that I do see him again, so that I can show him exactly what I think of him.

Across the road, the debt collector grabs Lara’s arm and shoves her against the wall. She lets out a startled yelp. My blood hits its boiling point in an instant.

“I have to go,” I say to Roan, then hang up and drop the phone onto the seat of my car as I climb out in a hurry.

The guy has her fully restrained against the wall, pressing his body into hers and making suggestive comments on how she can earn an extension on what she owes.

Her eyes are bright with tears and fear, locked onto the brute of a man, pleading with him to have patience.

I grab him by the back of his shirt and rip him off her, wanting to tear him to shreds for touching her.