The question hung between us, heavy with implications I didn't want to examine. Because the truth was, I didn't know. I'd made an impulsive decision to keep her, to protect her from the Morozovs, but I had no endgame. No plan for what happened next. She couldn't stay tied to a chair forever. Couldn't live in this safe house indefinitely. At some point, decisions would have to be made, and none of them would be good for her.
"I don't make promises I can't keep," I said finally.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer you're getting."
She held Bear tighter, and he licked her face with his tiny pink tongue, leaving wet streaks through the dirt and dried blood. The gesture was so innocent, so purely affectionate, that it made everything else—the violence, the theft, the half-million-dollar bounty—seem suddenly absurd.
The vet would be here in thirty minutes. He'd fix the dog, maybe look at her injuries if I could convince her to let him. Then tomorrow, I'd have to figure out what the fuck to do with her. Call Alexei, probably. Let him make the decision. That's what I should do.
But watching her hold that puppy like he was the most important thing in the world, whispering promises that everything would be okay even though nothing in her life had ever been okay, I knew I wouldn't. I'd keep her here, keep her safe, keep her mine for as long as I could justify it to myself.
This was going to be complicated.
And despite everything I'd just said, despite every rule I'd made for myself, despite the fact that she was trouble wrappedin rage wrapped in vulnerability I didn't know how to handle—I was starting to think complicated might be exactly what I needed.
Chapter 5
Eva
Thedreamdissolvedlikesugar in water, leaving behind a taste I didn't want to name. Something about rough hands and Russian accents, about being held down in ways that had nothing to do with violence and everything to do with—no. I forced my eyes open, desperate to escape wherever my unconscious mind had wandered while I slept.
Nothing looked right.
The ceiling above me was smooth white plaster, not water-stained tiles or rusty pipes. No sirens screaming past. No drunk shouting in the hallway. Just silence thick as wool, broken only by soft breathing that wasn't mine.
I sat up too fast, and the world didn't spin. That was wrong too. Every morning for the past two years, I'd woken dizzy from hunger, from sleeping on concrete, from whatever infection was currently winning the war against my immune system. But now I felt . . . stable. Present. Like my body actually belonged to me instead of being something I was trapped in.
The sheets beneath me were clean. Actually clean, not shelter-clean where you tried not to think about who'd bled or pissed or died on them before. They smelled like lavender fabric softener, the expensive kind I used to steal sometimes.
The room came into focus as my brain caught up with my body. Beautiful and wrong, like a museum display of "normal bedroom" that no actual person would inhabit. A mahogany dresser that just screamed mid-century modern. An upholstered chair in the corner that looked soft enough to sleep in. Matching nightstands with crystal lamps that threw prisms when the light hit them.
All of it arranged too perfectly, like someone had ordered "elegant bedroom set" and had it delivered whole. No personal touches. No lived-in chaos. Just expensive furniture arranged to look homey while being anything but.
The windows had bars. Decorative bars, worked into an elegant pattern that almost looked like art until you realized they were welded to the frame. The curtains were beautiful too—heavy silk in deep blue—but they were clearly meant to hide those bars from the inside, make the prisoner forget what they couldn't see.
The door had no handle on the inside. Just smooth wood where the knob should be, polished to a shine that reflected my face when I stumbled over to confirm what I already knew. Locked in. Trapped. But trapped somewhere that smelled like furniture polish and clean laundry instead of piss and desperation.
A soft whimper made me spin around. There, in the corner I hadn't checked, was a small pen. Not a cage—an actual veterinary recovery pen with soft blankets and a heating pad. Bear lay curled in the center, an IV port taped to his tiny front leg with cartoon bandages. Paw Patrol. Someone had put Paw Patrol bandages on a sick puppy.
His breathing was steady, even. His eye—the good one—was closed in real sleep, not the fitful unconsciousness of an animal shutting down. The swelling around his injured eye had gone down, the wound cleaned and treated with something that looked professional. Antibiotics, probably. Maybe pain medication from the way his little body was actually relaxed instead of rigid with hurt.
A piece of paper sat on top of the pen, covered in Cyrillic I couldn't read. Next to it, a line of pill bottles and syringes, each labeled with times and dosages in the same handwriting. Someone had left detailed medical instructions for a puppy I'd found in garbage.
The memory hit in fragments, like scenes from a movie I'd watched through a fever.
An older man with gentle hands and tired eyes, speaking Russian to Dmitry while examining me like I was fascinating and tragic in equal measure. The sting of a needle I was too exhausted to fight. Cool antiseptic on my palm making me hiss through clenched teeth.
"She's not a stray dog, Yankov," Dmitry's voice, rougher than usual. "She's a person."
"Could have fooled me with these injuries." The older man—Yankov—had switched to accented English, probably for my benefit even though I was barely conscious. "This one's infected, something nasty from the look of it. These look like defensive wounds, at least six months old, never properly treated. These bruises are in different stages—someone's been hitting her regularly for weeks, maybe months."
He'd cataloged my damage like evidence, each observation clinical and damning.
"When did she last eat a real meal?" he'd asked.
Dmitry's silence had been answer enough.
