He doesn’t raise his voice or lean in. He simply takes the knife from my pocket with his free hand and sets it on the bar between us like it’s a misplaced phone.
My breath goes shallow.
“That’s rude,” he says mildly. “And unnecessary.”
I laugh. It comes out shaky, but it’s real. “Do you always disarm women in public, or am I special?”
His mouth curves. “You’re very special.”
I stand still because every instinct tells me that moving right now would be a mistake. People like him don’t need to shout to be dangerous. They carry it in their stillness.
“Did my uncle send you?” I demand, jutting out my chin as though that would be enough to protect me from whatever he is about to say.
“No,” he says, flicking his eyebrows in thanks to the bartender as the vodka is poured in front of him.
“Then what do you want?” I ask.
He finally turns his body toward me, giving me his full attention like it’s a gift I didn’t ask for. Up close, his eyes are darker than I expected, glittering with something humorously menacing. If there’s such a thing.
“You stole from me. From several prominent Bratva Families, actually…” he says. “And then you stole from your uncle and fled here.”
My stomach drops. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mm.” He smiles like he enjoys the lie. “You do.”
He lifts his glass and takes a slow drink, watching me over the rim. “You ran beautifully, by the way. Clean. Efficient. I was impressed.”
That’s when it clicks.
The alarm. The timing. The way everything went wrong just enough to push me, not catch me.
“You did that,” I shake my head on an exhale of disappointment. Disappointment in myself for missing something, disappointment that this is my life now, veiled threats and no way out. I should have kept moving. “So why let me go?” I ask quietly.
He sets the glass down and leans in, close enough that I can smell his cologne. Something expensive and dangerous and all too risky.
“Because I wanted to see what you’d do and where you’d go. I wanted to see that you weren’t a foolish girl playing at adult games. I wanted to break you open and see what you were made of.” His eyes have darkened impossibly further as he runs them over my face.
My skin prickles and I have to swallow to make my throat work. “And now that you have?” It comes out like a cracked whisper and I silently chastise myself for being so affected by this man. For not having a better plan.
He looks at me like he’s deciding how much truth I can handle.
“Now,” he says softly, “you belong to me.”
Heat flares in my chest.
“I don’t belong to anyone. I had that my whole life already.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then back to my eyes. “You always belonged to me,” he says. “I just didn’t know it before. And neither did you.”
I swallow. “You should kill me, then, because I won’t go back to what I was before.”
A pause.
Something flickers across his face. “I’m not asking you to,” he says. “And I don’t kill people who fascinate me.”
My laugh comes out sharp. “Fascinate? Right. So I’m some sort of novelty to you?”
“Maybe,” he admits. “You’re a thief who stole from the Bratva and survived. That makes you priceless. Skilled. It means you have potential beyond being a wife.”
