I watch myself emerge from the shadows, watch her tense, hand twitching toward her knife. I watch the second where she knew it was me, where recognition cut through shock. Her face then: eyes wide, but no scream, no plea. She accepted it in silence.
I replay it once. Twice. Again.
She’s dangerous. I knew that before the convoy burned, before the files started leaking. She doesn’t fold the way most do. She doesn’t even bend. And that makes her more of a threat than any man with a gun.
Killing her would be the easy answer. A bullet, a blade, an order given, and it would be finished. She would vanish the way all traitors do. Clean. Simple. Final.
It would also be too easy.
Too final.
Death closes doors. It leaves no room for answers, no space for unraveling what she’s built against me. Right now, I need answers more than I need her blood on the floor.
I lean back against the console, the screens flickering across my face. My reflection stares back at me in the glass: hard eyes, clenched jaw, smoke rising in the corners of the room from a forgotten ashtray.
The problem is, I don’t know if it’s the truth I want from her. Or if it’s something else entirely.
The chain rattling at her ankle should have satisfied me. Proof of control, proof she’s caught. Yet it doesn’t, because even shackled, even stripped bare, she’s still holding something back. I can’t stand not knowing what it is.
My fingers tap against the desk, a slow rhythm I can’t break. I know what my men expect: swift justice, a body in the ground, proof that betrayal costs everything. But I’m not ready to give them that.
Not yet.
When I think of her, bound and waiting, I don’t just think of punishment. I think of her eyes the first time I saw her in court. Of her silence in the alley. Of the way she said my family’s name like it was poison.
I wonder which burns hotter inside me: the fury of betrayal, or the hunger to break her open and see what else she’s hiding.
Either way, I can’t let her go. Not until I decide which part of me wins.
The monitors hum softly, their glow cutting through the dark of the security room. I shift in the chair, cigarette smoke curling slow around me, eyes fixed on the screen. With a flick of the controls, I switch the feed from the archive to live.
Her room comes into view.
She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, cuffed ankle glinting faintly where the chain pulls taut. Dimitri stands near the door, broad-shouldered, arms folded across his chest. I watch him speak—his tone low, his words unreadable through the grainy feed—but I don’t need the audio. I can read his posture, the sharp set of his jaw. He’s giving her one of his warnings.
She listens, her face unreadable, chin tilted high even though she wears only the clothes I had laid out for her.
The blouse clings to her damp skin.
Her hair hangs loose, heavy with water, strands sticking to the curve of her throat. Even from the flat angle of the camera, I can see the line of her collarbone, the slope of her shoulder, the faint sheen of moisture that beads along her skin.
Dimitri turns for the door. He throws one last look over his shoulder before leaving.
She’s alone again.
The moment the door shuts, she exhales, her posture dropping, just slightly. Not defeat, but something more complicated. She drags her hand across her face, pushes her wet hair back, and the motion pulls the fabric tight against her chest.
I shouldn’t stare. I shouldn’t linger. This is surveillance, not indulgence. She’s a traitor, not a woman to covet.
Yet, I lean closer.
Her blouse is pale, almost translucent from the damp. The thin material clings to the swell of her breasts, to the line of her ribs, to every curve I’ve imagined since that first day in court. She shifts against the bed, tugging the hem down her thighs, but the fabric rides up again, baring skin smooth and pale.
My throat tightens.
I tell myself I’m studying her. That every gesture matters. Every flick of her gaze, every twitch of her hand could betray her state of mind. That’s not why I’m still watching.
It’s because she looks like this: raw, stripped of her courtroom armor, stripped of her careful mask. Not the poised woman who cut down prosecutors with her tongue, not the careful manipulator who sat across from me in the club with eyes like sharpened glass. Here, now, she looks human. Vulnerable.
