CHAPTER ONE
FIONA
I feelhim before I see him.
That slow burn at the base of my spine. The hitch in my breath that I pretend is nothing. The way my fingers tighten around a drink I don’t even like.
He’s here. I know it.
The bass pulses low and heavy through the bar, chairs scraping across worn hardwood, while Dana’s laughter cuts through it all. She’s a fellow prosecutor, the kind of woman men orbit around. Blonde. Sunny. Unapologetically warm.
I’m the opposite. I like rules. Boundaries. Men in cages—preferably the kind that slam shut with a satisfying clank after a guilty verdict.
We won today. Put one of them away. Yet here I am scanning the room, pretending it’s not for him.
Dana raises her glass of pinot noir. “You should be smiling after that win today.”
My mouth quirks a fraction. “Thisisme smiling.”
She rolls her eyes playfully and mutters something about my resting murder face, but I’m only half listening. My gaze drifts again, drawn like a tide.
Every shadow looks like him. Every dark corner promises the same devil. And I hate what it does to me.
It’s been two months since the trial ended. Since I stood in court and laid out every ounce of evidence I had, certain I’d finally be the one to bring down Aleksei Marinov. But the bastard walked free.
Now, he’s everywhere. On the street. Behind me in line for tea or coffee. Even in my damn dreams.
And the worst part? My body reacts before my mind catches up. My pulse stutters. My thighs press. A slow, traitorous ache coils deep.
It’s instinctual. Primal. And utterly unforgivable. A man like him shouldn’t make me feel anything but disgust. But whenever we lock eyes, I go still, needing to be near him, like a match to gasoline.
I take another sip, trying to calm the hurricane churning beneath my skin. I tell myself I’m imagining it. That I’m paranoid. That he has better things to do at night than stalk the woman who tried to destroy him. He has plenty willing to keep his bed warm, which would be a much better use of his time.
But I know better. A man like Aleksei doesn’t let things go, and I got under his skin. I saw it. Felt it.
He should’ve forgotten me, but he watches me instead. Smirks like he knows how close I am to strangling him to death. And if I wasn’t sure he’d kill me for it, I’d have filed the restraining order weeks ago.
But deep down? I think I like it. There’s a twisted thrill in knowing I live in his head. That despite everything, he still can’t stop watching me. That when he closes his eyes, he sees me. That I crawled so deep into his mind during that trial, he still hasn’t figured out how to scrape me out. And if he’s not careful, I’ll do it again.
Because that’s what you do with men like him: you ruin them.
I sip my drink and pretend not to sense the heat at the back of my neck. Pretend I don’t know who it belongs to.
I pretend so hard, I almost believe it.
Until the crowd shifts and I see him.
Aleksei Marinov.
He appeared out of nowhere. Sitting in the corner like a goddamn king, one arm draped across the back of the booth, a glass of something dark and expensive in his hand. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t bother smiling, either. He simply watches me with those deep brown eyes.
And I hate how fast my stomach drops. How my breath goes shallow. How I feel seen in a way that has nothing to do with admiration. My blood pumps louder as I remember the cocky grin he wore as they read the verdict, his dark irises zeroing in on me. Like he was taunting me.
I drop my gaze to my glass, wondering how it’d feel if I broke it into thick shards and stuck one in his neck.
I bet the sick bastard would like it.
My attention fastens to him again. That chestnut hair is slicked back, jaw cut sharp enough to draw blood, his black dress shirt undone just enough to reveal the ink crawling over sun-warmed skin. He looks like something ripped from aGQspread…ifGQfeatured monsters.
