“Too much,” I say quietly. “That’s the problem.”
Maya sighs and leans her shoulder into mine. “Okay. Then for tonight, you’re going to eat, sleep, and not stalk your maybe-murder-adjacent Bratva ex on my laptop. Tomorrow we can freak out strategically.”
I let out a breath that’s half laugh, half sob. “Deal,” I say.
But later, when she’s busy making up a bed on the couch and Lily is finally asleep down the hall, the image of his face on that screen stays burned behind my eyes.
And I know, even here, even now, I’m not done with him.
12
ALEKSANDER
I have to find her.
It’s not a thought I entertain; it’s a fact that settles in my bones the moment I step through my front door. The city can be on fire, my phone can be vibrating itself to death, Nikolai can be listing problems in that flat voice of his, and still, everything in me keeps returning to the same point.
Bella is out there.
And I let her slip through my hands.
Home should feel like control. It usually does. The elevator opens straight into the apartment, private code, no hallway, no neighbors. Stone floors that never scuff. Glass that looks out over the water like the world exists for my viewing. The place is quiet in a way that’s engineered, soundproofed, curated. It smells faintly of cedar and expensive paint and the cold cleanliness of money.
It doesn’t comfort me tonight.
I drop my keys in a bowl that cost more than a used car. I shrug off my coat, toss it over a chair. The security screens on the wall glow with feeds from cameras I don’t look at. The staff is gone. They know better than to linger when I come back like this.
My body still feels wired, like I’m waiting for the next shot.
I should be running the plan again. I should be calling people, leaning on contacts, pulling footage, tightening the net. I’ve done all of that, and it still isn’t enough. The problem isn’t logistics.
The problem is that she ran from me, and I hate it.
Everything in my apartment is arranged for efficiency—no photographs, no keepsakes, nothing anyone could use against me. Just the city sprawling below, reflected back in the polished floors.
Except for the studio.
I walk past the living room and into the studio at the back. It’s the only room in this place that doesn’t feel like it was designed to impress anyone. The lights are warmer in here. The windows are narrower. The shelves are cluttered with things I don’t let the rest of the world see. Books with cracked spines. A few old photographs turned face down.
It’s the one room I keep locked, the only space that feels lived-in. The walls are spattered with color, the scent of oil paint hangs in the air, canvases line the edges—unfinished work, half-abandoned attempts to make sense of things I can’t say out loud. A single window faces north, catching a pale, wintery light.
She’s everywhere in here.
Her outline on the canvas in front of me, the sweep of her jaw, the tilt of her head. The long, wild lines of her hair, alwaysunruly, always softer than I remember in my hands. The look in her eyes—wary, challenging, heartbreakingly open when she forgets to guard herself.
I paint her like I’m starving.
Like if I can get her right, she’ll appear in front of me—real, touchable, forgiving.
I’ve gone through three brushes in two hours, each one tossed aside when it fails to capture what she really is—the shadow of a smile, the shape of her mouth when she says my name, the way her eyes go dark when she’s fighting tears.
I don’t sleep. I don’t eat.
I just paint.
The city murmurs under my windows, cars moving in the street, distant horns, the faint pulse of bass from a club two blocks away. But in here, there’s only her, and the way I can’t let her go.
A noise at the door breaks the trance.
