Then the door slams. A lock turns. And I collapse where I am, breath breaking apart in my chest. I look at the space where Viktor was standing and try to remember how I functioned before he was here. I am covered in his scent. I am marked by his weight. He has made me part of him, and I don't know how to survive the silence.
As I sit there watching the snow, the silence that follows isn't quiet. It's violent.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
JONAH
I don't knowwhat to do with myself. They took him. I don't know what they're going to do to him. I don't even know why I care so much.
Pressing a palm to my throat, I force a breath in, then another. If I don't, I'm going to lose it. My body keeps reacting like the threat is still in the room, even though nothing is moving. Even though I'm alone. This silence has its own kind of violence.
I pace around, then stop, because there's nowhere to go. Nothing to grab onto. Only a few nights ago, I stood in the doorway of my old life, staring at the man who taught me fear. The man who called himself Dad but hasn't come back to help me. Now I'm here instead. In a house that isn't mine. Surrounded by money and power and men with guns. Kept in a golden prison with a mafia heir who's dangerous enough to terrify everyone else, and gentle enough with me that it hurts to think about.
Outside the window, snow keeps falling. It presses against the glass in waves, burying the road, the trees, the stone wall at the edge of the property. If Viktor had walked out of here andkept going, the storm would've erased every trace of him within an hour.
I shouldn't think about him, but my body doesn't seem to know that. It's like it learned his shape and didn't get the message that he's gone. I can't believe he didn't kill them all.
I cross to the window and then back to the bed. A book lies on the nightstand. The title is printed in Cyrillic. I recognize a few letters, not enough to read. Inside, the pages are dense with columns, numbers, notes crowded into the margins. I set it down carefully, realizing how little I actually know about Viktor Morozov. Not where he grew up. Not how he learned to become what he is. Not what his life looked like before he walked into mine and bent everything out of shape. Would Viktor have looked at me if we'd passed each other on the street? Of course not. He lives in a world I never touched. I'm only here because I was in the wrong place, with the wrong man, at the wrong time.
Time drags. I keep asking myself what they're doing to him. I don't know what could be worse than being killed, but I start to understand that his uncle has enough cruelty to invent something. By the time the sun sets, Viktor still isn't back.
My thoughts circle the same place. I see the way his body fought the drug. I see the way his eyes burned even as his knees gave out. I see the way Petrov watched all of it without blinking. Petrov. The one Viktor trusted. The one his family trusted.
“Viktor,” I whisper to the empty room. Nothing answers.
I'm in bed by the time footsteps finally move in the corridor. My throat locks. The lock turns from the outside. The handle moves. The door opens. Then, finally, the doorway fills with him.
I'm out of bed and moving toward him before my head remembers to stop. His hair is damp at the temples, like he's been burning through adrenaline. His gaze doesn't quite focus on me at first. His arms hang loose at his sides. His shoulders are drawing in. He looks broken. Brutalized. I've seen that look many times in the ER. Seeing it on him hits harder, because he's never looked breakable to me before.
His eyes lift to mine. Focus snaps back in.
“Viktor. Are you alright?”
“Yeah.” He shuts the door behind him. “Were you waiting up for me?”
Reaching to the back of his waistband, he pulls out a knife. My breath catches.
“Guess they didn't want to keep it,” he says mildly.
“What’s that?”
“My knife.” His mouth tilts. “It was my father's before it was mine. I lost it after the shooting.” He turns it once in his grip.
“How did you get it back?”
“A guard gave it to me. She waited until Sergei's men weren't watching. Put it in my palm and walked away.”
“Do you know her?”
“No.”
“Then why give it back?”
He looks at the blade. Something dangerous flickers in his eyes. “Loyalty. Someone in this house is on my side. Or because these motherfuckers want to see what I'll do with it. If that’s the case, I'll make sure my uncle regrets the reminder.”
His thumb slides once along the flat of the steel. I don't know which scares me more. That they gave it back, or how naturally it fits his grip. Viktor crosses to the far wall, to the strip of wood framing the space beside the window. He steps back and throws. The knife hits and stays, buried to the hilt. My stomach drops.Is that a warning? Or proof that whatever they did to him didn't work?
