His first smile after all this, and it’s for me.
As he stalks ahead—confident, alert, utterly in control—unexpected warmth unfurls in my chest. Not just attraction, though that’s still present, but a hot pulse beneath my fear. This is new. A recognition. A kinship.
We’re both survivors.
Different traumas and different worlds, but survivors all the same.
Chapter 13
Kolya
Her Volvo sits pathetically in the driveway, the spare tire I changed last night looking even sadder in daylight. The thing’s practically a bald disaster waiting to happen. The knowledge needles at my skin. She shouldn’t be driving on that garbage.
The urge to take her home in my Audi is difficult to resist.
She chews her bottom lip. After the battle in the store, glitter covers her body like a bizarre form of war paint. “Will you be okay?”
“I’m good. Get in. Lock the doors.” My directives come out harsher than intended.
She flinches but complies, fumbling with her keys.
I wait until her engine sputters to life before I move to my own car. Through the windshield, her hands grip the steering wheel too tightly, her knuckles white with tension. Her eyes meet mine for a second before she pulls away.
I follow at a distance, that raw, protective instinct gnawing at my insides. Her car wobbles slightly as she rounds a corner. That spare tire is a fucking hazard, though I guess it’s better than the flat.
I changed it because…she’s mine now. My project.
My responsibility.
Until I get what I want from her, I control what happens in her life. Good and bad.
Roman’s voice echoes in my head.“Attachments get you killed.”
I rub my jaw. When did I start caring if a mark lives or dies beyond mission parameters? Caring about someone is a liability. I bury the strange feeling under layers of cold purpose.
Three blocks from her house, I turn down a side street, pulling over once I’m out of sight. I yank out my phone and stab the keypad with more force than necessary.
Kirill Khitrenko answers on the second ring. “Did you find them?”
No hello. I expect nothing less from my fellow enforcer and the man I’m reporting to for this mission.
I keep my voice neutral. “Not yet.”
“What’s the complication? She’s a kindergarten teacher.” His tone cuts straight into what he perceives as weakness.
I stare through the windshield at nothing. “She doesn’t know anything. Doesn’t have a storage unit or safe deposit box either.”
“And? Your job is to get in, retrieve the diamonds, and come home.” A pause. “Why are you lingering?”
I ignore him.
Another beat. “How hot is she?”
The question ignites wrath in my chest. “I’m lingering because the diamonds aren’t where MJ’s intel said they’d be. Not in her classroom. Not at her house. So, now, I have to figure out where else they could be.”
The angry words spill out, piled like sedimentary rock. The top layer is professional frustration. The mission isn’t going according to plan. But a more volatile emotion I refuse to name lurks underneath.
It’s too much likeweakness.
