Anger surged through me. I clenched my fists as she refused to look at me anymore. The confusion tore me apart, this sudden distance driving me mad with rage. “What the hell is this?” I snapped, grabbing her shoulders in a sharp movement before she could escape, “let go of me,” she replied, her eyes fixed on my chest.
“Look at me, Sienna,” I growled, refusing to loosen my grip, searching for her eyes in vain. She turned her face away with a quiet sigh. “Enough, Sasha. We had good moments, to take the edge off everything that was happening with Rasili but it’s enough. It was a mistake. We shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have,” she finished softly, closing her eyes as if she regretted everything we had shared. Not as if. She truly regretted it.
“What…” “A problem?” Nikolai’s voice suddenly interrupted as he entered the kitchen carrying a tray of empty glasses.
I stared at Sienna’s profile for a few more seconds before stepping back, my hands sliding slowly along her arms before clenching into fists. “We’re going to talk,” I muttered through clenched teeth, “you can’t run from me anymore,moya malen’kaya gadyuka.” (my little viper) I turned and left the room, ignoring my brother calling after me.
Sienna
His heavy footsteps faded quickly as I braced my hands against the counter, struggling to catch my breath. The breath he had stolen from me, cut short by his voice, his scent, his mere presence. I had done what I had to do. I had been right. It had been necessary. It had been a mistake. We should never have… I should never have. When had it all begun? When had my goals slipped into the shadows of this… this thing I could not even name? Attraction? No. It had been far more than that. It had been visceral, almost cruel, a desire that burned and consumed me from the inside out. When had it started? That rainy night, once again, amid our shouts, our dark stares, our collisions of hatred.
My glass now empty, I glanced toward Hans behind the bar. He smiled and was already refilling it,“slow down, or youwon’t have your head on straight by midnight,” he said, sliding the full glass back to me with a wink. I shot him an unimpressed look and ignored him, sipping anyway as my thoughts drifted back to my sister and my nephew, under the same roof as the Ivanovs , the head of the Bratva.
I still didn’t know how we had ended up in this situation. They had appeared out of nowhere and taken us. I should have hit that damn lawyer harder at the airport. He got on my nerves with the way he looked at me, the way he spoke to me as if I were some ignorant fool who knew nothing about life.Idiota.
“Always brooding,” my Shadow’s rough voice said as he suddenly appeared beside me, settling onto the high stool at my right. “So now we’re getting kidnapped?” he added with a crooked grin, which only deepened the line of his scar, the one that started at the outer corner of his right eye and ran down to the corner of his mouth. Despite it, he remained one of the most charismatic men I had ever known: square jaw, sharp masculine features, slanted eyes. And his build… tall, very tall, broad-shouldered, drawing every gaze in the room, male or female alike. Lean, yet unmistakably strong. He winked stealing my glass and draining it in one swallow. I shot him a dark look, crossing my arms over my chest, He ran a hand through his dark hair after setting the glass down, my glass, now empty again.
“A simple setback,” I replied, glancing toward Hans, who was chatting with other customers. He wouldn’t be listening. This place was one of the few where I could meet discreetly, one of the rare spots not under the Master’s control.
“A setback,” my Shadow repeated, scratching his chin as his beard began to grow back. “That’s a funny way to describe the Ivanovs” he raised an eyebrow at me.
I sighed, rubbing my face with both hands. Damn Ivanovs. They had ruined everything. Months of preparation, no years of it.
Warm hands closed around my wrists, pulling them away from my face. I met my Shadow’s neutral gaze, neutral on the surface, at least. I knew him too well. Better than I knew myself. And he knew me better than he knew himself.
“Have you eaten? You’re not drinking on an empty stomach, I hope,” he asked in a low voice, his eyes scanning my face.
I froze, suddenly remembering the hot soup a certain blue-eyed Russian had brought me earlier that evening, just before I had slipped out of his manor. Avoiding guards and security systems had been child’s play , once you learned how to melt into shadows, disappearing became easy.
I grimaced, pushing away the image of that man who stirred such contradictory things inside me. I slipped free of my Shadow’s grip without answering and pulled a folded piece of paper from my jacket pocket, handing it to him.
“The address of the manor. I want you to know where I am”, he took it, glanced at it, then pulled out his lighter and burned it, letting the ashes fall into our empty glass. “Are you in danger?” he asked, signaling Hans for another drink and a burger. Stubborn as ever.
“I don’t think so,” I murmured, recalling the way Nikolai Ivanov had behaved toward my sister and my nephew. My Shadow nodded, trusting my judgment. “But we can’t stay there. We need to set up an extraction in the next few days,” I added tired, brushing imaginary dust from his leather jacket. “It’s too dangerous. Too unstable.”
He nodded again just as Hans set down a beer and a plate with fries and a burger. He took the beer and silently pushed the plate toward me. I was about to refuse when he handed me his phone while taking a sip. I frowned, then smiled despite myselfwhen I saw the photos: three young women, all smiling. “They made it,” I whispered, zooming in on their faces glowing in the sunset, I scrolled through the pictures, nibbling on the fries he offered without looking away.
“They look so happy,” I said between bites, my legs swinging lightly from the high stool,“look at Mary’s smile here,” I added, showing him one photo as he handed me yet another fry. I froze, finally realizing his little trick. He watched me with an amused look as he took his phone back and slipped it away.
“We’ll have to come up with a new trick,” he said calmly. “The Master won’t take long to figure it out.”, he was right. Car accidents, illnesses, disappearances, the excuses we had used to free the youngest and most fragile over the past two years. Two years of action built on years of preparation. Years of suffering, blood, and death.
I would need to contact Ganesh again for help.
I sighed, pushing the plate, still half full, aside, folding my arms on the counter and resting my head on them, eyes closed.Think, Sienna. Think. I squeezed my eyes shut harder as I felt it again, that presence brushing against my thoughts, sinuous, invasive. Its voice echoed inside my head.
“Why think, Sienna? You are not a savior. You can’t save them. You’re a monster, the worst kind.”
“Go away,” I whispered, so softly I barely heard myself. But he did. My Shadow always heard me. I felt him lean back on his stool, his gaze fixed on my profile.Wonderful. He set his half-full bottle beside my plate,“you need to eat,” he said, ignoring my words.
My head felt like it was about to explode. My eyes burned. I was exhausted, drained to the bone. “Do you know why the Master has no control over this place, Enna?” Kenji suddenly asked.“Hm?” “Because someone far more powerful does,” hecontinued, standing up. I barely listened, I wasn’t in the mood for metaphors.
“I will always be your shadow,” he murmured in Korean, his fingers brushing the top of my head, a promise as old as our first meeting, a promise that had kept us alive even in the deepest darkness.
When I opened my eyes, he was gone again, melted back into the shadows.
“Idiot,” I muttered, rolling my eyes when I noticed the money left beneath his bottle.A true gentleman. I picked up the small lollipop he had left beside it, smiling faintly. “What’s he doing here?” “I don’t know, but he doesn’t look happy,” I heard Hans and a waitress whisper behind the counter. A sudden shiver ran down my spine.
I frowned and turned around, only to bump straight into something warm, damp… and solid.
