Kazimir raises an eyebrow. "That's not a plan. That's a suicide mission."
"Maybe." I move past him toward the stairs that lead up to my bedroom. "But I've never been good at doing things the safe way."
—
After Kazimir leaves—still disapproving but loyal and smart enough not to argue further—I pour myself another vodka and sit in the dark, thinking.
The situation is more complicated than I'd like. Sergei's attention is dangerous. He's not just angry or insulted, things I could smooth over if that were the case. He's calculating, looking for opportunities, trying to figure out if I'm a threat.
I’m not—not to his territory, anyway. But I can’t stop him from seeing me as one, because I'm in his city, spending time here, establishing a presence that could be the precursor to a territorial challenge. And worse still, I'm a potential target, because I'm distracted, focused on a woman instead of business, showing weakness that he could exploit.
Any rational person would see the danger and adjust accordingly. But I can’t be rational when it comes to her.
She's mine.
And I always get what's mine.
15
MARA
The days after the confrontation with I.S.—because that’s the only way I can frame it in my mind and still stay sane—blur together into a haze of paranoia and exhaustion.
I have a hard time sleeping, waking at every sound and jolting as I look for him in the shadows. Every. Single. Sound. The building settling. A car door slamming outside. Footsteps in the hallway that might be my neighbor or might be him. My heart races at all of it, adrenaline flooding my system until I'm so wired I feel sick.
When I do manage to drift off, I dream of him. His hands on either side of my head, caging me in. His mouth on mine, rough and possessive. His voice sayingYou're minelike it's a fact, like I have no say in the matter.
I wake up gasping every time, my sheets soaked with sweat, and I hate myself for the way my body responds to the memory.
I can't stop looking over my shoulder as I walk to work, to the store, home at the end of the day. I know I'm being irrational. I know this level of hypervigilance isn't sustainable. But I can't stop.
Someone bumps into me on the subway platform on my way to work one morning, and I nearly scream. It's just a businessman, distracted by his phone, muttering an apology as he hurries past. But my heart is pounding so hard I have to sit down on a bench, my head between my knees, trying to remember how to breathe. People are staring, but I don't care. I can't care about anything except the fact that this man, I.S., knows where I live, where I work, what I look like when I sleep. He's been inside my apartment. He's touched my things. He's watched me in my most private moments.
And he's made it clear he's not going away.
At home, I check the locks obsessively. The front door, the windows, even the fire escape I never use. I check them before I shower, after I shower, before bed, in the middle of the night when I wake up convinced I heard something. I've started pushing furniture against the door—my desk chair wedged under the handle, my bookshelf angled to block it.
I doubt it’ll stop him. In fact, Iknowit won't stop him. If he wants to get in, he'll get in. He's already proven that.
But it makes me feel like I'm doing something. Like I have some illusion of control.
Claire corners me in my office on the third day after the kiss, her face written all over with concern. "Mara, what the hell is going on with you?"
I look up to see her standing at the corner of my desk. I was so preoccupied I didn’t even hear her walk in. "What do you mean?"
She purses her lips. "You've been weird since you got back from Boston. You look like you haven't slept in days. You're jumpy and distracted and—are you in trouble? Is someone hurting you?"
The concern in her voice almost breaks me. I want to tell her everything—explain about the gifts and the hand and Daniel'sdestroyed face and the man who cornered me outside my gallery and kissed me like he owned me.
But what would I say? How would I even begin to explain?
"I'm fine," I lie. "Just stressed about work. We have that big auction coming up."
"Bullshit. This isn't work stress. This is something else." She pauses. "Did something happen with that guy from the bar?"
My stomach turns, flipping as the memory of the photo appears viscerally in my mind’s eye again. "No. Nothing happened. We just didn't click."
She looks at me disbelievingly. "Mara?—"
