He moves to the large soaking tub and turns on the water. The sound of it filling is loud in the quiet bathroom. He adds something from a bottle—bath oil, maybe, or salts. The scent rises with the steam, herbal and clean.
When the tub is half full, he turns back to me. "Can you undress, or do you need help?"
I should feel embarrassed at the thought of this man seeing me naked, in the flesh. I should feel vulnerable. He’s been stalking me, and now he’s offering to help me out of my clothes.
But even that fact feels far away. Like something far down a tunnel that I recognize, but can’t quite make out.
I try to pull my shirt over my head, but my hands are shaking too badly. The fabric is stiff with dried blood, and I can't seem to coordinate my movements.
Ilya steps forward. "Let me."
He helps me out of my clothes with the same careful gentleness he used to wash my hands. It’s oddly almost clinical, like he's a doctor and I'm a patient. He doesn't look at my body with desire or possession, which feels strange, given the hungry way he’s looked at me in the past. But now, as my clothes shed off like layers of skin, there’s no need in his eyes, only worry.
When I'm naked, he takes my hand and helps me into the tub. The hot water envelops me, and I sink into it with a gasp. It's almost too hot, but the heat feels good. The near-pain of it jolts me back into my senses again.
"I'll be outside if you need anything," Ilya says calmly. "Take your time."
Then he's gone, closing the door behind him, and I'm finally alone.
The silence is overwhelming, just me and the sound of water lapping as I move, and my own ragged breathing.
I look down at my hands under the water. They're clean now, the blood washed away. But I can still feel the weight of the sculpture in my grip, the resistance when it connected with the man’s skull, the way his body went limp.
I killed someone tonight.
I don’t even know his name.
The reality of it crashes over me in waves. I took a life. Ended someone's existence. No matter that he was trying to hurt me, no matter that it was self-defense, the fact remains: I killed him.
What does that make me? A murderer? Is it murder if it was because I had no other choice?
I sink deeper into the water, letting it cover my shoulders, my neck, trying to process everything that's happened—to make sense of the impossible situation I'm in.
I'm in my stalker's apartment. The man who's been sending me gifts, who cut off Richard Maxwell's hand, who beat Daniel bloody, who's been watching me for months. I'm in his home, in his bathtub, naked and vulnerable.
The Russian mafia is after me. The Bratva. Words I've only heard in movies, in news articles about organized crime. But it's real. That man tonight was real. Sergei Kima is real. And they want to hurt me because of Ilya, because I matter to him.
I'm in danger from people I didn't know existed until tonight.
And Ilya—Ilya Sorokov—is the same person as the man from Boston. The man who looked at me in that gallery like he could see straight through to my soul. The man who made me feel more alive with a look than I ever have while being fucked by someone else. The man I haven't been able to stop thinking about since I saw him on a sidewalk in front of my best friend’s house.
He's been orchestrating all of this. He's been in this building, looking across at my apartment, learning my routines, my preferences, my life.
And I kissed him outside the gallery.
That memory surfaces, sharp and clear despite the shock: his mouth on mine, rough and possessive. The way my body responded, the way I kissed him back with the same desperate intensity.
Some part of me—some dark, twisted part that I don't want to acknowledge—some part of me isn't sorry I'm here.
The thought horrifies me.
I should be planning how to get out of here, how to go to the police, how to save myself. But I'm so tired. So tired of being afraid, of looking over my shoulder, of jumping at shadows. And there's something about him—about the intensity of his obsession, the way he looks at me like I'm the only thing in the world that matters—that calls to something in me.
I've been looking for something this intense my whole life. Something that makes me feel alive, that breaks through the numbness of everyday existence. I've been drawn to darkness in art, in literature, in music, for as long as I can remember. The conflict of light and dark. The romance of it. The fear and the hope.
And now I've found it. Or it's found me.
It's sick. Twisted. Wrong in every possible way. But I can't deny that part of me has been waiting for this. For someone to see me this completely, to want me this desperately, to be willing to destroy everything for me.
