My mind knows exactly who he is.
A killer. A crime boss. A man who took my choices away.
Except then he hesitates before answering a question about his history. Or his eyes flicker when I poke holes in his logic. Or he steps between me and the sound of violence without even thinking.
Those tiny, fleeting slips humanize him in ways I’m not prepared for.
They complicate everything. So I do what I always do when something scares me: I watch him harder.
***
I don’t fall asleep so much as drift into it sideways.
One second I’m staring at the ceiling, listening to the low murmur of Simon’s voice in the other room as he speaks softly in Russian. The next, my eyes are heavy, my thoughts blurring at the edges, and I slide into dreams that don’t feel like dreams at all.
He’s there.
Not the vague, warped version most people become in my sleep, but him—sharp, precise, inescapably real. We’re in the warehouse again, but the air feels different. Warmer. He steps closer and instead of dragging me, his hand settles at the small of my back, firm and guiding.
“Here,” he murmurs, voice low against my ear. “Stand here.”
His fingers adjust my posture—one hand on my hip, the other lightly touching my spine, nudging me into place. My skin tingles where he presses, heat blooming outward in slow, thick waves. I should pull away. I don’t.
In another fragment, I’m in the kitchen. The flickering light is gone. Everything is dim and golden. I’m reaching for a glass on a too-high shelf, fingers just brushing the edge, when suddenly he’s behind me. His chest brushes my back as he reaches up, caging me in without quite touching the wall.
“Careful,” he says.
His voice is right at my neck, deep and unhurried. His arm moves above my head, muscles flexing, and the warmth of his body sinks into mine. My breath catches. The air feels thick,heavy with something unnamed. When he hands me the glass, his fingers brush mine.
It’s nothing. It’s everything.
In another sliver of dream, I’m sitting at the table, and he’s leaning over my shoulder to read what I’ve written. His hand comes down over mine on the notebook, steadying it, his thumb resting against my knuckles. He’s so close I can feel his breath on my cheek.
“You’re not wrong,” he murmurs. “But you’re not right either.”
I turn my head toward him and our faces nearly touch. His eyes drop to my mouth. The air crackles. My whole body goes hot.
I wake up with my heart racing and my skin too warm.
The room is dark, only the faint glow of the streetlights sneaking through the curtains. My sheet is tangled around my legs. My breathing is shallow, uneven, like I’ve just run up a flight of stairs.
For a second, I don’t know where I am.
Then it all rushes back—the apartment, the guards, the fact that he’s probably still here, a few steps away. The reality hits just as hard as the remnants of the dream.
I press a hand to my face, trying to cool the heat there. It doesn’t help. Every time I close my eyes, I see him again—his hand on my back, his fingers over mine, his body too close, his voice sliding down my spine like something I should not want.
I shouldn’t be able to think about anything except fear.
Instead, I’m flushed and restless, wanting things I have no business wanting.
Guilt washes over me in sick little waves. This isn’t some mysterious stranger with a tragic backstory. This is a man whoordered a killing in an alley and watched another human being die without blinking. A man who had me grabbed off the street because I saw too much. A man whose name is attached to missing people and violence and all the things I’ve spent my life analyzing from a safe academic distance.
He is not a good man, he is not a safe man. Still, my body doesn’t care.
It remembers the feel of his fingers on my wrist, the way my pulse jumped when he touched my hair, the quiet way he stepped in front of me when he thought there might be danger. It responds to him like he’s heat and gravity and oxygen, and my mind has no idea how to reconcile that.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, shame simmering under my skin.
