"Did you sleep well?" I ask.
"Fine." She pulls on her jeans and buttons them, still facing the window. I know she's going to bring it up before she even says anything, so I brace myself for it. Vivika is a powerful woman, stronger than she's shown me. All I've seen is the meekness she shows me, but deep down, she has steel in her backbone like Ana does. It's what gives her that advantage when she dons a dress and heels in her profession, and it's how she so easily plays the part of the missing Donna.
"Lev, I need to ask you something." She turns around finally, and I can see the dark circles under her eyes.
"Ask anything."
"Now that we're certain the hit was aimed at me," she says carefully, head still hanging, "can I just go home?"
Her question is a fair one, but it hits like a stone in water, creating a ripple effect. Of course I'm frustrated that she's not settling in and staying happy, and it's not just about the job. I want her to be happy because I want her to consider staying with me by her own will. Forcing her won't bring me pleasure, but I need her. Her going home isn't an option to me. And we need this job finished.
"We've discussed this, Vivika."
"I know we have. But things have changed." She wraps her arms around herself in a defensive gesture I've come to recognize. "The family I'm pretending to belong to wants me dead. Yaros knows I'm a fake, or at least he suspects it strongly enough tosend shooters after me. Your leverage over him is gone, Lev. I'm useless to you now."
There's strong logic behind what she's saying. She probably stayed awake all night thinking through everything, and she isn't wrong. The situation has grown more complicated than I anticipated. But she's wrong about being useless.
"You promised to help me save those women," I say, and I watch her face carefully as the words land. Something changes in her expression. The weariness gives way to frustration that creases her forehead. Her jaw tightens and her eyes flash with an anger that makes me straighten up from my casual lean against the doorframe.
"Don't," she says, sharp enough to cut. "Don't you dare use that against me."
"Use what?"
"The women. The trafficking. The whole fucking story you fed me to make me cooperate." Her body language screams how upset she is, and she gestures with her hands, holding her palm up toward me. "I heard you last night on the phone outside my door. You were talking about weapons shipments, about getting them into Romania through trade routes. Weapons, Lev? There is no slave trade, is there? No women to rescue… It was all just a lie to manipulate me into playing your game."
Vivika has never stood up to me or fought me. I've seen her react in fear, and I've seen her try to flee, but she has never openly questioned or doubted me. And the way she carries herself right now with her shoulders squared and her eyes narrowed on me shows hot contempt I know would turn primal if I so much as touched her.
It turns me on more than the meek, submissive waif I've fucked twice now. Pliable is good. Feisty is hotter.
I'm across the room before she can finish the sentence, my hands gripping her shoulders and spinning her around until her back hits the wall. She gasps, her eyes going wide, but she doesn't flinch away from me. Instead she glares up at me with that same fierce defiance, her chest heaving with angry breaths.
"You used me," she continues raising her voice. "I believed you because I wanted to believe I was more than just a pawn in your fucking?—"
I kiss her to shut her up. There's nothing gentle about it, either. I take that kiss like I'm sucking the anger right out of her, and for a moment she resists. When she finally softens and stops fisting my shirt in anger, I pull back.
She isn't wrong about most of that, but the slave trade and Yaros's sickening fascination with stealing young women to fuel it are definitely happening. I've witnessed it with my own eyes. I may not be trying to steal their trade routes to stop the slave trade, but that will be his very unfortunate side effect, and I can't say I'm sad about that. I'll have the routes, and those women will be safe.
And now it will be my pleasure to prove that to the woman in front of me. "Let me prove it to you," I say, my forehead pressing against hers. "Let me show you I wasn't lying about the women."
She stares at me for a long moment, her body still pinned between mine and the wall. The fire in her eyes hasn't dimmed, but there's curiosity there now. If I'm reading her correctly, she doesn't want to hate me. She wants to believe me, but I'm going to have to work for it.
"How?" she asks.
"I'll take you there and show you what Veche trade routes really move, and then you can decide for yourself whether I was lying to you."
She holds my gaze for another beat, searching my face with a scowl. Then, slowly, she nods.
"Fine. Show me."
I release her and step back. The anger's still there, simmering beneath her carefully controlled expression, but she's agreed to come with me.
I can work with anger. What I couldn't work with was the passive resignation that had been creeping into her eyes, the slow acceptance of her fate that would have made her useless to me.
We leave the house twenty minutes later, Vivika sliding into the passenger seat of my car with a stiff posture. She hasn't forgiven anything but merely agreed to a temporary ceasefire, and she proves that by not speaking the entire trip.
I don't try to fill the silence. She needs time to process things, and I'm content to let the tension between us ride as the city gives way to industrial outskirts and then to the long, empty roads toward the border regions.
The drive takes nearly two hours, and Vivika doesn't say a single word the entire time. I catch her glancing at me occasionally, but every time I look in her direction, she turns away and goes back to staring out the window at the landscape passing by. The silence isn't comfortable, but it isn't hostile, either.
