Until exhaustion finally pulled me under, and the room fell into a bitter silence.
Chapter thirty-two
Ineeded a fucking cigarette.
I dressed quickly, pulling on the black joggers I’d discarded and the closest dry shirt I could find. I walked barefoot across the hardwood toward the kitchen, where I yanked open the drawer beside the fridge—the one where I kept my stash.
A while back, I’d succeeded in quitting, and I’d gone without for over a year, but being back in Kyiv while it was under siege by those Kremlin fucks, seeing the destruction of the Ukrainian people, had reignited the craving. Russia might’ve been the country of my birth, but Ukraine was my home by choice. The war there was the reason I’d gotten into arms dealing in the first place. And all the shit that had gone down this summer had only fueled my nicotine addiction.
Right now, I needed a hit.
I thumped the box against my palm. Once. Twice. Popped the lid. Pulled one out with my teeth and grabbed the old silver lighter from where it sat on the island. I cupped my hand aroundthe flame and it sparked to life. The tip of the cigarette flared and caught.
The first drag scorched its way down to my lungs, taking off the edge of everything…for one fucking second.
But my frustration wouldn’t be denied.
Because no matter how hard I tried to justify it, I couldn’t get around one brutal, unrelenting truth—I’d hurt her. I’d treated her as if she were just another warm body, another asset to be handled.
But she wasn’t.
She was my little lamb.
Lacey Grace Oakley.
Not Lyla Laine,Lacey—the real one. The girl I’d stalked, studied, and broken.
I knew her story. I’d researched every detail of it. Her parents and sister—gone in an instant, wreckage on a Tennessee highway. She was alone in this life with just her grief and a dream she refused to let die.
She should’ve had support. Family. A safety net.
Instead, she was lying her way through survival, using her dead sister’s name. And her desperation had led her to get a job she had no business working—the kind of job that came with velvet ropes and backroom handcuffs. She was naïve, but who could blame her?
She just wanted to make it on Broadway. Like so many others. Thought she could make her way to the top with grit, charm, and natural talent. No agent. No connections. Just fire in her belly and talent that could probably bring the house down—if she ever got a chance to really use it.
But this city didn’t give a shit about a person’s dreams. Manhattan chewed up girls like her for breakfast—starry-eyed hopefuls who showed up with a suitcase and a song in their heart, thinking they were going to be the next big thing. Theyalmost always ended up waiting tables, dancing in sleazy clubs, or worse—selling themselves just to make rent.
And Lacey?
She was barely holding on.
She danced in that hellhole not because she wanted to—but because shehadto. Because rent was high, the city was merciless, and rejection was a daily ritual. The Broadway meat grinder didn’t care that she was gifted. Didn’t care that she was sweet or kind or still mourning a life that had been ripped out from under her.
She was twenty fucking years old!
She should’ve been in school. Falling in love. Learning who she was.
Instead, she was spinning from a goddamn aerial pole in a club run by traffickers, while men like me sat in the shadows and watched.
And now?
Now she was mine.
Not by her choice. Bymyobsession. My control. My inability to fucking let go once I had her in my sights.
I’d taken the last pure thing she had left.
And I hadn’t seen the goddamn truth until it was far too late.
