But she just watches me, her green eyes narrow. Not hostile but probing, like she expects to find an answer in my face. “You looked so alone.”
The quiet, understated words shouldn’t matter. But they punch past every line of defense, slide through the cracks in my armor, and bury themselves deep in my chest.
Worse than a touch.
It’s exposure.
Out of instinct, I react before I can think.
I’m on her, pinning her up against the wall, my palm flat on the cool plaster by her head, my other hand gripping her chin and forcing her to look at me. She’s small beneath my body, her bones light as glass under my skin, and I feel the tremor in her breath.
“You want to know what it means? It means you don’t know a damn thing.”
I expect her to shatter. I’ve seen fear a thousand times in all different flavors.
Pupils blown wide. A flicker of hope at a perceived exit, followed by her collapsing when she realizes the impossibility of escape. That the only way out is to give me what I want.
I’ve dropped murderous men to their knees. And she’s just a small, lone woman.
But Jordan stares back, steady, calm, and unblinking. Not afraid. Just waiting. “What happened?” She brushes the hair back from my face, her hand warm like summer grass on bare feet.
Everything in me screams to push her off, shut her down, and slam the wall back up.
But the raw and splintered part of my soul wants her to see my fury. To know precisely what kind of monster she’s locked in here with and sharing her light with.
“You get one lesson. Free of charge.” I hold one finger up in front of her face. “I was eleven. A rival family targeted my father. They ended it in our kitchen. With my mother.”
The memories come, undiluted and merciless.
My mother’s face as her lips formed my name one last time. The smile hiding her fear. The improbable gentleness. Then my own screams echoing down the hallway as those men dragged me out of my home and tossed me into the cold.
“It was winter. They left me outside. In the snow.” As I continue to reveal my darkest memory, my control falters for a second. “I called for her for hours. I was weak. I let it happen.”
No softening. No apology. No drama. Just the brutal truth, offered up to horrify Jordan, to make her see what kind of man she’s really dealing with.
And as I speak, I’m in that place again.
The wind cut through pajamas meant for warmth inside, not for survival. Snow seeped through socks, then skin, until the fabric surrendered and left me barefoot on ice. The hours stretched and contracted, held together only by the rhythm of me pounding helplessly on the locked door of my home, my skin cracking, bleeding. Logic and thinking gave way to shrieks. Until the cold stole even my voice.
Then the slow, grinding realization that no rescue would happen. That I was truly, fully, alone.
The cold wasn’t just cold.
It was extinction, starting as a sharp, bone-deep pain and mutating into a heavy, dragging numbness. A longing to just give in, to sink into the darkness.
The overwhelming freeze transformed into unbearable heat so intense, I had to strip to cool down.
That’s how the Kozlov men found me. A little boy, half-naked in the snow, crying for his stiff, dead mother.
Jordan remains silent.
Perfectly still.
She doesn’t glance away. And in her gaze, I find none of the revulsion I expect. Not even fear.
But I do find compassion.
Don’t look at me like that.
