A clean, merciless blade of a word.
My breath stutters. “So it’s true? You took everything? Everything?”
“Yes.”
“Why? You’ve destroyed everything that I am!”
His eyes stay on the windshield, unreadable. “You were born on stolen gold, Vivian. I’m just taking it back.”
The world tilts. My pulse detonates.
I slap him—hard. The sound ricochets through the car. He doesn’t block it. Doesn’t grab me. Just absorbs it like stone.
His jaw flexes once before he murmurs, voice low, dark, infuriatingly calm: “You can hate me all you want, Vivian…but you’ll still come undone for me.”
“I hate you,” I whisper, shaking. “And I will never give you that satisfaction.”
He doesn’t bother responding. He just shifts the gear and floors the accelerator, tearing out of the parking garage.
The drive home is a graveyard. No words. No glances. Nothing but silence thick enough to choke on. Even when we step into the elevator—shoulder to shoulder, anger vibrating off both of us—we don’t speak. We ride up to the penthouse like strangers trapped in the same storm, neither of us willing to break first.
When the elevator doors slide open, I bolt out, fury in every step. I’m two breaths from slamming my bedroom door when his voice cuts through the hallway.
“Why are you so mad?” Dimitri asks, like he’s genuinely confused. “It’s not like your father ever kept some of that money for you. To him, you were a means. A stepping stone. And now he’s used you. Discarded you.”
I whip around, anger snapping through me. “Are you insane? You don’t know anything about my family. You have no right to speak on it.”
“I know everything,” he says, voice like steel.
“Fuck you, Dimitri. You don’t know shit. Come down from your high fucking horse and stop acting like a god. My family affairs are none of your business.”
“Oh, you’re swearing,” he grins darkly. “That’s not very ladylike of you,krasavitsa.”
“Fuck you again, Dimitri. My family is none of your business.”
He moves.
Sudden, lethal, controlled.
In two strides, he’s in front of me, and then his body hits mine, pinning me against the wall. His breath is hot against my cheek, his eyes burning into me.
“Everything about you, Vivian,” he growls, “is my fucking business. Down to the air you breathe.”
I open my mouth to tell him to go to hell—but I never get the words out. He crushes his mouth to mine.
The kiss is brutal, punishing—like he’s trying to devour the argument out of me. And I kiss him back just as hard, fingers fisting in his jacket, dragging him closer, wanting to hurt him, wanting to feel him, wanting—I don’t know what I want.
Only that neither of us stops.
Neither of us softens.
It’s a collision. A fight. A surrender neither of us will admit to.
The air crackles with hate and heat and something far more dangerous. But just as his hand slides beneath my dress, I whisper, “Don’t.”
He freezes.
I feel him stiffen against me, every muscle locking like I’ve just triggered something he didn’t expect. His palm is still on my thigh, hot, steady, and I’m suddenly trembling so hard I know he can feel it.
