Her voice freezes, tight. I can hear her pulse through the silence.
“Y-yes?”
Small, tentative. Scared again.
Not the way she sounded last night when she was begging for more. Not the way she sounded when she was coming apart on my cock.
This is different. This is weakness.
And it grates the fuck out of me. Because if she sounds like that with me, how the hell will she sound with a barrel pointed at her head?
She makes some nervous joke, trying to cover it. I hear it in her breath, in the way the words stumble out. Like she knows she’s in over her head and doesn’t know how to swim.
My cock still wants her. But my brain… my brain knows I’ve got work to do.
A lot of work.
“Twenty minutes,” I tell her, and hang up before she can ask anything else.
My thumb hovers over the screen for half a second. Then I switch threads, pull up Dima.
Pick her up. Twenty minutes. Bring her to the floor at Charleston.
The reply comes almost before I can pocket the phone.
Already outside.
Of course he is. That’s Dima. Quiet as a ghost, always too close, always watching. She’ll never know he’s been shadowing her since last night. Hell, maybe longer.
Give her something small before you bring her. Protein bar. Banana. Nothing heavy.
Another pause. Then:
You’re making her train on an empty stomach?
I don’t want her puking all over my floor.
I fire back.
Dima’s answer is immediate, flat:
Da.
I shove the phone into my pocket, muttering, “She’ll live.”
Because if Mary’s going to survive what’s coming, she won’t have the luxury of being afraid.
5
Anton
The gym smells of sweat and gun oil. Bare concrete floors, steel racks of weapons, heavy bags lined up in a row. Harsh overhead lights hum, buzzing against the silence.
Not exactly welcoming. Which is the point.
And then… Mary.
She freezes in the doorway with Dima behind her, clutching her bag like it’s armor, wide, amber-flecked eyes darting between the punching bags and the rows of rifles locked against the wall. Out of her depth, and she knows it.
