My breath comes in fast, panicked bursts.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he murmurs.
I flinch. My heart is pounding so hard, I’m half-convinced it’s going to rip through my ribcage and land in a twitching heap at his feet.
“I didn’t… I wasn’t—” But I can’t finish the sentence.
His eyes, dark and merciless, bore into mine. He leans in, just a fraction, but it’s enough to steal what little air was left betweenus. “I’m going to ask you this one time. What were you really doing here?”
10
MAKSIM
So what if I’ve been stalking her?
Sue me.
No, really. Drag my ass into court. I’d love to see the look on some poor bastard’s face when the charges hit their desk.Pakhan of the Antonov Bratva arrested for tailing one nosy American tutor.
Interpol would wet themselves. They’d throw a fucking gala, pop vintage champagne, hand out little gold medals shaped like my initials for finally taking me down. Hell, they’d probably name a whole task force after the incident.“Operation Ivy”or something equally stupid.
And maybe, just for fun, I’d show up, stand in the back in a pressed suit and a half-smile, just to watch the room go still when I finally made my presence known that I’d miraculously gotten let out on a technicality.
Their faces would pale, their expressions would drop, and soon, everyone would be on their hands and knees begging for forgiveness.
Because let’s be honest. No one is stupid enough to touch me. Not while I hold half of Moscow by the throat. And certainly not while the other half is still scrambling to kiss the ring every chance they get.
But her? She’s another story.
There is something about the way Ivy pokes and prods at things she should’ve let go of a long time ago that gets under my skin. She’d come to Moscow to teach English. That’s what her file said. Nothing had been marked strange when Matvey pulled her records afterward to check what her affiliations were the day I brought her and Yulia back to the Sorokin estate.
A glorified babysitter, that’s what he’d called her when handing me her file. That’s all she should’ve been.
Safe.
Harmless.
Completely forgettable.
Which is what makes it so fucking baffling that I just caught her creeping around a crime scene I’ve been in the middle of getting cleaned up for the past two days.
So yeah, I’d followed her.
Because harmless people don’t break into buildings where my men have left bloodstains in the mortar. And they sure as hell don’t make me lose focus in the middle of a fucking cleanup operation.
I wasn’t supposed to think about her. She was a convenient excuse to keep Yulia busy while Sergei and I struck more business deals and expanded our portfolio. Yet every time her name crept back into my thoughts, uninvited and unprovoked, I caught myself wondering things I had no business wondering.
Where is she right now? What is she doing?And my personal favorite,Why the fuck do I care?
I don’t have a good answer for that. Which is exactly why I didn’t hesitate when I saw her on the security feed this morning getting out of one of Sergei’s cars with her coat pulled tight around her and that stubborn set in her jaw that I knew meant she was going off to do something stupid.
And now here we are, back in the belly of a mess she had no business sticking her nose into, her pulse rabbiting beneath that delicate skin where my thumb is pressed to as I corner her against the wall.
Her throat bobs visibly when she swallows. “I told you… I just came back for my phone.”
“Careful,” I warn. “You’re in enough trouble. Lying to me isn’t an offense you want to add to your list.”
She twists again, panic flickering across her face. The fingers on her free hand twitch toward her bag again like she’s still thinking she can try something and outrun me. It’s cute, in a suicidal kind of way.
