"I'm sure." I pull him down to me, needing his weight, needing his heat. "Please. I need this."
He kisses me carefully—avoiding my split lip. When he enters me it's slow and careful. The anger is still there, aftershocks that shift beneath his skin. I ignore it, wrap my legs around his waist, and let him pound the rage out, before he drags me into his release.
After, when we're both sated and exhausted, he pulls me against his chest and holds me. His hand skims up and down my side as he cocoons my back.
"You accepted what I had to do tonight," he breathes. "Accepted the violence."
“Accepted but notcondoned. I don’t know if I can do that.”
"Fair enough. Just accept that some people are monsters. And that sometimes monsters need to fight monsters."
Fight orkill? I hold that question inside. Still processing. Still deciding if it’s okay to live in a world where you just don’t call the authorities. His arms tighten around me and I hold onto his forearms, carefully avoiding his wrists.
I fall asleep wrapped in a killer’s arms.
Maybe I’m the monster.
Chapter seven
Rafail
The bedroom door is cracked two inches. Enough to hear her if she stirs. She's on her back, one arm thrown over her head, hair curls spread dark across the pillow, chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of deep sleep.
My phone buzzes. Viktor. I answer before the second pulse. "Talk."
"It's handled." His voice carries the flat efficiency I've relied on for twenty years. "Body's gone. Won't surface. Restaurant staff took the money and forgot the rest. Security footage has a convenient gap. His credit card puts him in a cab, alone, at eleven-fourteen. He simply ceased to exist."
"The owner?"
"Surprisingly grateful." A beat. "Apparently the man had a habit of cornering the waitresses. Owner called it an act of God. His words."
I don't respond. I watch the street below—empty at this hour, rain-slicked pavement catching the yellow wash of streetlights, nothing moving. Clean. Quiet. The city indifferent to what happened inside one of its restaurants last night.
"There's something else," Viktor says.
"There always is."
"Volodymyr." He lets the name sit. "He's been busy. Our people tracked movement at the Pryvoz district—not his usual warehouse. He's negotiating with Kutuzov's people. Mikhail Kutuzov." A pause, weighted this time. "He's setting up another auction, Rafail. Using Kutuzov's facility. Whatever he's planning, it's bigger than the last one. Different inventory. Different buyers. The kind of event that draws attention from people we don't want paying attention to us."
Kutuzov. The name settles cold in my chest. Moscow-based, ambitious, not particularly interested in the boundaries other organizations respect. If Volodymyr is operating under his umbrella, the problem has grown considerably larger than one skimming middle-manager with delusions.
"Timeline?"
"Three weeks. Maybe four. We're still getting details."
"Keep getting them." I pause. "Nothing moves until I say so."
"Understood." Viktor doesn't argue. That alone tells me the next part of this conversation is the part he actually called for. He lets a moment pass—the way he does when he's choosing his entry point.
"You did the job yourself," he says. "In a restaurant. With witnesses, cameras, phones… Sloppy."
"The footage is gone. You just told me that."
"That's not the point and you know it." Victor’s voice doesn't rise. But his steady tone clamors like a shout. "You have men on payroll who exist specifically so you don't have to put your hands on someone in a restaurant." A beat. "You walked in there and handled it personally because you were angry. That's not strategy, Rafail. That's emotion."
I don't deny it. There's no argument that holds against the truth, and we both know it. The man grabbed her wrist. Leftmarks. I saw them, and everything became very simple, very focused, and entirely uninterested in cleaner options.
"He touched her," I say.
