“Ms.Hughes.”
The voice was cold.Professional.Familiar in a way that made my stomach drop.
Parsons.Raphael’s driver.The man who had driven me away from the manor the morning everything ended.
“Mr.Antonov wishes to discuss the terms of your contract.”Parsons spoke without inflection, delivering the message like it was nothing.Like it wasn’t a death sentence.Like my entire life wasn’t hanging in the balance.“He’ll be at the hotel tomorrow at 10 AM.”
“Wait—” I started, but the line was already dead.
I stared at the phone in my hand, trembling so hard I nearly dropped it.
He was coming.
Invoking the contract.Claiming his property.Dragging me back into his orbit like I had never escaped at all.
And there was nothing I could do to stop him.
Outside the window, green shoots pushed through dead leaves, indifferent to everything happening inside these walls.Spring arriving.Life continuing as if nothing had changed.
But in the office that smelled like my dead father’s cigars, surrounded by documents that proved how completely I had been outmaneuvered, I heard the trap snap shut.
2
RAPHAEL
The scars pulled when I raised my arms for the jacket.
Eight weeks since the Pakhan’s enforcers had held me down while their claws tore through muscle, and the wounds were still healing.Slower than they should have.Deeper than they needed to be.That had been the point.A lesson written in my flesh, carved by hands that weren’t human when they did the carving.
You’ve become weak.Distracted.This is what happens to wolves who forget what matters.
I had taken every strike without making a sound.Not because I was brave.Because all I could think about was her.The way she had looked at me that last morning, shattered and confused, searching my face for some explanation I could not give her.The way her scent had lingered in my sheets for days after I sent her away.Apples and cream, faded to a ghost of itself, and still my wolf had pressed his muzzle into the fabric every night like an addict chasing the memory of a high.
I shrugged into the jacket carefully, letting the expensive fabric settle over the mess of scar tissue on my back.The lining caught on raised ridges where the claw marks hadn’t healed flat.
In the mirror, I looked exactly like the man the world expected.Cold.Composed.A Vor of the Ivankovskaya Bratva, second only to the Pakhan himself.A man who crushed his enemies without hesitation and never let sentiment interfere with business.
No one looking at me would guess that I had spent the last two months counting the days until I could see her again.That every part of me strained toward a woman who was miles away and hated me with every breath in her body.
Eight weeks of separation after touching her, tasting her, nearly marking her.Eight weeks of the bond screaming for completion while I denied it everything.
That I deserved every ounce of her hatred.And she could destroy me with a word if she knew how much power she held.
A soft knock at the bedroom door.I knew who it was before she spoke.The scent of lavender soap and the particular rhythm of her heartbeat, slower than a younger woman’s but steady as a metronome.
“You’re going back to her.”
Alice stood in the doorway, her gray hair pinned back the way she always wore it, her eyes seeing straight through every mask I had ever constructed.She had been my mother’s housekeeper before she was mine.Had watched me grow from a feral child into whatever I was now.She knew about the wolf.Knew what Lena was to me.What she had been from the first moment I saw her.
“Yes.”
Alice nodded slowly.No judgment in her expression.No pity either.Just the understanding.
“She doesn’t know what you did for her.”
“No.”I adjusted my cuffs, not meeting her eyes.The silver links caught the morning light.“And she won’t.”
“Raphael—”
