His head snaps toward me.
His voice is low, calm, and iron-clad as he locks his finger on the trigger.
"Lily," he says. "Close your eyes."
3
ALEKSANDR
Why was she there?How could she have known? What kind of twisted timing puts her in that alley—thatalley—at the exact moment I was about to pull the trigger?
It all happened too fast. Her voice—sharp, cutting through the air. Screaming no. The shot. The sirens, already closing in. The way I stored the gun, grabbed the takeout bags with one hand and her wrist with the other, and dragged her into the maintenance elevator before anyone could see her face.
I've dealt with panic before, this overwhelming need to make her stop rocking on the heels of her feet, and for her to tell me that despite all of this that she is not losing her mind. I have never had to deal with her seeing me in this position before.
She's standing across from me now, not saying a word, chewing her bottom lip raw and accumulating so many knots in my scarf I know I will drive myself mad trying to unknot them later.
It makes me want to walk across the elevator and pull that lip out from between her teeth. Rub the worry from her forehead with my thumb. Rewind the whole goddamn night until she's safein her chair, feet curled beneath her, reading her book and too concerned with Tom and his Ballad to care about anything else in this world.
Instead, I stand here. Holding the food. Watching her twirl the edges of my scarf into little knots. And thinking about how I also want to throw her over my knee and turn that soft little ass red for putting herself in this position in the first place.
Who the fuck walks down a city alley alone at eleven o'clock at night?
She's small. Too small. All curves and softness and no fear. No backup. Just her stubborn little self with no clue what she almost walked into.
She devours horror novels like candy—has shelves full of them—but doesn't seem to grasp the most basic rule they all teach: don't go down the goddamn alley. Don't follow the sound, or save the stranger screaming for help.
Every single one of her books tells her to be selfish, and run, but she doesn't. Not from anything.
She infuriates me. Drives me to the edge of my restraint. Because she has no idea how dangerous this world is. She has no idea how close she comes, every time, to being pulled under.
And worse—she doesn't belong anywhere near it. Near me.
She is what's wrong with the entire universe, to be so bright and consuming like the sun, but being dragged to the darkest corners of the world at every turn. How is she not sick of us? How has she not punished every single one of us for condemning her to this eternal despair she must endure from us?
This elevator is crawling upward floor by floor, slower than usual, and I feel every second like a countdown.
She's curled in on herself in the corner, hugging her arms and playing with the edge of my scarf, not meeting my eyes. She shifts her weight again, and clears her throat.
"There was an ice cream truck," she squeaks, her voice so terribly small it barely takes up the space around her.
"What?" I unfortunately bark.
She flinches at my tone, recoiling back against the metal wall. I force my shoulders to stay still, and my body to relax as much as I humanly can, when all I feel like doing is running up a wall.
"Outside. There was like an ice cream truck sitting outside the building and a woman came up to me--"
"What do you mean a woman came up to you?" I snarl.
She swallows. "She said her name was Dahlia. She started asking questions. About me entering the building so late. I didn't tell her anything—I brushed her off." Her voice trailing off at the end, just as the elevator dings for the 80th floor.
I don't move, because if she is saying what I think she is then the NYPD, or fucking worse, are watching us. They were just outside, ready to move, and now their friend is dead in the alley with no communication to his cop friends that he is alive. They are going to swarm this place in a matter of fucking seconds.
"Fuck," I say through gritted teeth and stalk over to the elevator shaft.
The metal gate groans under the force of my grip as I wrench it upward—the rusted track screeching in protest before snapping into place. I manually pull open the second inner door, and it gives way with a metallic thunk, revealing the pristine white corridor of the Petrov business headquarters.
Lily follows without a word, her boots squeaking against the polished floor, leaving tiny slush tracks behind her. Normally, the sound of dirt and meltwater being dragged across clean tile would set my teeth on edge. But not now. Not from her.
