I flinch. Just a little.
His eyes catch it like a spotlight.
“Fuck you,” I spit.
He smiles, sharp. Predatory.
“There she is.”
Anger spikes hard enough that my fingers tingle. “You broke into my car, into my apartment and into my life! I didn’t ask for you and you knownothingabout me.”
“I know enough.” His voice sharpens. “I know someone drugged you. I know you wake up ready to bolt. I know you don’t eat until I do. I know you walk like you’re bracing for the next hit.”
Each sentence lands like a shove.
My heart knocks against my ribs.
“You think that makes you special?” I snap. “News flash, Maksim—most people in our world have scars. That doesn’t mean I need you escorting me around, I’ve handled my life long before you and I’ll continue to long after you’re gone.”
His brows lift. “Inourworld? Finally admitting something, Beda?”
I still.
“Yeah. That the world is where women are pawns to men who think they’re powerful, when in reality if you had afractionof my brain—you wouldn’t have half your empire falling apart.”
His eyes go flat. Cold.
“You don’t know shit about my empire,” he says. “You think you and your little half baked friends could ever run what I do?”
My pulse stutters.
He takes one more step, crowding my space. I smell soap and leather and the faint ghost of my own marshmallow body wash on his skin.
“You’re a broken girl with a shit life,” he goes on. “I’m offering you a place to stay,protection—”
“I don’t need your protection!” I fire back.
We’re too close now. My chest is brushing his with every breath.
“Don’tneedit or don’t want it?” he asks softly.
It’s worse than if he’d shouted.
“Move,” I say. “I’m going.”
“No.” His hand comes down on the back of the chair I was just sitting in, fingers digging into the wood. Trapping me. “You want to see your people, I take you. That’s the deal.”
“There is no deal.”
“There is now.” His mouth curves, humorless. “You don’t like it, shoot me.”
My hand twitches toward my back on instinct.
His gaze drops, laser-fast, to the motion.
We both freeze.
I feel the weight of the gun against my spine. The kitchen feels too small. Too bright.
