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I rose onto my toes and wrapped my arms around him.
The stubble along his jaw scraped softly against my skin. He tasted like black coffee. When he drew back, my lips tingled.
For once, being cared for didn’t feel like a cage or a debt I would eventually have to repay. It felt like his arm firm around my waist, food warm in my stomach, and the quiet certainty that nothing could reach me while he was near. I felt safe. Cherished. And so completely happy that the emotion swelled against my ribs, loosening something tender inside me before I could warn it to hide.
The word came out unbidden. I couldn’t have stopped it, even if I tried.
It just came out.
“Daddy.”
Sergei froze, and his hand tightened once at my waist, then loosened. “Do not use that word to test me,” he cautioned.
“I’m not.”
His green eyes searched mine.
“What does it mean to you?” I asked gently.
“That you trust me.”
My heart turned over. He kissed me again, softly, and I felt the patience of his mouth and the heat of the hand that held me without closing around me. Eventually, he pulled away and looked back down at the flour print on his shirt again.
I expected him to wipe it away.
He didn’t.
CHAPTER 17
Sergei
The next day…
I should’ve been thinking about how it felt to have Alessia call me Daddy for the first time, but right now I was looking at a photograph on my tablet that should’ve never existed.
Someone had taken it last night, and it showed Alessia asleep against me in front of the fireplace on the living room floor, her cheek resting over my heart and the gray blanket tangled around both of us. Her dark hair spilled across my shirt. One hand had curled loosely near my ribs, as though even in sleep she hadn’t quite decided whether she was holding on or preparing to push me away. My face was turned toward the windows, my eyes open, because I hadn’t yet carried her upstairs and because sleep had never come easily when another person trusted me enough to close her eyes.
The image had been taken through the glass from the roof of the neighboring building. Someone had mounted a long lens behind the rusted housing of an old exhaust vent, where it could see through the gap between two chimneys and directly into the first floor of my townhouse. The camera woke for several seconds at a time, took what it could, and sent the images elsewhere before returning to sleep.
Seventeen photographs remained inside the damaged transmitter when my men found it during their morning sweep. I swiped through all of them, my heart in my throat the whole time.
Alessia walking through the kitchen.
Alessia when she escaped.
Alessia sleeping against me.
In the photograph, I was looking down at her.
“That one is almost flattering.”
I turned to see her standing in the doorway of my study, holding a cup of coffee in both hands, wearing black leggings, thick socks, and a light blue sweater. Her gaze rested on the screen in my hands without any visible surprise, though the way her fingers tightened around the cup told a different story.
She moved closer and stopped beside me. “I look peaceful.”
“You were exhausted.”
She leaned closer to the screen. The warmth in her face faded as she swiped through the other images. One showed her standing at the kitchen island while I cooked breakfast, unaware that a lens had been trained on the back of her head. Another caught her touching my scar beside the stove.
