“Shit.” I grab a towel, but my hands won’t stop shaking. My chest feels too tight, like someone’s sitting on it. I force myself to breathe—in through the nose, out through the mouth—but it comes in short, sharp gasps.
This time, the message hits different.
Not just creepy. Threatening.
I don’t respond. I won’t. But I make a mental note; first thing tomorrow, the number changes. And I’ll put in a call to someone in Nikolai’s circle. Someone who can find out exactly who Pablo Montoya is beneath the designer suits and charming smiles.
Because he’s not just a patient.
And therapy isn’t what he came for.
Where Pablo’s interest feels invasive, possessive—predatory—Yakov’s is what I really want. Calculated. Curious. Dangerous, yes. But not in the same way.
Yakov is a challenge.
Pablo is a threat.
I should refer them both out. Wash my hands of the ethical tangle entirely.
But Yakov’s not a name I can erase from a file and walk away from. The Bratva wouldn’t allow it. And Pablo…Pablo is no longer just a patient.
I laugh once, dry and hollow.
Ethics and the Bratva. A contradiction in terms.
Somewhere, my professors would be spinning in their graves, and the ones still living would be composing furious journal articles.
And yet, here I sit. Chamomile cooling in my hand. Surveillance photo on my lap. Two men on my mind.
One inside the cage.
The other at my door.
I set the tea aside and reach for my journal. The one with the stiff leather cover and sharp-lined pages, where every entry is an attempt at order. I flip to a blank spread and begin with Pablo.
It’s easier that way.
Clinical facts, bullet points, the shape of something I can control. I document his charm, his boundary testing, the way his eyes search for something he has no right to see. The text messages. The surveillance car. The implications beneath his words. And the violation that comes with him knowing things he shouldn’t.
This isn’t therapy.
It’s reconnaissance.
I finish the entry and turn to a new page, pausing at the top. Yakov.
My pen hovers.
What do I write about a man who deconstructs me in real time? Who sees the space between my armor and steps into it like it’s his own?
I force myself to focus on the clinical: his resistance tactics, the intentional silences, the verbal bait he offers to test my reactions. The way he frames truth as manipulation and vulnerability as strategy. I note his triggers—Anastasiya, Damien, the Bratva betrayal. I list them like symptoms.
But I don’t write about the moment he leaned in, eyes dark and unflinching, and asked if I feared being seen.
I don’t write about the shiver that skittered down my spine, not from fear, but recognition. I don’t write about how I’ve replayed that moment a dozen times. How I’ve imagined what would have happened if I hadn’t pulled back.
Tomorrow’s session plan: keep maximum distance. No personal revelations. Redirect any attempts at?—
My pen stalls. At what? Intimacy? Connection?
