And to miss him. Because I do. I miss the weight of him. The space he takes up when he enters a room. I miss being watched. Wanted. His smell, the sound of his footsteps, the way he eats me up each time those blue eyes rake over me. The way I just know his heart beats in time to mine, the fluttering pleasure in my belly whenever he’s near.
He’s just a man, and I’ve had men before, but none of them ever made me feel like this.
I miss the way I see myself through his eyes.
I spend a lot of time thinking about why I told him about Serena. Was it because he told me about his own past? Did it make me feel like I owed him my truth?
Or did I need him to know so he could give me what I actually need?
Not justice in an abstract sense or revenge for girls who haven’t been hurt yet.
Justice for Serena. Vengeance forme.
He finds me in the conservatory. I’m nursing bitter coffee, staring out at the garden wondering who keeps it alive. There are rosebushes out there, and I wonder if that’s where he gets the roses he used to leave me.
That feels like a very long time ago now.
Was I a different woman then, or was I just pretending to be?
Seeing him sparks anger in me for being left alone in this goddamn crypt of a mansion. But it also reopens the wound I’ve carried ever since I met him. The raw, beating part of me that wants him so badly. Underneath all the terror and rage, something about being close to him—it brings me a comfort I’ve never known.
It’s like coming home.
“Where the fuck have you been? I thought we were going to work together from now on. And then you go off and?—"
“I have a gift for you,” he says, cutting me off. His voice is soft, but the air goes hard the second he speaks.
I reach for Serena’s earrings, twist them. These were the last gift he gave me. I’m not sure what else he has to offer at this point.
He’s wearing the same dark shirt as yesterday. No blood, no stains, but the sleeves are rolled up and his hands are restless, flexing.
I brace myself. “What is it?”
“A man. Blake Skinner. Middleman for Starkov Bratva outposts in Brighton Beach and Bensonhurst. He arranges safehouses, cash drops, and the movement of girls from one city to the next. He was at the auction. He’s a crucial player.”
“Was he one of the men Dakota named?” I ask, trying to recall if the name tracks for me at all, if I’ve ever seen it pop up in a file, during an investigation, anywhere. Nothing pings.
But if he was at the auction, he’s a monster, and he deserves whatever Roman is going to do to him.
That is, if we’resureit’s him.
“No. He took your sister,” Roman says. “He sold Serena.”
My vision pulses black for a second.
Motherfucker. I’m going to fucking kill him. I’m going to rip his fucking face off.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek so hard I taste blood.
Shit. This is really happening.
That promise we made over dinner wasn’t just us being swept up in the moment.
We’re doing this.
I’mdoing this.
Fuck!
