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Holding eye contact with him felt like a deadly game. Like Russian roulette. A revolver and one bullet. A single wrong blink, and I’d be dead. But it also evoked a whisper of adrenaline, as warm as half a bottle of UV Blue and the Miami sun.
Sometimes, it was the little things that made us who we were.
He was the glimmer of adrenaline, the roughness of tracks beneath bare feet, and the siren of a freight train coming head-on. And I was fascinated.
“You shouldn’t give a fuck about what other people think. Trust me, they don’t care about you.”
“I’m twenty, by the way, not nineteen.” He looked amused by the admission, like I was a child announcing I was now eight while proudly displaying a hand and three fingers. “Are you?” I swallowed. “My birthday was a few days ago.” “I’m thirty-two, kotyonok.”
“Moy kotyonok.” I ran a thumb across her parted lips. “I told you this city would eat you alive.” I just didn’t tell her I owned Moscow and everything in it.
I wouldn’t hand this devil my soul. If he wanted it, he’d have to rip it from my chest.
“Does it make you feel big and strong to push me around?” “No. It makes me hard.”
Sarcasm was a sneaky bitch who often got the best of me.
The first book I pulled off the shelf was Paradise Lost by John Milton. How ironic. The novel was a set of poems depicting Satan as arrogant and instrumental to his own downfall, and, eventually, he lost the fight against God. I dropped the book on Ronan’s desk on the way out.
“How did you learn to swim?” He watched me for a second. “When I was eight, in the back seat of a car after my mother put a brick on the gas pedal and drove it into the Moskva.”
In this world, things weren’t black and white. I preferred yellow anyway.
If I could long for the devil, it meant I had some darkness in me too.
“Bite me.” He watched me for a second that felt like an eternity, and then, a cruel, disbelieving chuckle escaped him, showing off sharp incisors. After wiping the mirthless laugh away with a hand, he gritted, “Don’t say you didn’t ask for it, kotyonok.”
I spun around and shattered the vase against the side of his head. Glass fell to the floor around us, the room going deathly still. In the movies, men went down. Ronan didn’t go down.
“I’ll hate you forever if you hurt him,” I said numbly. “Your dramatics are a bit much for a Tuesday morning.” His words made me uncomfortably aware of all the eyes on us. As a little embarrassment arose, I turned my face into Ronan’s neck and murmured, “It was a great monologue.” “Oscar-worthy,” he returned with a trace of dry humor. “The near-fainting really brought it home.”
He liked me. Every yellow, rebellious, heart-on-my-sleeve inch of me.
The moonlight loved her. But not as much as my shadows.
He may not be a good man, but the world wasn’t black-and-white. He was all the gray in between. And I was falling for him hard—so hard, I worried when he was finished, there wouldn’t be anything left of me.
I’d wanted her body. But now, I wanted her loyalty even more.
“You pull a trigger on me, and I can’t even leave you out in the cold for fifteen fucking minutes. So you tell me, Mila, who cares more here?”
“Am I that easy to leave, kotyonok?”
“If you want to turn me in, so be it. I’d go back to prison for you, kotyonok, but when I get out, there’d better be an ocean between us.”
“I’ve Stockholm syndromed you.”
“But be careful. One of them might end up meaning something to you.” The words seared like acid on my tongue. He watched me for a second. “Ya dumayu uzhe slishkom pozdno dlya etogo.”
D’yavol may have stolen my breath. But I gave him my heart.
Her tears, her trusting eyes, her fucking existence—all of it made it impossible to imagine her walking away from me while I watched from a distance, my palm containing a remnant of sticky yellow Play-Doh I’d never be able to wash off.
My perfect little martyr, lying in her father’s executioner’s arms. I had a job to do, and she was the chess piece needed to win. The problem was . . . I didn’t think I could ever play her.
Christian was the kind of man who made a woman’s mouth dry just by looking at him, but as flawless as he was, I preferred his brother’s imperfections. That scar on his bottom lip. All the ink. His jaded soul I’d seen warm just for me.
“I love you, Papa.” His eyes softened. “I love you too, malen’kaya volchitsa.” As he turned to leave, Kat wrapped her arms around his shoulders and said, “I really want chocolate chips in my pancake. And Fruit Woops. It would make me so happy, Papa!” It was clear by Christian’s enamored expression, there’d be chocolate and rainbow-colored cereal in his daughter’s pancakes come hell or high water.
I loved his black and his gray and every shade in between. I loved him so much it was embedded in my skin. I loved him, and even knowing I would lose him, it felt like my heart would simply stop if I didn’t tell him.
A rough exhale. A growled, “Mila.” And then the sound of his expensive boots on my trail. I flew down the stairs, frantically thinking of a good place to hide. In my haste, I barreled into the dining room and came to a full stop when I saw Gianna, Christian, and Kat enjoying a nice family meal. I panted, chest heaving. Gianna hid a laugh. “Uh-oh,” Kat murmured. “Mila is in trouble.” Ronan grabbed me by the waist and pulled me off my feet. “Make sure you try the vatrushka,” he said nonchalantly. “Polina makes the best.”
“Because you’re so sweet you fucking glow.” His eyes darkened. “And I’ll kill anyone who tries to take that light from you.”
I found another weakness. He was weak for me.
“I can’t imagine a world where you and all your fucking yellow doesn’t exist. So if you die, you’ll take me with you. Your sacrifice would mean nothing, kotyonok. NOTHING.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of living without him.
“I loved Gianna for years before she ever even looked at me. Love isn’t hearts and flowers. Sometimes, it fucking sucks.”
If this was what they called “love,” then I’d own it. I never did anything half-ass.
“Because you’re coming home with me.” I raised a brow. “As your captive?” That villainous look so akin to him touched his eyes, and then he said three words that stopped my heart dead in its tracks. “Kak moya zhena.” As my wife.
“Ronan . . . did Moscow get an Eiffel Tower of its own recently?” “I would never allow that kind of romantic tourism in my city.” “Huh,” I mused. “So why am I seeing the Eiffel Tower right now?” “We’re in Paris,” he said indifferently.
“You’re enough entertainment for me alone. It’s like watching a circus.”
