Elena's POV
The words echoed in Elena's head long after the footsteps faded down the hall. A problem. Permanently. She spent the night curled in a tight ball on the massive bed, staring at the sliver of city lights visible around the blackout curtains. Every sound was Alexei coming to solve his problem. The quiet hum of the heating system was a threat. The distant chime of the elevator was a death sentence.
By morning, fear had crystallized into a sharp, clear understanding. She had two enemies here: the Orlovs somewhere outside, and Alexei, a viper in the nest. Nikolai stood between her and both, but for how long? How long before the pressure from his own man, or from the outside war, made him reconsider? Sentiment, Alexei had called it. A deadly weakness.
She avoided the main rooms all day, a prisoner in her own wing. She used the intercom to ask for food to be brought to her, which it was, on a silver tray, by the silent woman in uniform. The luxury of it was a mockery. She was a pet being fed in its gilded kennel.
When the soft chime came again that evening, she expected another tray. Instead, Nikolai's voice, low and direct, came through the speaker. "Elena. Join me for dinner. In the dining room. Please." The 'please' was an afterthought, but it was there.
Her first instinct was to refuse, to hide. But hiding hadn't saved her from being brought here. Maybe facing him, looking into his eyes when she asked about Alexei, was the only way to gauge her real safety. She had to know if the protector was still in control, or if the viper was gaining ground.
"Fine," she said, her voice steadier than she felt.
This time, she didn't change. She wore the same soft, old sweater. It was her armor. When she entered the dining room, the vast table was set differently. Only two places remained, but they were much closer together, at the corner of the table, making the space almost intimate. He was already there, pouring water from a crystal pitcher.
He looked up. "Sit." It wasn't the cold command from before. It was an invitation, albeit a gruff one.
She sat. The silence was heavy, loaded with everything unsaid: the alley, the kidnapping, the argument she wasn't supposed to hear.
The servant brought food: a simple roast chicken, roasted potatoes, glazed carrots. Comfort food, not intimidating haute cuisine.
"How are you… occupying your time?" Nikolai asked the question awkwardly, as if he'd read a manual on small talk and was reciting from it.
"Mostly wondering if I'm going to be murdered in my sleep," she said bluntly, watching his face.
He froze, his fork halfway to his mouth. His grey eyes snapped to hers, sharp and searching. "What does that mean?"
"It means I heard you. Last night. Arguing with Alexei." She held his gaze, forcing bravery she didn't have. "He thinks I'm a problem. He thinks problems need permanent solutions."
A muscle in his jaw ticked. He set his fork down with precise control. The air in the room seemed to get colder. "Alexei's concerns are strategic. His methods are not mine. You are under my protection. My word is law here. Not his."
"Is it?" she challenged, her heart pounding. "He sounded like he wasn't asking for permission."
"He does not need to ask," Nikolai said, his voice dropping to a dangerous murmur. "He needs to obey. And he will. That is the end of it."
It wasn't comforting. It was a reminder that this was a dictatorship, and her life depended on the strength of the dictator. She looked down at her plate, her appetite gone.
"Why chess?" she asked suddenly, changing the subject, needing to break the tension, to see a piece of the man behind the crown.
He seemed surprised by the shift. He studied her for a moment. "It is a clean war. All logic. All control. You see the board, you calculate the moves, you win, or you lose based on your own skill and foresight. There are no… surprises." He said the last word while looking directly at her, and she understood. She was the ultimate surprise. An illogical, unpredictable element that had crashed into his ordered world.
"I'm a surprise?"
"You are the most illogical thing that has ever happened to me," he said quietly, the confession stark in the quiet room. "I cannot calculate you. I cannot anticipate your next move. It is… unsettling."
The honesty disarmed her. She took a sip of water. "What do you even know about me? Besides my name and my job."
"I know you live alone. You work too much. You have no family in the city. You take the 7:15 bus on Tuesdays for your volunteer shift at the city shelter. You order Chinese food from Golden Dragon every other Friday. And you hate Christmas music."
A chill that had nothing to do with fear went down her spine. He hadn't just brought her here; he'd studied her. Her whole life had been a file on his desk. "How?" was all she could manage.
"It is my business to know things," he said, but then a faint, almost imperceptible shadow of something like shame crossed his features. "The Christmas music… the external security camera at your clinic has audio. I reviewed the footage. I heard you muttering to a puppy about 'offensive holiday cheer.'"
A startled laugh burst out of her, sharp and unexpected. "You spied on me talking to a dog?"
"I assessed my vulnerability," he corrected, but the ghost of a smile touched his lips. It transformed him. The harsh lines of his face softened. He looked younger, almost approachable. The sight made something flutter nervously in her stomach.
"It reminds me of my parents," she found herself saying, the words spilling out before she could lock them away. "They died. Two years ago. Christmas Eve. A car accident on black ice. The music… it just makes the quiet louder."
The smile vanished. His gaze softened into something that looked like genuine understanding. "Quiet is underrated," he said, his voice low. "In my world, quiet is the most precious commodity. It means no one is shooting at you."
They talked more after that, the conversation flowing in fits and starts across the ruined chicken. He asked thoughtful questions about her work, about what made her want to be a vet. She asked careful questions about his childhood in St. Petersburg. He spoke of cold winters, a strict grandfather, and learning to fight before he learned to read. It was a sanitized version, she knew, but it was a piece of him. She learned he loved complex, violent classical music, Shostakovich, not Mozart. He learned she wanted to open a no-kill shelter with a surgery wing.
For a moment, the cage faded. The city outside the windows was just a view. It was just two people, impossibly different, finding a fragile connection in the quiet. The charged tension between them melted, reshaped into something else, a magnetic pull, terrifying and irresistible.
He reached across the corner of the table to refill her water glass. His fingers, long and elegant but scarred, brushed against hers.
A spark, electric and warm, shot up her arm. Her breath caught. Their eyes locked. The world narrowed to the point of contact, the few inches of charged air between them. In his stormy eyes, she didn't see a mafia boss. She saw a man, isolated in his tower of glass and steel, as alone as she was in her quiet apartment.
In that suspended second, he wasn't her captor. He was just Nikolai. And she was just Elena.
The universe exploded.
The massive floor-to-ceiling window to their left shattered inward.
A deafening CRACK-BOOM of sound, a hurricane of flying, dagger-like glass shards. The concussion of it hit her like a physical wall. Elena was thrown backwards, her chair screeching across the floor. A searing line of fire scorched across her cheekbone.
Chaos. Silence shattered.
But Nikolai was already a blur of violent motion. He wasn't reaching for a weapon. He wasn't diving for cover. He was moving toward her, over her.
As the lethal rain of glass cascaded down, his body covered hers, a living shield. He wrapped his arms around her, curling his torso over her head and shoulders, pressing her into the relative safety of the solid table leg and his own body. She felt the impact of glass hitting his back, heard his pained grunt close to her ear, smelled the clean, sharp scent of his skin mixed with cordite and fear.
Her vision, blocked by his chest, was a blur of dark wool and flying glitter. Over the roaring in her ears, she heard shouts from somewhere in the penthouse, running feet.
Then, as suddenly as it started, the rain of glass ceased. The room was filled with a ringing, icy silence, broken by the howl of winter wind rushing through the giant, jagged hole in the wall.
Nikolai didn't move. He stayed curved over her, his breathing ragged against her hair. She could feel the fierce hammering of his heart against her own.
Slowly, he lifted his head. His eyes, wild and terrifyingly focused, scanned the room, then the gaping hole, then the city beyond. His gaze fixed on a point in the distance, on another skyscraper a few blocks away. His face hardened into a mask of pure, murderous fury.
Elena followed his gaze. In one of the distant, lit windows, she saw a tiny, almost invisible pinpoint of light wink out.
A sniper.
A bullet suddenly shatters the window next to them!