One of my biggest rules is to keep my business far away from my home, but this isn’t a normal situation. I feel like I need my personal resources to deal with this situation. And I meant what I told Nadia about not leaving her alone. As much as I fear this could be an attack on me, I might be wrong. If that turns out to be the case, I don't want to risk something happening to her. If something happened to her that I could have prevented—that would kill me.

“Okay,” I say to her as we pull up outside my place. “This is me, let’s go in.”

My home has always been more than enough for me, but I doubt Nadia will be impressed. She’s been living in sheer luxury for however long she’s been married, but she’s kind enough to look like she likes it.

“Would you... like a drink or something?” I ask when we go inside. Now that we’re here, it feels awkward. Ever since I’ve owned this place I haven’t brought anyone to see it—not friends, not women, no one... it’s mine and that’s the way I intended it to stay. I’m not sure why I made an exception for this woman I barely know, but it’s strange having company in a place where I’m usually all alone.

“Yes, thank you.”

I walk over to my liquor cabinet and decide that we both need something a little stiffer to drink, so I grab the bottle of my favorite vodka which I take over to the table.

“So I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and what we need to do is find out who...” But I trail off, noticing that she’s looking at me a little strangely. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“You drink Elite?” She asks with a rasp to her tone. “I’ve never known anyone else in this country to drink it. Are you... Russian too?”

“I am,” I confirm, nodding as I let her in. “My full name is actually Alexi Fedorov.” I don’t usually tell people about my past, that’s one of the reasons that I tried really hard to disguise my accent, but since I already know so much about Nadia’s life, it feels all right to share something of mine with her. “I grew up in Moscow until I was in my teens... I can’t remember when exactly. That’s when I came to America.”

“Wow,” she gasps, taking a massive swig of the vodka, like a true Russian. “That’s crazy. What made you come out here?”

I drink a little more myself, trying to steel myself before I share anything else. Telling this story to anyone scares me, but I feel an affinity with Nadia. I feel like because we’ve come from similar backgrounds, I can tell her things and she’ll understand. Plus, I can tell that she needs the distraction, needs something else to think about other than the current bizarre situation she finds herself in.

“I’m not entirely sure what happened, because I was too young to remember it fully, but I know that we lived in the poorer end of the city. My father worked all hours, but it was never enough, and we lived pretty much in squalor.” I sigh deeply, feeling myself crumble a little. “It was always a violent area, but one day a whole bunch of explosions kicked off... I think I must have been at school when it happened, which is why I survived it, but I remember clearly hearing the bangs.”

As I speak, I’m taken back to that moment in time. Back to when I was a child, and my world shattered. “Then, that was it. My parents were dead. I guess our house got caught up in the fires and that was the end of it all.”

“I’m sorry,” she says sadly. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

A little part of me breaks at her kindness, but I keep talking Suddenly, I want to get it all out, this story that’s been stuck inside me all these years, and is now finally spilling forth.

“After that I was left. I suppose if I waited around long enough, the authorities would have gotten involved somewhere down the line, but I was scared. I thought we were being targeted for a reason, and I just ran. There was no one to mourn for me, no one to care I was gone, so I just... carried on. I lived on the streets, fending for myself, until I met the man who brought me here.”

“Why...what did he bring you for?” She asks anxiously, I guess fearing the answer.

“To work for his agency, I guess,” I tell her, shrugging my shoulders causally. “To start the life I live today.”

She nods slowly, as if she understands, and I suppose in a way she does. She also wound up in a life she probably didn’t plan. And, like me, she’d probably done things she might not have otherwise done, just to keep herself alive.

“What about you?” I ask, hoping that she trusts me enough to reciprocate. I realize she might not want to, but after all I’ve just said I would so appreciate it if she did the same. “What brought you here?”

“My father,” she tells me, before glugging her drink again, needing the liquid courage as much as I do. “He wanted to come to America and become a big shot, but it never worked out for him.” She looks down at her feet for a moment, and my heart bleeds for her. This story clearly doesn’t have a happy ending, the same way the ones that involve me never do.

“When things didn’t work out as he wanted, he started drinking, then he became abusive. It was a vicious cycle I wanted to break free of.” She rubs her face hard. “I guess I thought that I was doing that by marrying Damien, but he was probably worse. I mean, I saw my father do some pretty horrific things to my mother, but I think it came from his depression. I feel like there was always some love there between them, not that I’m excusing it at all,” She says hastily. “But with Damien... he was manipulative and mean, he was horrible.”

Tears start to stream down her face, and I can’t resist the urge for another second. I lean forward and pull her body close to mine, trying to reassure her at least a little bit. She slumps against me and allows me to take some of the burden from her for just a few moments.

“He turned me into a different version of myself—one that’s scared and sad all the time. I mean, I hate the fact that he’s dead, and that it had to go that far, but if anyone deserved it, it’s him. He was a despicable man.”

“It’s okay now.” I do my best to reassure her. “He’s gone, and soon enough all of this will be behind you. I know it seems overwhelming right now, but soon it will be a distant memory. You’ll have a future for the first time in a very long time, and you should be focusing on that.”

She pulls back to look at me for a few seconds, and in that moment I feel something spark deep inside me. Something both strange and familiar all at once.

“I guess we aren’t so different, you and me,” she tells me huskily. “We’ve both been through horrible ordeals, and we’ve managed to come out the other side.”

I nod slowly, but my mind isn’t on the conversation anymore. I’m thinking about whoever is out there, looking for us, coming for either one of us—or maybe both of us. I don't know what to do about it, and the only thing that I can think of is to contact Aidan, to get him involved, but that’s the last thing I want. I owe him a whole lot, and I don't want to let him down. He pulled me out of the gutter and gave me this chance. All I’ve ever wanted to do was repay him for that. I certainly don't want to have to go to him with this bullshit.

I need to tackle this alone.

“Let me turn my computer on,” I say, getting up. “We need to do some research on this, try and work out what happened at Damien’s. I need to know everyone that he’s connected to. We have to find out...”

But she pulls me back into a sitting position, before I can even finish my sentence. “Just leave it for now,” she assures me. “Let’s just... take a time-out from all of this. Take a minute to rest.”

I stare at her for a few moments, trying to figure her out. Does she not see that we still have much to do? And that by tackling that now we give ourselves the advantage... but as I look into her eyes I can see something else, something that I wasn't expecting at all. A fire.

Is she... does she want something to happen here?

The electric charge between us is something I’ve been thinking about all along, but I know I shouldn’t act on it. This is the first time I’ve suspected that Nadia might feel it too. It’s actually felt like she’s been purposely trying to keep her distance from me. Maybe the stress of everything finally catching up to her. Maybe she’s reacting to the way I’ve been taking care of her. I don't know. All I know for sure is that this is a terrible idea.

So why can’t I stop myself from leaning in?

As we move nearer to one another, drawn together like magnets, my brain is screaming at me to stop, yelling at me to stop, but I can’t even though I know there’s only one way that this will end—in a whole heap of trouble.

Despite my internal torment, our lips crash together in what feels like a moment that has been coming for a very long time. Her mouth opens, and my tongue darts inside. She tastes like strawberries, and I want to drink her in. Devour her.

My fingers get tangled in her hair, her hands clutch my waist, and I can tell this isn’t just a sweet kiss. It’s a kiss that’s deep and passionate, needy and desperate. The kind of kiss that opens the door to your heart, no matter how hard you’ve tried to keep it locked away.

It doesn’t make sense.

But it doesn’t have to.

I know that if I don't put a stop to this soon, we’re going to end up in bed together. And as much as I’ve been thinking about being with Nadia, I didn’t think I’d actually act upon those thoughts...

I can’t.

I force myself to stop, and I hold her shoulders trying to keep her at arm’s length. But as I stare into her eyes, my resolve wavers. There’s something about this woman. Something between us I need to explore. So instead of saying the words that I should, I hear myself asking her, “Are you sure?”

She nods furiously then she grabs me, bringing my body back to hers, as desperate for me as I am for her.

With nothing holding me back, I pick her up and carry her to my bedroom.