Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 65104 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65104 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
“I need the walk to clear my head,” I tell him. “Otherwise, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
21
LYRA
The apartment is so quiet when I walk in it almost rings. I drop my bag on the couch, toe off my shoes, and stand there for a beat, letting the silence sink in. For a few days, I’d been able to pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. Now that I’m home, reality creeps back in.
No matter what happened on that island, Damien is still in the Bratva. It’s a harsh, punishing truth.
I pull my laptop from my bag and sit at the kitchen table. My hands hover over the lid for a heartbeat before I open it. The screen glows in the dim room, washing my fingers in light as I log into the private server I built. I haven’t had time to check it since Damien whisked me away on our vacation. One click and I’m connected to the feed.
Static hums in my ears before voices start coming through. Most of it is in Russian, rapid and sharp, the cadence clipped in ways I can’t follow. My grasp of the language is nonexistent, so the words slide over me without meaning. I jot down timestamps anyway, hoping I can translate them later.
Minutes pass. Then an unfamiliar voice speaks in English, the words cutting cleanly through the noise.
“He’s not going to stop until Rurik is gone. You know that.”
Another voice answers, low and certain. “And Rurik isn’t going to stop until Damien is dead.”
My stomach twists. The air turns heavy, making each breath harder. This isn’t a vague suspicion anymore. It isn’t Becca’s worried voice telling me to be careful. It isn’t my imagination. Damien is planning to kill someone. Someone is planning to kill him. The danger isn’t just real, it’s imminent.
I lean closer to the laptop, needing every scrap of information I can get. Footsteps shuffle in the background. A door creaks. Then the feed drops back into Russian, and I’m left staring at the screen with my pulse pounding in my ears.
I press my hands to my face, trying to think. I don’t know how to help him. I don’t even know if he’d let me. Damien is all sharp edges and control when it comes to his business. I can’t exactly tell him what I heard, and I can’t admit I know who he is. But I can’t just sit here and hope he makes it out alive. It’s an impossible situation.
A pounding rattles the door so hard the sound vibrates through the floor. My head snaps up, heart lurching. The knocks aren’t polite. They’re demanding and dangerous. The laptop is shut before I even think, my fingers flying to close the lid, to hide what I’ve been doing. I stand frozen for a heartbeat, then force myself to the door. I look through the peephole.
It’s Damien.
His jaw is hard, his eyes darker than I’ve ever seen them. He’s not calm or collected. He’s furious, and the energy rolling off him is so sharp it prickles my skin.
I unlock the door and pull it open. He doesn’t wait for an invitation.
“Are you carrying my child?” His voice cuts like a blade, right there in the hallway.
The world narrows to that one sentence. Heat rushes to my cheeks in shock. I almost feel like I’ve been slapped. I glance both ways down the hall before grabbing his arm and tugging him inside.
The door slams shut behind us. My back is pressed to it, my heart hammering. Half of me is scared. This isn’t the Damien who teased me by the pool or kissed me under the moonlight. This is the man Becca warned me about.
“Yes,” I say, my voice steady even though my pulse is anything but.
His eyes narrow, a flicker of shock or rage passing through them before it all hardens again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The words are nearly a growl.
I push off the door and stand straighter, meeting him head-on. “Because I’m not one of your lieutenants or whatever you call them.”
That makes him stop for a second and take a step back. Now he looks like the one who’s been slapped. His brow pulls tight and he stares back at me in surprise. “What?”
His tone is incredulous, but I see the truth in his eyes. He’s been made.
“I’m not one of your little underlings you can order around. I don’t take orders from you, Damien. Not about this. Not about my body. Not about my child.”
Damien stares at me, his jaw still set, but the heat in his eyes shifts. He’s still angry, still tense, but something else is creeping in. A pause, maybe, as if he’s recalculating.
“I’m not here to give you orders,” he says slowly, the anger leaching out of his tone with every word.