Sleep was a joke.
I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, the black car outside my window a constant in my peripheral vision every time I blinked. Apparently, Cillian Volkov didn't sleep. Or park. Or get bored.
My phone buzzed on the mattress beside me.
Elena: Did you leave your shift? Are you okay?
I stared at the message for a second before typing back.
Me: Sorry. Family thing. I'm fine.
Another message slid in from an unknown number.
Unknown: Call this number.
Yeah, I thought. Call and say "come get me, big guy"? Pass.
The clock ticked past midnight. Lana was snoring softly from the other room. The apartment hummed with that late-night quiet that makes every creak feel personal.
Running sat heavy in my chest. I had no money and no plan. But staying here with him circling my building like a shark waiting for feeding time felt like its own kind of slow death.
I pulled on the hoodie, the oversized grey monster that made me look like a suspicious potato sack, over my tank top and sweats. I shoved my feet into sneakers, grabbed my phone and keys, and slung the canvas tote over my shoulder with three days' worth of underwear and a toothbrush inside. It was a pathetic escape kit, but it was something.
He's outside, I reminded myself. But it's a car. Cars have blind spots.
I cracked the window and eased it open inch by inch. The fire escape was rusted but solid. One foot out, then the other. My heart hammered like it wanted to audition for a drum solo. The metal groaned under my weight, too loud, way too loud, but no headlights flashed and no door slammed.
I climbed down one careful step at a time, the hood up, blending into the shadows like the world's most anxious ninja.
I cut through the alley, then the side street, telling myself to keep moving and not look back. The parking structure two blocks over had a bus stop, with the first bus at five in the morning to the next town. From there, I would figure it out. I always did.
Freedom tasted like rust and adrenaline.
Until it did not.
The passage between buildings was dark and narrow, lit by a single flickering bulb. Footsteps sounded ahead of me, heavy and uneven. A guy stumbled out from the shadows, bottle in hand, reeking of cheap beer even from ten feet away.
He clocked me immediately. "Hey. You lost?"
"Nope." I kept walking, hood low, voice bored. "Just passing through."
He did not pass. He stepped sideways, blocking the narrow path. He was big enough to be a problem and drunk enough not to care. "Cute hoodie. What's under it?"
My pulse spiked, the simple, stupid kind, not the complicated Cillian-flavored one. "Nothing you would survive seeing. Night."
I tried to sidestep him. He grabbed my arm, hard. "Come on. Don't be a bitch."
Humor. Keep the humor. It was armor, even if it felt thin tonight. "Hands off, champ. My boyfriend is a mafia prince. One call and you are chum."
He laughed, wet and ugly. "Mafia prince? In this shithole town? Prove it."
His grip tightened. Panic clawed up my throat, but I yanked anyway. He didn't budge. Shit. Shit, shit.
The air changed.
It went cold and precise, like someone had opened a freezer door behind me.
The guy's eyes widened over my shoulder. His hand went slack. He stumbled back two steps, the bottle clattering to the ground.
I didn't turn. I didn't need to.
"Ava."
My name was uttered low and even, his accent wrapping around the edges like smoke.
The creep bolted. He took off in an actual sprint, his sneakers slapping against the pavement until he vanished around the corner. Smart man.
I turned slowly.
Cillian Volkov filled the mouth of the passage, his coat dark as the shadows and his eyes greener in the flickering light. Three months hadn't dulled him. If anything, the time had sharpened the edges. He looked exactly as I remembered… like something that had fallen out of heaven and decided it preferred the ground.
"You," I said. Brilliant opener.
His gaze snapped to me, then dropped to my arm.
"Did he hurt you?" he demanded.
The anger in his voice was immediate and unfiltered. He crossed the distance in two strides. I backed up on instinct until the chain-link fence met my shoulders.
"I'm fine," I said quickly. "He just grabbed—"
His hands came up, bracketing my head against the fence as he leaned in to inspect the mark on my arm. The metal rattled softly from the force he didn't quite use. His thumb pressed over the reddening bruise, his jaw tightening in a way that told me the calm was coming later.
Something in my chest did a very unhelpful flip at the closeness. Traitor body.
"I said I'm fine," I added, because I didn't need him in full protective crime lord mode tonight. "You can put the murder kit away."
Ugh, why did he care anyway?
His eyes lifted to mine, dark with something sharp and ugly. "You think this is funny?"
"No," I said. "I think this is my coping mechanism. If I don't joke, I start screaming."
A beat passed. Then another.
The anger in his face didn't vanish, but it settled into something colder and more controlled. He straightened, the space between us returning in a rush that left me oddly off-balance.
"You told him you had a mafia boyfriend," he said, his tone shifting. Not soft, but… amused, just enough to be dangerous. "Is that what I am now?"
He wasn't even my boyfriend. But, maybe I shouldn't remind him yet?
I swallowed. "It was a life-saving lie. You showed up on cue."
The corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn't a smile but it was close enough to make my pulse stutter.
"Next time, pick something less accurate. It tends to invite complications." he said.
"Noted," I said. "I'll go with 'boyfriend is aggressively into yoga' next time."
His gaze lingered on me a second longer than necessary, then flicked toward the darkness where the man had fled. The faint amusement drained from his face.
"He will be taken care of," he said matter-of-factly, like he was ordering coffee.
"No." Panic spiked again, a different flavor this time. "Don't," I said. "It's a small town. Cops ask questions. Bodies get noticed."
He looked back at me, the anger still there under the control. "You don't get to decide what I do with people who put their hands on you."
"I get to ask you not to kill them," I said. "It's a small town. People notice when men disappear."
His eyes searched my face, something calculating working behind them. "You're asking me to ignore an insult."
"I'm asking you not to turn my bad night into a body count," I shot back.
"Invite me for dinner then."
I blinked. "What?"
His gaze held mine. "You asked me to spare him. I don't do favors without terms."
Right. Of course he didn't. Why would a mafia prince suddenly grow a conscience because I asked nicely?
Some part of me had expected the other version. The over-the-shoulder hauling, the black car, zero input from me.
Instead, he was standing here negotiating like this was a business dinner and I was the appetizer.
"My place," I said. "If we're going to talk, we talk there. Not here."
He studied me for a long second. "You think that makes you safer?"
"I think it makes me louder," I said. "And harder to disappear."
That, at least, earned a faint huff of breath. Approval, maybe. Or amusement. With men like him, the line was thin.
"When?" he asked.
"Now," I said, because if I hesitated, I might come to my senses. "If you're coming, you're coming now."
He stepped back, giving me space. I bent to pick up my tote, my hands still unsteady. "Try not to murder anyone on the way over," I muttered. "It'll be awkward if my neighbors see."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "You worry about strange things."
"I live a strange life."
We had barely made it halfway down the block when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Unknown number: Stop pretending you can hide. We know where you are.
I frowned at the screen. "Seriously?" I muttered. "You're still sending ominous threats now?" I turned the phone toward him. "Because the whole brooding silent treatment was already very effective."
His expression shifted.
"That isn't from me," he said, and the temperature in his gaze dropped.
The streetlight flickered overhead, and suddenly the distance between my building and us felt a lot longer than it had a second ago.