Page 11 of Ruthless Sin
I drink it anyway.
Renzo dropped Moscow at dinner, flat and empty, like it was nothing.
I set the cup down.
The wood of the table is warm where my hand has been on it.
I should get up, go back upstairs, and try to sleep, but the bed is three rooms away and my body will not move toward it.
I can sit at this table or I can sit outside her door, but the bed is where I have to stop moving. Where I have to be still, and where the second I close my eyes, I’m back in the chair, watching Yelena’s blood spread patient across the concrete while she hums through the knife.
Stop.
I do not get up.
2
MILA
“Ya ne proshu tvoey lyubvi.” I don’t ask for your love.
He reads the words low, his Russian gravelly through the dense oak.
He doesn’t have a goddamn clue that I speak his translation right back to him inside my head.
He doesn’t know I have been on this side of the door every night for weeks, sitting flat on the cold hardwood with the meat of my palm pressed against the grain, matching the rhythm of his breathing.
On his side, the leather book snaps shut. He stands, his boots shifting weight, and I catch the uneven hitch in his stride right where the corridor turns.
It’s a hitch he hides from everyone downstairs, one he doesn’t bother to smooth out for a closed door.
He walks away. He always does.
Don’t.
The thought slips through before I can choke it back. My hand stays glued to the oak, my fingers twitching against the wood.
Take it back. He’s gone. Take the wanting back.
You don’t get to want him. You don’t get to be chosen. You were the thing in the room. Never the person in it.
I lean my forehead against the grain, my skin finding the faint warmth where his back was against the wood.
Gone now. Empty space. Just the thick smell of New Orleans jasmine creeping through the floor gap.
I count to thirty breaths before my hand drops into my lap.
Eventually, I make myself move.
The small tactical folding knife is the only thing on this side of the room that didn’t feel like an interrogation.
Renzo gave it to me during my second week in the house. He’d walked into the room without knocking, set the matte-black casing quietly on the nightstand, and said two words.
In case.
Then he turned on his heel and left before the weight of it had even landed.
I haven’t let go of it since. It stays tucked into the deep pocket of my oversized sweater, my thumb constantly tracking the ridge of the release switch.
