Page 22 of The Russian's Stalked Bride
So much for keeping this private.
Chapter 8 - Mila
The sheets I wake up tangled in aren’t mine, and that alone makes my heart startle the second my eyes open. Right after, the pounding in my head registers, and my chest aches like I’ve been punched over and over again.
For a moment, I forget where I am until clarity strikes me at once. Everything hits me from the alleyway, his hands on me, the condo, the camera.
The humiliation of hiding under the covers all night just to keep out of his sight clings to me even as I sit up abruptly, well aware of the anger surging through me so fast that it burns everything else away.
While sunlight filters through the reinforced windows and the silence of the room swathes everything, I’m reminded that this is nothing more than containment, even if Ivan wants to pretend it’s for my safety.
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I get up and pad over to the door.
Even if it was just one night, I’ve had enough.
I spent the whole time cycling between panicking, crying, and shrinking under the pressure of the situation, and now, I’m tired of it.
Ivan had calmed me down and reassured me of his intentions, but that game is all too familiar. The reassurance, the redirection…it’s just like my brothers, and that realization makes my skin go completely cold.
I didn’t run from Carlo and Cesare just to fold the moment a different man decided he knew what was best for me. I escaped, and that matters. By now, it has to mean something.
Rather than sitting around quietly while I wait and hope that Ivan Lukov suddenly grows a conscience, I need to take my life back into my own hands, even if I don’t know exactly how to do that yet.
Finding the bedroom door unlocked, to my surprise, I push through and step into the hall without hesitating. If he has more cameras around that he’s watching me through, then fine. Let him see I’m not hiding now.
The condo is as quiet as it was yesterday, and now that I’m looking around more thoroughly, I catch the smaller details. Somehow, the place is masculine in an understated, expensive kind of way, with enough dark wood and steel accents to make it seem intentional. It’s clean, but not sterile. With a dark bar cart in the corner of the living room, and crystal glasses on display behind it, I’m assuming that’s as personal as it gets here.
It suits him in a way.
After padding through the place, I find him in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a coffee mug in his grasp while he scrolls through his phone. And to my horror, he’s shirtless.
I pause, eyes drawn to the lean muscle spanning across his back and how it flexes subtly as he shifts in place, then I catch the tattoo on his shoulder, though I don’t let myself look at it long enough to make out what it is.
The casual way his grey sweatpants hang from his hips doesn’t help my momentum in the slightest, but the slight flutter in my stomach forces me to correct myself, steeling my expression.
It only took one look at him in this relaxed position, in the comfort of his home, to make me second-guess myself, and I hate it.
Surely sensing that he’s not alone now, Ivan glances over his shoulder at me, then he pushes himself up smoothly. “Good, you’re awake.”
I don’t give him the decency of a greeting. “We need to talk.”
“Yeah?” He asks, offering me a noncommittal hum as he turns and leans back. “Do we?”
“Yes, we do,” I snap back, arms crossing over my chest. “Unless you prefer locking me in the spare bedroom like an object.”
Ivan gives me an unruffled look that’s more unimpressed than anything, and he sets the mug down. “You’re being dramatic. It wasn’t even locked.”
“That’s not the point. You put cameras in the bedroom, Ivan.”
“Don’t take it personally. The camera was there before you came here,” he says as simply as anything. “It’s for security.”
I narrow my eyes at him, not accepting that answer as innocently as he wants me to. “You were watching me sleep.”
“I turned the feed off…eventually.”
“Yeah, after you proved you could,” I fire back.
Ivan puts his hands up in a placating gesture that makes his biceps pop, and I have to convince myself I didn’t see it. “Fine, maybe the camera’s a bit much. But you’re safe here, like I said.”
