Page 47 of Arrow

His hand came to my jaw, not to strike, but to tilt my face so we were breathing the same air.

“Yadovitaya malen’kaya gadyuka,”⁠* he said, and there wasn’t a trace of a smile now. “But I can wait for you to figure out what kind of afraid you want to be.”

The release came suddenly—he let go, turned his back, and opened the confessional door. Instead of leaving, he waited, holding it with two fingers, daring me to storm past or stay and beg for a second round. I shouldered by him, knocking his hand loose, but he only followed silently.

The club was winding down. People went to their limos, their afterparties, or their walks of shame, but Arrow trailed me to the street without a word. He took the cathedral steps two at a time, overtaking me, then halted at the curb.

Ivan held a black umbrella over his head as Arrow lit another cigarette, watching me shiver in the rain, waiting for me to get into his car.

I rolled my eyes and stalked two blocks toward the L train, feeling the cold bite into my battered thighs and pulse in my veins, but he kept pace behind me, a steady metronome of hard-soled shoes against the cracked concrete. I spun on him at the edge of a yellowed streetlamp.

“Following me doesn’t make you mysterious. It makes you a stalker.”

“Did you enjoy yourself tonight?” Arrow asked.

The rain made his hair look even darker, his face sharper, and I realized with a jolt of revulsion that he looked beautiful in the way funerals sometimes were.

“I did,” I said, “but I think you missed the part where I get to consent. Was that in the fine print with the collar, or do I get to negotiate that after the vows?”

He let my words sit between us, unrefuted. “Do you know what happens to disobedient brides in my family?”

“Yeah,” I shot back. “They end up drowning in the Hudson, or chained to a stove in New Jersey.”

Arrow smiled, cigarette ember flaring. “We’re not animals.”

“Says the guy whose kin nailed my brother to a fucking cross.”

That got under his skin. Arrow flicked the cigarette into the sewer as if ridding himself of the thought.

“You believe every nursery story your father ever told you?”

“I believe the evidence. I believe the body count.” I held my breath, not because he scared me, but because I needed to say it out loud, to let the ugly words rip loose from my tongue. “I believe every story that ends with a Romanov holding the smoking gun.”

He stood very still. The rain cast strange shadows down his face, dividing it along the hollows of his cheekbones. When he spoke, his voice was caught between disgust and pity.

“Then you should know, I don’t need a gun to end you.”

“But you need a leash?” I snapped, flashing the Cartier band from my purse like a badge of honor. “What, you want to see your mark on my neck? Is that what gets you hard, Romanov?”

Arrow moved so fast I almost fell backwards. His hand landed, open-palmed, on the wall beside my skull, and his whole body caged me against the vandalized brick. I blinked in shock, not because the move was violent, but because his grip never touched me, not really—he just hovered, the threat enough.

“You want to make me a monster?” Arrow whispered. “You want to feed every fear your daddy ever banked on, every bedtime story he thought would keep you loyal to his orbit?”

He dropped his gaze to the spot just below my jaw, where the bruises from Zephyr were quietly blooming into focus. For a breathless moment, I thought he’d kiss them.

“I could snap you in two,” he said. His voice was utterly sure, so blankly unafraid it was almost a mercy. “But I’d rather see what you become when something doesn’t kill you right away.” He stepped back, letting the night and the rain and the air itself rush in between us. “Go home, Harlowe. You’ll need your strength for the wedding.”

Without waiting for my reply; he turned, got into the car, and left.

I stood there until the cold seeped through his jacket, the urge to cry so stale it sickened me.

On the train, I stood against the doors, feeling every lurch and every jolt. When I got home, the foyer was lit up. Frank sat at the base of the stairs, bracing a glass of scotch balanced on his thigh. He looked at my lack of attire, noticing the jacket that didn’t belong to me.

“I would have picked you up.”

“I know.” I wanted to weep, or maybe just let the memory of tonight’s pain bloom into something less lonely. But I asked the only question I thought mattered anymore. “Do you think he’ll kill me?”

Frank finished his drink, set it on the table, and sighed. “No,” he said. “He’ll try to break you, but not kill you.” It was kindness, in a way, the certainty of my future humiliations instead of my death. “You’re his prize, Harlowe. He’ll make an art form out of your survival.”