Page 19 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
“Maxim?” he asked, nodding toward my phone.
I nodded, not trusting my voice to remain steady.
“He wants you gone.” It wasn’t a question. Lev had always been good at reading between the lines, at understanding the currents that ran beneath surface conversations.
“He thinks I’m in danger.” I pulled the sheet tighter around myself, suddenly aware of how exposed I was in more ways than one. “Because of your father.”
Something flickered across his face at the mention of Mike—grief, maybe, or rage, or some combination of emotions too complex to name. But it was gone so quickly I might have imagined it, replaced by the kind of careful neutrality he wore like armor.
“You probably are.”
The casual way he said it, like he was commenting on the weather, made anger flare in my chest. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
He straightened, moving into the room with that predatory grace that had always made my pulse race. “What do you want me to say, Anya? That you should stay? That I can protect you from the kind of people who put bullets in men like my father?”
“I want you to—” I stopped, the words dying on my tongue because I didn’t know what I wanted from him. Didn’t know what I had the right to want after one night that was supposed to mean nothing.
“You want me to what?” He stepped closer, close enough that I could smell his skin, could see the way his jaw was set with tension. “Fight for you? Beg you to stay? Tell you that last night changed everything?”
The words hit like physical blows because they were everything I wanted to hear and everything I knew I couldn’t have. I’d spent five years telling myself that Lev Antonov was exactly the kind of man I needed to avoid—dangerous, violent, tied to a world that had already taken too much from me.
But last night, in his arms, I’d forgotten every reason why we were impossible. Had let myself believe, for a few stolen hours, that maybe love could be stronger than the violence that surrounded us.
“Last night was a mistake.” The words tasted like ash, but I forced them out anyway because they were the only truth that made sense in the harsh light of morning. “We both know that.”
He went completely still, and for a moment I saw something raw and wounded flash across his features before the mask slammed back into place. When he spoke, his voice was carefully empty.
“Get dressed.”
That was it. No argument, no fight, no desperate declaration that would give me an excuse to throw caution to the wind and damn the consequences. Just cold acceptance that cut deeper than any angry words could have.
I turned away from him and gathered my clothes, my hands shaking as I struggled with the zipper of my dress. Every movement felt heavy, weighted with the knowledge that I was getting dressed to leave, to walk away from something that could have been extraordinary if we’d been different people living different lives.
He didn’t watch me dress, didn’t try to touch me or change my mind. Just stood by the window like a statue, staring out at a city that looked gray and unwelcoming in the morning light.
When I was ready, he walked me to the door in silence. The hallway felt different now—not charged with possibility but hollow with endings. My heels clicked against the marble floor like a countdown, each step taking me further away from the man who had shown me what it meant to burn.
We stopped at the elevator, and I found myself hoping he would say something, anything, to make this moment feel less like a funeral for something that had barely been born.
Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his car keys.
“I’ll drive you home.”
The ride to my mansion passed in suffocating silence. I kept my eyes on the passing scenery, watching Chicago blur past the windows like a life I was leaving behind. Every few blocks, I could feel Lev’s gaze on me, heavy and unreadable, but when I glanced his way, he was always looking straight ahead.
My house came into view—all clean lines and pristine landscaping, a monument to the safe, sanitized life I’d built awayfrom the chaos of my brother’s world. It had always felt like a sanctuary before. Now it looked like a prison.
Lev pulled into the circular driveway and put the car in park, but he didn’t turn off the engine. The message was clear: this was a drop-off, not a goodbye that required conversation.
I reached for the door handle, then stopped. There were things that needed to be said, apologies that needed to be made, explanations that would probably fall on deaf ears but deserved to be offered anyway.
“Lev—”
“You should have told me you were a virgin.”
The words hit me like a slap, not because they were cruel but because they were said with such clinical detachment. Like I was a problem he’d solved, a box he could check and file away.
I turned to look at him, searching his face for any sign of the man who had whispered my name like a prayer in the dark. But all I found was the same cold control he’d worn like armor for as long as I’d known him.
