6. Ivan

6

IVAN

P utting a gun in Agent Bradley's face is far from the smartest thing I could have done. But I've long since established that when it comes to Charlotte, all of my better sense goes out of the window.

This is just another symptom of that.

I knew that Agent Bradley had it out for me. I still knew that this morning, when I called him on the burner phone and told him what had happened, and that I needed his help getting Charlotte out of trouble. And I'd believed him when he'd said that he would help.

I'd believed him because he'd helped Sabrina. I don't know for sure where she is, or if the promises that the FBI made her panned out, but I know that my father didn't get to her. If he had, I'd know that . Which makes me think that Bradley kept his promise to help her.

It made me think he'd keep his promise about Charlotte.

Right up until I saw Nate get out of the car.

I was still willing to play along, if it meant Charlotte getting to safety. I would have let Bradley throw me into the deepest, darkest hole in the most maximum security of prisons if it meant that Lev and my father couldn't get to her. There's nothing I fear more than prison—not torture or death—but I'll take it if it means she's safe. I'll do anything to make sure she's safe.

Especially because all of this is my fault.

But I knew when Nate started talking that Charlotte wouldn't be. That he'd find a way to end up taking her home. That Bradley doesn't give a shit what happens to her—that maybe he resents me enough to let her be a scapegoat, because it would be one more knife to dig in.

I can't let that happen. So I slip the gun free, fast enough that Bradley doesn't see it coming, and level it at his face.

"We're leaving," I say flatly, coldly, but the smile never leaves his face.

"You really think I came here alone?" He doesn't flinch, and just behind him, I can see the other doors to the black car opening. Two more agents. "They'll bring you down, Kariyev, and take her. Who knows what happens then? She probably doesn't have enough answers for us. Not enough to make protecting her worthwhile. I wonder if your father will still want her, with you dead or locked away? Probably, even just as?—"

"I'll drop you before they get to me," I growl. "Call them off, and let us go."

Behind me, I can feel Charlotte flinch. I know what this must be doing to her. This is already more than she could have ever imagined dealing with in reality, a gritty level of violence before a shot ever goes off that she should never have had to confront. And now that Bradley has drawn his line in the sand, there will be more.

I should never have gone near her. But I did, and now it's too late. And I can't even say I'm sorry.

Not and have it not be a lie.

Bradley drops in the instant before I pull the trigger, with an instinct born of years of training. He's a piece of shit, but he's good enough at his job to know when a bullet is coming. My shot goes wide, just missing one of the other agents, and I react in the split second before they fire, pushing Charlotte down to the asphalt as their bullets hit close to us, spraying bits of it in both our faces.

They're not going to stop shooting until they've killed us, or fucked up my car so badly I can't drive. Bradley is already starting to push himself up, and I fire again from where I'm lying on the ground, clipping his arm. He grabs it, rolling onto his back with a groan as blood spills out onto the asphalt, and Charlotte lets out a high-pitched scream.

Winging Bradley might have distracted the other agents just long enough. "Get in the fucking car!" I growl at Charlotte, shoving myself up and firing twice more at the other agents' feet, spraying gravel at them as I bolt for the driver's door. I want to fling her into the car myself, but I don't have time. All I can do is hope like fuck that she follows instructions as I yank the door open, jumping inside, and shoving the key into the ignition.

To my relief, she slides in next to me, just as the agents fire again. I slam my foot down on the gas, the car peeling away, and for a second, I wish I'd angled it so I could have run over Nate's fucking face.

Or at least his hand.

Gunshots are still peppering the asphalt behind us as the car swerves, and Charlotte screams, clinging to the side of the door as we jolt out onto the road, accelerating as I drive with only one thing in mind—getting us as far away from that fucking motel as I can.

When I finally look over at Charlotte, I can see that her face is paper-white. She's still gripping the side of the door, frozen still, her lips pressed tightly together. She hasn't cried, not through any of this, and I don't know whether to be impressed or worried. I can't think of many other people who wouldn't have. At least a little.

"I'm sorry," I tell her finally, when we're back on the highway and it's clear that we're away from any pursuit. I intend to stay on the highway for a little while, and then get off on surface roads, to make it harder for them to follow us. "I had no idea that he would pull that shit. I definitely didn't know that Nate would be there?—"

"Because you thought you killed him?" Charlotte swings sharply towards me, her face bloodless, and I'm so shocked that it takes me a second to answer.

"What? No, of course I didn't fucking think I?—"

"So you did do it." She faces forward again, ramrod straight in the seat. "You beat him to a pulp and then…carved that awful message in his chest." The last part sounds forced out from between her lips, as if she can barely bring herself to say it. "Holy shit, Ivan."

Fuck. I let out a slow breath, trying to think of what I can possibly say to her. I was right about one thing—she doesn't belong in this world. What I did to Nate was child's play compared to what I've done to other men, and not nearly as bad as what I thought he deserved, and yet, Charlotte is clearly horrified. And I can't blame her. That kind of violence isn't normal for her—and I don't want it to be. I never did.

"He threatened you," I say quietly, staring straight ahead at the highway in front of us. I check my GPS and take the next exit off, and Charlotte tenses immediately.

"Where are we going?"

"Surface roads. Make it harder for us to be tracked. What, do you think I'm going to hurt you? That I'm going to take you somewhere and…what? Leave you in a ditch?" I try to hide the hurt in my voice, but I can't. I'm willing to do anything to make sure this woman is safe, and it's pretty fucking clear that she's afraid of me now, too.

On one hand, I can't exactly blame her, after what she's just seen. But on the other—surely she's also seen what I'm willing to do to keep her safe.

"Maybe." Her jaw is clenched now, too. "Clearly, I don't know you at all, Ivan."

That dagger she shoved in me when she told me to take her home and leave her alone twists, and before I can stop myself, I slam my foot against the brake, wrenching the car over to the side of the road and skidding to a stop in the grass. We're out in the middle of fucking nowhere, Illinois, and there's no one to be seen for miles. Charlotte seems to realize this, but for all the wrong reasons, because her already bloodless face seems to go even paler.

"You know some things," I say quietly, my voice hard and sharp. "You know I'd rather eat a burger out at a pub than drop five hundred dollars on a Michelin-starred meal. You know I'll go apple picking with you on a fall afternoon, when all your other boyfriends would rather stay in and watch the game. You know I'm shit at baking, but I can at least peel an apple, so you make up for the rest of it. You know I make you laugh." I reach out, my finger tracing down the line of her jaw, because I can't stop myself from touching her. Even like this, angry and frightened, she's beautiful. Even like this, I can't make myself stop wanting her.

"You know what it feels like when I kiss you. You know the way I look at you when you're all spread out for me naked, sweet as that apple pie we baked. And you know how hard I can make you come." My fingers close around her chin, and I turn her face to look at me, but she jerks it away just as quickly.

"And how much of that was real?" She looks out of the window, twisting as far away from me as she can get. "How much of that was just you trying to get me to fall for you, so you could have what you wanted from me?"

All of it was real. But I can see that she's not going to believe that. Not right now. Maybe not ever, with the way things are going.

"Fuck, Charlotte." I shake my head, putting the car back into gear and pulling back out onto the road. We don't have time to sit here and argue, not with what we have on our tail. "We can finish this conversation later," I mutter, gritting my teeth as I start to drive again.

"Let's finish the one where I found out that you beat the shit out of Nate," she spits. "And?—"

"Put a reminder on him, since he's too stupid, or too much of an asshole to know when to quit?" I look over her, feeling a jolt of anger that she won't let this go. "I didn't think you gave a shit about him. He cheated on you, remember? Made you feel like shit, even though you didn't deserve it. Wasted five years of your life. Why the fuck do you care what I did to him?"

"I—" Charlotte stammers, looking down at her hands. "I don't know if anyone deserves anything like—that. Even if they?—"

"Plenty of people do." I feel my jaw clench as I twist my hands on the steering wheel. "And some people don't. I've hurt both, Charlotte, doing what I do for my father. And that's what's really bothering you, isn't it? Not that Nate got the shit beat out of him, but that it was me that did it. Me , who you've eaten dinner with and baked pie with and watched movies side by side with, like a normal girl with a normal boy. Me , who you've let inside you, who you've let?—"

"Stop!" Charlotte shouts the word, throwing up her hands. "I get it! I let you fuck me, but I didn't know, and?—"

"You knew this morning." The hurt is in my voice again, icing over every word, and I can't hide it. I know I've done more wrong in this than I can probably ever make up for, but Charlotte seems intent on pretending that she has no hand in it. That she was fooled in every little thing, and while I've lied to her about plenty that she doesn't even know about yet, there are some things she did know. And this morning is one of those things I'll hold on to, even though I know I didn't deserve that, either.

Her mouth sets in a thin line. "You stalked me." She swallows hard, the delicate line of her throat moving, and the sight of it makes me twitch in my jeans, aroused despite the argument. Hell, maybe partially because of it. Sweet, innocent Charlotte is beautiful and desirable in every way, but angry Charlotte is a spitfire, and it makes me want to pin her down and fuck her while she spits those angry words at me, until I find out if I can turn those curses into moans.

"You tracked me," she continues, and the anger is back in her voice. " Spied on me. I heard what Bradley said. That's how you knew what Nate was saying to me. I never told you about it. That's how you knew where I ate lunch. You finding me at Cafe L'Rose wasn't an accident—" she trails off, and I feel myself tensing, knowing how close she is to putting together the rest. To figuring it all out, and then god knows she'll never forgive me.

I should just tell her. I shouldn't keep dragging it out. But once I do, any chance of there being anything more between us will be gone. And I'm not ready to let her go just yet.

"You're right," I tell her quietly. "And I shouldn't have. All of that was wrong, but?—"

"What do we do now?" She cuts me off, clearly uninterested in my apologies. Which is probably for the best, because I still don't know how to tell her that I'm sorry in a way that feels sincere. In the end, what I want is still what I shouldn't have—a way to keep her. "Your plan with Bradley clearly isn't going to work out. He wants to throw you into the deepest pit available. And I'm almost inclined to agree with him," she adds acidly, bitterness coating every word. "I just trust you slightly more than I trust him."

"I suppose I should be glad for that," I mutter, and she looks over at me, her face still bloodless and mouth set in a hard line.

"He's a snake," she says flatly. "He felt—wrong. And he betrayed you, so clearly, he's not someone to be trusted."

"I'm a criminal, and he's a fed." I chuckle darkly. "Isn't that just what he's supposed to do?"

Charlotte seems to consider this for a moment. "Not if you had an agreement," she says finally, folding her hands together in her lap. "He should have kept his word."

It's a naive view of the world, but I don't tell her that. "He's going to be after us, too," I tell her quietly. "We'll have the FBI and the Bratva on our asses now. We're going to have to be careful, and you're going to have to listen to me, Charlotte."

"Then maybe you should tell me what we need to do." Her voice is icy, and it hurts to hear her like that. I want to hear her soft again, breathy, her voice pleading for more. I want to hear her laugh. I want her happy, and the hardest thing to accept by far is that it's almost certainly never going to be me that gives that to her.

All I can do now is focus on getting her safe .

"I'll tell you when we stop for the night," I say finally, unwilling to have this argument right now, in the car. "We can talk about it then."

We drive in silence on the surface roads for a long time, until the sun starts to set. I see Charlotte lean against the door, looking out at the bright oranges and yellows streaking across the sky, and the expression on her face makes my chest ache. Her face has softened, her eyes almost dreamy as she watches it, and it's as if she's managed to forget for a moment what's happening. As if she's her old self, just for these few seconds as the sun sinks beyond the horizon.

I can't help but wonder if that's what she wants to be—her old self. When Charlotte and I went out on our first date, she told me that she thought she was boring. That she'd lived a predictable, unexciting life. It seemed as if she wanted to break free from it. That's what she was doing, after all, playing in the dark corners of the internet with Venom. That's what she was doing that night at Masquerade. But now that reality has hit her, I can't help but think that she likely wants to retreat back into the safety of that boring, ordinary life.

A life that I've taken away from her.

Guilt churns in my stomach as the sky starts to darken, and I pull off of the road into the drive-through of a fast food place. Charlotte looks over at it, and her nose wrinkles.

"I'm not hungry," she says flatly, and I let out a slow breath, trying to keep my patience. She seems determined to try it, and I deserve that. But I'm exhausted, too, and I wish she wouldn't fight me on every little thing.

"You haven't eaten all day, because we couldn't spend the time to stop. Not until we put a good distance between us and them. But you have to eat something."

Charlotte sets her jaw stubbornly, and I sigh, rolling down my window. I order a burger for myself and chicken tenders for her, figuring that she'll pick at them when she gets hungry enough. Fries, too. I set the greasy bag of takeout on the floor next to her feet, and look at my map on my phone for a nearby cheap motel.

I could afford nicer, of course. But those places usually look sideways at anyone trying to pay with cash, and without using real names. The shadier the motel, the more likely that I can keep our stay as anonymous as possible.

Charlotte doesn't touch the bag, moving her feet away from it as if it might burn her. I chuckle darkly, pulling back out onto the road. "I thought you liked simpler things." I can't resist the urge to rib her, just a little. She's behaving like a diva all of a sudden, and I know that's not her. She's trying to get under my skin.

"I like casual places," she says stiffly. "I don't usually poison myself with that garbage."

"Well, unfortunately, restaurants are a little too visible. And they put others in danger. My brothers or the feds get wind of someone fitting our description having been seen—and the feds will put out pictures of us, soon enough—and they'll start questioning other guests. Waitresses. Hotel clerks. Anyone who might have seen us. So we need to lay low, and keep out of sight as much as possible. That means drive-throughs and cheap motels, and getting back on the road as early as we can."

"Sounds like you've done this before. Gone on the run." She still won't look at me, and I sigh heavily as I pull into the motel parking lot.

"No. But I've always been prepared. Comes with the territory." I turn the car off, looking over at her. "Are you going to try to run again? Or are you going to accept that we're going to have to stick together for the time being."

Charlotte's mouth tightens. "I barely even know where we are right now," she says, her voice still stiff and cold. "I don't think I can try to run. There doesn't seem to be a police station for miles."

"And if you called them, you'd end up with Bradley," I tell her flatly. "And Nate, right by him, waiting to pay you back for what happened to him."

Her head whips around at that. "He wouldn't hurt me," she says sharply, clearly startled by that insinuation. "He's a cheating piece of shit, but he'd never?—"

"He would." I look at her, fighting the urge to reach out and touch her, as if by holding her in my hands, I can drive my point home somehow. "Look, Charlotte, I get that all of this is strange to you. That you're seeing sides of human nature you've never had to see before, and never thought about outside of television and maybe some books. But what I need you to understand is that you have no idea what some men are capable of."

She looks at me evenly, unflinching. "Men like you?"

I choose to ignore that, and the jab of pain in my chest. "Nate might've never laid a hand on you before this. I'll agree with that. But now he's been hurt in ways he couldn't have imagined either, before. Hurt by a man you slept with. Humiliated by him, too. If he gets half a chance, he'll take that out on you. I promise you that."

For once, Charlotte doesn't look away. "Then that'll be your fault, too," she says coolly. And before I can respond, she shoves her door open, stepping out into the chilly night.

I want to offer her my jacket, but I already know she'll refuse. I can see the prickling of her skin as she wraps her arms around herself, but I just grab my duffel bag out of the back of the car, locking it as I lead the way to the clerk's window.

Fifteen minutes later, I have a key and a room. Charlotte follows me in silence, and I grab the bag of our food out of the car, unlocking the room and letting us in. We're on the upper floor, which I'm glad about—we'll be able to get some warning, most likely, if anyone is coming after us. I plan on keeping an eye out as much as I can.

I let Charlotte go into the room first, and I can see her taking it in—the old carpet, the pressed-wood furniture, the stiff duvet on the one bed. She looks at me, and I let out a sigh.

"I'll sleep in the chair. Or on the floor."

She doesn't argue, or tell me that I've been driving all day, so I should take it, or even give me a chance to try to convince her that she should have the bed. She just nods, sitting heavily down on the end of it, and I can see what looks like defeat cross her face as she unrolls the bag of food and takes out a single chicken tender.

I know I'm about to make that feeling even worse.

We eat in silence. I scarf down my burger without really tasting it, and Charlotte shreds the chicken more than she actually eats it. When the trash is thrown away, I wash my hands and come back out, noticing that she hasn't moved at all. She's just a statue, sitting at the end of the bed.

"We're going to go to Vegas," I tell her, and she looks up at me.

"Vegas?" There's clear confusion on her face, and I nod.

"I have a contact there who can make fake identification for us. Licenses, social security, the works. Good enough that we can go anywhere, with no trouble."

Charlotte swallows hard. "And we need that because?—"

"We're going to have to scrub our old identities, Charlotte. Leave the country, probably, to be safe. Together, separately, whatever—the old Charlotte and Ivan, those are going to have to go, if we want to survive. This guy can do that for us."

The look of horror on her face is frozen there for a moment, and I realize that she believed, somewhere deep down, that I was going to find some other way out of this for us. That she was going to get to go home, eventually. I don't think it's settled in yet that that's impossible.

Unless I could pull off a miracle somehow, she's not going home. And the feeling that I've failed her settles on me, a weight that I can't shrug off. Leaving, starting over—that's what I've always wanted, but she has a life that she didn't want to shed. Maybe she wanted to lose pieces of it, but not all of it—not her friends, her job, or her home.

I've cost her all of that. And all I can think, as I look at the dawning grief and shock on her face, is that I have to find some way to get it back for her.

Keeping her safe isn't enough. I need something more. Something that can undo what I've done.

"No." Charlotte shakes her head frantically, breaking my train of thought. "No, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to just—become someone else. I won't do it. We'll have to figure something else out, Ivan. My life, everything—I can't just walk away from that!"

I let out a sharp breath between my teeth. "You can't escape the Bratva, Charlotte. My father is relentless and merciless. My oldest brother, Lev, is cruel. My other two, Niki and Ani, will do what he says. They're my father's spares, there to do as they're told, and to follow Lev. That's their purpose, beyond reminding Lev that he can always be replaced, if he puts a foot wrong."

"That he can—" Charlotte's eyes narrow, her forehead wrinkling as she shakes her head, running her hands through her hair. "This is awful, Ivan. Everything you tell me about your family is awful. This is?—"

"I know." I breathe out heavily. "Believe me, I know. I've lived all my life with them, and I've spent a good bit of it plotting how I'll escape, eventually."

"And that's what this is. Your escape." Bitterness laces every word. "You're just taking me down with you."

"This isn't how I planned it. And I never wanted to drag you down with me." That, more than anything, I want her to believe. I want her to understand that I never, never would have sacrificed her safety, for anything. I would never have put her in this much danger, if I'd believed my family would come after her.

"So I'll go to Bradley." She spreads her hands out in front of her. "Maybe he'll protect me from Nate. He wants the Bratva to go down. He?—"

"That's not an option any longer." I cut her off, before she can keep traveling down that path. "He's not going to help you, Charlotte. He's going to want information from you that you don't have—he made that clear earlier today, when we met up with him. He'll probably hand you back over to Nate. It's clear they have some sort of agreement. He might threaten you with all sorts of things, to try to get you to tell him what he thinks you know. He might not care enough to even put you in witness protection. And if he does?—"

"Isn't that what you wanted?" she demands, her voice cracking slightly, and I run my hand through my hair.

" None of this is what I wanted, Charlotte. But yes, I thought Bradley was the best option. I thought he would help you, get you safe. But it's clear he doesn't give a shit. So even if they do put you in witness protection, I'm no longer convinced that's enough to keep my brothers from getting to you. From finding you and using you. Charlotte, you don't want to know what Lev will do to you?—"

"I have some idea." She cuts me off, shoving herself up from the bed and starting to pace. "So—what? Now I'm dependent on you. I'm going to road trip with you to Vegas, where some man you say we can trust but I don't know is going to get us new, fake identities, and then—" She spreads her hands out. "We ride off into the sunset? ‘The beginning of a beautiful friendship?'" The sarcasm in her voice, dripping off of every word, bites into me like acid on my skin. "I don't believe this, Ivan. I don't believe you wanted Bradley to help me. I don't believe that all of this has been some massive fuck-up on your part, that you didn't want this from the start! That this isn't what you always intended to happen?—"

I jolt up from my chair, my anger rising to meet hers. I've been shoving it down all day, throughout one of the longest days I can remember having in recent memory, telling myself that I deserve every cutting word, every angry remark, every cold shoulder. And fuck, I know I do. But at the same time, she's accusing me of things that aren't true. And that pisses me off, because god knows I've done enough wrong that she can be furious at me for. She doesn't need to be angry at me for what I haven't done, too.

"I never wanted this," I growl, pacing towards her. She holds her ground, eyes sparking angrily up at me, and I shake my head, my anger sparking to meet it. "This is exactly what I didn't want to happen. I knew I should have stayed away from you. I knew I was bad for you, that everything about me was wrong for someone like you, but I couldn't. I fucking couldn't! From the moment I saw you at Masquerade, I knew?—"

Her mouth drops open, her eyes so wide that her eyebrows shoot up almost to her hairline, and I realize what I've said a moment too late. That it's all coming out, and Charlotte is going to realize the extent of what I've done.

That because I let my mouth run away with me, because I let myself get angry for a second, I might have doomed her even more.

She'll never stay with me after this. Not even long enough for me to make sure she's safe.