8. Charlotte

8

CHARLOTTE

T he cold air is bracing, and it brings me back to my senses, a little bit. I close the door behind me, not caring that I don't have the key—sooner or later, Ivan is going to come out here after me, anyway. But I need a moment alone, away from him. I need a wall between me and him, some kind of space to think about everything I've learned and what's happened.

This one day feels like it's lasted a week. It's hard for me to reconcile that twenty-four hours ago, I was in a bar with Jaz, having a drink. I still believed Ivan was who I thought he was. I didn't know Nate had been attacked. I didn't know that the Bratva was a real thing. I was going to go home, sleep off the too many drinks I had on a work night, and wake up probably a little hungover in the morning. I was going to go to work, text Ivan, and set up another date.

I never realized how quickly an entire life can shatter. Even Nate's cheating couldn't have prepared me for this. That took away a five-year relationship and forced me to reframe my plans for my romantic future, but it didn't take away my job, my home, or my friends. A sharp, bitter laugh spills out of my lips as I remember how thoroughly broken I'd felt right after that. How it had been the biggest betrayal I'd known. How it had felt like the most impactful, hurtful thing to ever happen to me.

The worst sundering of something in my life that had ever occurred. I couldn't imagine it getting worse than that.

I had no fucking idea how bad it could get.

And somehow, Ivan's lies hurt so much more. On the surface, it doesn't make sense. I had five years of memories and plans with Nate that were stripped away in an instant, but somehow, the last few weeks with Ivan being ripped away and reframed feels like a knife that's digging so much deeper. Maybe it's because nothing with Nate ever felt that profound, or meaningful—not like those few dates with Ivan did. With Nate, he always checked off my boxes, made me feel like I could cross things off the to-do list of find a boyfriend.

Handsome. Check. Polite. Check. Decent job. Check. Gets along with my friends. Check . Isn't controlling. Check .

But he didn't like going on dates with me that weren't his thing. He'd tell me to take my girlfriends instead. He didn't go out of his way to make time for me, or try new things. He didn't encourage me to be more adventurous. And he definitely didn't ever make me feel the things in bed that Ivan did.

He never said anything like what Ivan just said to me, either.

The best moments of my life so far have been the ones I've spent with you.

I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling tears drip onto my cheeks. Everything Ivan just said to me is the kind of thing that twenty-four hours ago, I'd have been thrilled to hear from him. Maybe a little shocked, because it would have felt so soon, but still—I would have believed him. I would have believed that I'd somehow been swept up in an intense, passionate, whirlwind relationship, the kind that Jaz always told me existed and that I never believed in.

Now, I don't know what to believe.

Think about your future, I tell myself firmly, scrubbing my hands over my face to wipe away the tears. How I feel about Ivan, or how he feels about me, isn't what matters any longer. Not right now, because he isn't my future. Not anymore.

The idea of wiping my old life away and starting a completely new one, with a new identity, leaving everything behind and never speaking to my friends again or going back home, makes me feel a grief so intense that it makes me feel as if I can't breathe. Like a death—and I suppose, in a way, that's exactly what it is. A death of myself, my life, my dreams, my relationships.

I can see how someone like Ivan—if he's telling me the truth now about his life and what it entails—would see that as a good thing. As a chance for a clean slate, a fresh start. But I can't fathom it being anything but a nightmare. A lonely, lost existence, where I have no direction and no plan.

It's the complete antithesis of how I've lived my whole life. And when I said I wanted adventure, to try to be less uptight, to try to branch out—I meant traveling to a new country as myself , or maybe just…going to a new restaurant without looking the menu up first. I didn't mean burning every bridge and starting completely fresh, reborn as a new person.

That feels impossible.

But what other choice do I have? I lean my elbows on the rusted railing of the balcony, burying my face in my hands. My skin feels dry and rough—without my skin care products and after the hard water of the shower this morning. I don't feel like myself. And I don't know how I'm meant to make decisions right now. I feel completely unmoored, cut loose from everything familiar.

If Ivan is telling the truth, this is the only way to escape his father. His brothers. The Bratva . And while a part of me thinks that he's lying, that he wants me to depend on him and him alone so that he can keep me here with him, another part of me isn't so sure.

He's said, over and over, that that wasn't his intent. That it's not what he wanted. And he's the only source of information I have on just how dangerous the Bratva are. On his claim that they're inescapable, unavoidable, unless we start fresh. That they want to do the terrible things that he's hinted at.

My only other option seems to be Agent Bradley. And while on the surface, he should be the person I trust, the person I should go to—I can't shake the instinctive feeling that I had from the moment I met him. That feeling had nothing to do with Ivan. It was before I even saw Nate get out of the car. Everything in me screamed that Bradley was someone I shouldn't trust. Shouldn't get in a car with, or go anywhere with.

And then there was Nate. I press my face harder in my hands, resisting the urge to scream into them. His getting involved in all of this has only convoluted it more. I think of what Ivan warned me of earlier, that if I go to Bradley, I'll also be going back to Nate, and that he'll take the humiliation Ivan inflicted on him out on me?—

That feels even more unthinkable. Nate has never been violent. I never feared him, not even during that last argument, when I found out about his cheating. Even when he sent me those texts, I just ignored them, assuming it was the tantrum of a man who wasn't getting his way. I didn't fear him hurting me.

But I think of the satisfied look on his face when he saw me. That flicker of anger in his eyes when he looked at Ivan, and said that we'd talk about how I let Ivan touch me. I think of how I thought I knew Ivan, and how wrong I've turned out to be. Of all the horror stories women always hear of domestic violence, of women who never believed their partner would hurt them until it was too late, of boyfriends who no one saw it coming from until it happened.

I can't deny that there's a chance Ivan is right. That Nate, after all of this, isn't the same Nate as before. That by going to Bradley for help, I'd be putting myself in danger in more ways than one.

There's what Bradley threatened Ivan with, too. I shouldn't care, but the thought of Ivan being killed in prison or locked away in a solitary cell, makes my stomach churn. I don't know what Ivan deserves, but that ?—

Yesterday, I would have said threats like those were bluffing. That that sort of thing doesn't really happen. But now I'm no longer entirely sure. The world is a much more terrible place than I ever imagined, and I'm only just now realizing how narrowly I saw it before. How much better I thought people were than they actually are.

I can't believe that my only options are to go home, and risk being taken captive by the Bratva, to go to a man who I should be able to trust and don't think I can and throw myself on his mercy, turning Ivan in in the process, or go to Vegas with a man who has lied to me, and erase my entire life and start over. Those can't be my only options, and yet, they are.

I don't know what to do, and I have no one I can ask.

In the parking lot below, I think I hear the sound of a car door closing. I lean over the railing slightly before I can think better of it, and in the shadows at the far end of the parking lot, I see three figures, dressed in black clothing. They look bulky, masculine, and I shrink back, my heart suddenly racing.

They could be anyone, I tell myself, closing my eyes tightly shut for a minute. They could just be other guys on the road, stopping for the night. But Ivan said he had three brothers. He said they would come after us. And I know, in the part of my mind that's thinking logically through all of this even as I fight it, that three men in black clothing, moving stealthily through the parking lot, is too much of a coincidence to be that.

I bite my lip, feeling my heart start to beat faster, panic rising up thickly in my throat. I push myself away from the railing, rattling the knob on the door. I'm afraid if I knock, it will be too loud, and lead the men right to our room. I peer into the window, through the crack of the curtain, and rattle the knob again, harder this time.

The door opens a second later. Ivan's gun is in his hand, his body tense and eyes narrow, but he relaxes when he sees that it's just me. "Charlotte?—"

"I think your brothers are here," I blurt out, and his eyes widen in the instant before we hear a scream downstairs, and a gunshot.

" Shit ." Ivan grabs my arm, yanking me into the room, slamming and locking the door behind us. "They'll be up here in a minute. Fuck . I thought I gave them enough false leads to buy us more time?—"

"What was that?" All my anger has fled, replaced by cold fear, as I look up at him. "Ivan?—"

"They must have given the hotel clerk our description. Probably got it out of him. People like that aren't built to withstand questioning from men like my brothers."

I thought I'd already run cold, but the matter-of-fact way Ivan says it makes me feel as if my blood has turned to ice. "That shot?—"

"Either wounded him to get information, or killed him." Ivan is leaning around me, looking through the small gap in the curtains. He turns abruptly to face me, his hands on my upper arms as he shakes me, lightly. "Charlotte, listen. I need you to do as I say. Everything I say, without arguing or questioning it. Do you understand?"

I want to argue, but my self-preservation has kicked in, and I nod instead. I don't know how far I can trust Ivan any longer, and I'm beyond angry and heartbroken by his betrayals, but I'm not so foolish as to think that he's not my best shot at getting out of here alive. And right now, if those men down there really are his brothers, that tells me that at least one thing he said was true.

His brothers are after us. And what they'll do if they catch us won't be pretty.

The thought of Ivan hurt or killed, makes my chest wrench, nausea flooding me. However angry I am at him, it hasn't gone so far that I want him dead, at least. I can't imagine wanting anyone dead.

"There are stairs to the left and right of the balcony," Ivan says calmly. I don't know how he can be so calm, not when my insides feel like churned butter, panic rising up and on the verge of choking me. But he keeps talking, as normally as if he's giving me a grocery list. "The ones to the right are closer to our car. If my brothers are smart, and Lev can be wily, they'll block off both. We're going to go for whichever side Lev isn't on. He's slower than us both, and Ani and Niki will be more likely to hesitate. I feel confident I can get us both through them. Not as much as him. Okay?"

"Which one is Lev?" I manage, and Ivan winces.

"The oldest one. And the biggest. Built like a bodybuilder. You'll know. Now stay with me, Charlotte, and follow what I say."

He checks his gun, and looks at me as he lowers it to his side. Something hot and dark flickers through his gaze, and for one wild second, I think he's going to kiss me.

Either he changes his mind, or we don't have time. He goes for the door, and I stay close behind him, my heart pounding so hard that I think I'm going to be sick. I look at the bed that I didn't get a chance to sleep in, exhaustion hitting me like a wave, and I want to slide under the covers and not come out. I want to hide from all of this, and I can't.

Ivan opens the door, and steps out onto the balcony.

I follow right behind him, so close that I'm almost pressing up against him. He looks left and right, and pivots left, his gun raised.

"Ivan!" A rough, Russian-accented voice, thicker than Ivan's, calls from behind us. "Hand over the girl, and otets will go easier on you. She'll fetch a pretty price, even once I'm done with her."

A shudder crawls down my spine, and I fight the urge to look behind us. I see two other men coming up the stairs in the direction we're heading, the left side, and I feel certain that the voice behind us is Lev.

The other two men are built more like Ivan, lean and rangy. They both have lighter blond hair than Ivan, one nearly buzzed to his scalp and the other long, hanging in his face. They're wearing all black, guns in hand, and they pause on the stairs, blocking our way.

"Give up, Ivan," one of them says. "You got away last night, but you're not going to keep getting away. Otets wants you to pay for your betrayal, and what he wants, he gets. He wants the girl, too. You'll make it less painful for everyone if you come along now."

"That's right. Come along." The voice from behind us, Lev's voice, is closer now. I have a feeling they could have closed in on us by now if they wanted to, but Ivan hasn't made a move, and I think they're toying with us. Or Lev is, at least, and the other two are following orders. Lev is playing with his food.

That nausea rises up again, threatening to choke me, because I can't imagine the kind of person that does this. That revels in pain and fear. But I can feel it, the pleasure radiating off of him, the thrill of the hunt.

Lev whistles, like someone would for a dog. "Come on, girl. Come to me, and I'll make sure you enjoy at least some of what I do to you. Drag this out, and I'll take every one of my brother's sins out on you."

Fear spikes through me, cold and sharp, and I want to run. I want to break away from Ivan, and flee back into the room, or anywhere , but both exits are blocked, and Ivan made me promise to stay close. I don't know what his plan is, but he's the best chance I have.

Right now, he's the only chance.

It all happens so fast that I barely have time to register it at all. One minute, Lev is whistling, taunting from behind us, and then Ivan pulls the trigger, shooting as the sound explodes in my ears, and I fight against the urge to drop to the ground.

Bullets spray at his other two brothers' feet. I hear one scream as a bullet strikes him in the calf, the other shrieks as one hits his shoulder. They go toppling backward, flailing on the stairs as blood spatters, and Ivan keeps shooting as he walks, firing twice more towards them as he grabs my wrist with his other hand and hauls me forward, breaking into a run.

" Ivan!" Lev roars from behind us, but Ivan keeps going, dragging me along, and I don't know how I manage to stay upright as we tear down the stairs. My feet slip in the blood, and I almost go down, but some combination of Ivan holding onto me and my own determination keeps me upright.

"Don't stop," Ivan says harshly, as we bolt across the parking lot. "Get in the car, and get down."

Behind me, I hear shots. I flinch, a high-pitched sound of fear escaping from my lips before I realize I've even made it, but I keep running. For once, I don't argue. I just fling myself into the car as Ivan yanks open the door, huddling down in the seat as he leaps in next to me and hits the gas the moment the engine roars to life.

Tears are running down my face. I don't know when I started crying, or shaking all over, but I roll into a ball as tightly as I can in the seat as Ivan careens out of the parking lot, driving like a bat out of hell as he flees the motel.

I don't ask if they're following us. I don't ask if they're behind us or what happens next. I wrap my arms around my head, burying my face in the side of the seat as the movement of the car wrenches me back and forth.

For the first time since I woke up this morning, I don't fight it. I just let myself cry.