12. Lev

12

LEV

I turn up the air conditioning in the car to stop myself from falling asleep. My skin is covered in goosebumps, and my teeth are chattering from the cold, but Elle is due to finish her shift any minute, and I need to stay awake so I can make sure she gets home safely.

The past twelve hours have been torture, and my eye lids are painfully heavy as I keep them trained on the hospital entrance.

“Where are you, Elle?” I check the clock again.

Elle was meant to have finished her shift ten minutes ago, and while it’s common for her to finish late, I can’t help but imagine the worst.

I’m just about to go storming into the hospital in search of Elle when a call comes through on the center screen of my car from Pyotr .

He’s been quiet over the past couple of days, and I’m desperate for an update on Alexei Koslov.

“What have you got for me, Pyotr?”

“Are you alone? ”

“Yes.” My eyes flick to the main entrance of the hospital.

“Good. Because I have some information for you that you might want to keep to yourself.”

“You’re the only person I talk to.”

Pyotr chuckles. “I’m honored.”

“Spit it out, Pyotr.” I look at the clock on my screen.

I start tapping my fingers on the steering wheel.

Elle’s shifts usually run long, but that doesn’t make me worry any less.

“Igor was the one to order the attack on Elle.”

My body stills. “You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

I shouldn’t be surprised and yet, I am.

“I’m going to fucking kill him.”

The reason that Elle wakes every night, screaming in terror, is because of my father.

Why would he do this?

If he wanted to go after Alexei, targeting Elle like he did doesn’t make sense. He should have gone after his wife or child, or even one of his brothers.

There’s only one reason he would go after Elle, and the realization has bile burning my throat.

He did this to get to me.

He wanted to lure me out of the shadows that I’ve been hiding in for the past few years, and there is only one person that I would dare risk exposing myself for.

“From what I can tell, he’s not planning another one.”

I run a hand over my jaw as I watch a few nurses exit the hospital.

Elle is now fifteen minutes late, and now that I know my father has eyes on her, I can’t help but think the worst .

If I take my eyes off her again like I did at the bar, I might not be so lucky as to get to her in time again.

I guess sleep will have to wait a little longer.

“And Alexei?” My voice shakes as I fight the rage slowly bubbling inside me.

“Nothing of note to report.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Something feels off about this.”

“In what way?”

“Alexei has been looking into me for years. For him to suddenly go quiet…” I hold my breath as another swarm of hospital staff exits through the double doors, my eyes furiously scanning for any sign of Elle.

If my father gets to her…

I’m all too familiar with Igor’s preferred torture methods, and a rush of nausea hits me at the thought of him getting his hands on my sweet Elle.

Perhaps, it would be worth anonymously tipping Alexei with my father’s location. He’s made it no secret that he’s been after him for years, and this way, it could kill two birds with one stone.

But if Alexei were somehow to fuck it up, it could backfire on me massively, and I’m not sure if the risk is worth it.

If I know my father at all, he would likely bargain for his life by handing over information on me to Alexei. My life is worth nothing to him, but it’s worth everything to Koslovs.

“I need you to keep someone watching my father at all times.”

“Lev—”

“There’s no way in hell he’s just going to give up and move on from this, Pyotr. The fact that Elle got away would have embarrassed him, and my father doesn’t do well with being embarrassed. He will retaliate, and it will turn into a bloodbath. I’m not going to let him get anywhere near Elle, even if it kills me in the process.”

I would think nothing of giving up my own life in exchange for Elle’s. I almost did already. I look at my scarred hands. Scars her thumb caressed.

“Are you sure this chick is worth the fall out?”

I clench my hands into fists.

“If you ever refer to Elle as ‘this chick’ again…”

The unspoken warning hangs heavy in the air, and Pyotr is silent for a moment.

“Sorry, I meant no disrespect.”

“Keep your eyes on Igor until I figure out what to do.” Elle is now twenty minutes late, and I’m desperate to go and find out what’s keeping her.

“Will do. And, Lev?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry again.”

“Speak soon.” I end the call and open up my door.

Just as I’m climbing out of my car, I spot Elle.

She’s hastily shrugging on her coat as she walks through the sliding doors, her hair pulled back into a ponytail that whips around her face as the wind hits her.

Her face is a little pale, and her shoulders are slumped with exhaustion, but that’s nothing out of the norm.

The weight lifts slightly from my shoulders as I take her in.

My father hasn’t got to her.

Yet.

She gives up fighting with her coat and moves to stand to the side of the entrance, dropping her bag on the ground and taking her coat off completely.

I bite back a groan at the sight of her in her light blue scrubs.

How is it that she can make such a mundane uniform look so fucking sexy?

The way the material clings to her body and shows off every curve has my mouth watering.

What I wouldn’t give to peel that uniform off her and expose that beautiful body that hides underneath.

Images of her standing in the window completely naked flash through my mind, and my cock starts to grow hard.

Taking myself in my hand last night barely took the edge off. If anything, it only made the need for Elle even worse, but I can’t risk sneaking into her apartment again.

Though I doubt it would take much more than a quick glimpse of those perky tits to have my restraint snapping.

I blink, realizing that I’ve been gawking at her for the past few minutes in full view of the hospital. All it would take is her to look slightly to the left, and she would catch me staring.

Would she realize who I was? Would she be scared? Or would she throw her arms around me like she did the other night in her apartment and kiss me like we’re long lost lovers?

I can’t help but imagine it being the latter.

After shrugging on her coat, she busies herself searching through her bag before pulling out her phone. As she speaks, Her cheeks slowly turn a dark shade of pink. Then she laughs, and I tense, an odd sense of jealousy filling me as Elle’s face lights up.

Is a man making her blush like that?

I frown, trying to rack my brain to see if I remember seeing Elle with a guy.

But Elle hasn’t been on a date in months, so the sudden surge of jealousy inside me that has my teeth grinding together is surprising.

If she was seeing someone, there’s no way I wouldn’t know about it.

I’m no stranger to seeing Elle with men, so I shouldn’t be feeling so jealous, but maybe that’s because it’s never been anything serious. Over the years that I’ve been watching her, her dating life has consisted of nothing but a handful of one-night stands.

One-night stands that I have witnessed.

I would have thought that watching her being fucked by another man would have me overcome with jealousy and rage, but it had the complete opposite effect.

I’ve never been more aroused than when I was witnessing Elle climax as she rode another man’s cock. Her naked body moving in that way, the sounds she made as her release builds… Those moments were mesmerizing and ones I often relive.

The men have always been irrelevant in these situations because I would picture myself as the one beneath her or behind her, working her body in the way that I know will have her screaming as she comes. So, her one-night stands would always end with me taking my cock in my hand, my own release building right alongside hers.

It was never anything more than sex, which is probably why it never bothered me.

A relationship, on the other hand, now, that requires a deeper emotional connection. One that is built over time, with every movie watched together and every conversation shared over a meal at the dinner table. It’s how lust turns to love, and that’s something I can never have with Elle, so the thought of her having that sort of connection with someone other than myself is almost enough to tip me over the edge .

I can never have her. At least not in the way I truly want her.

“Fuck.” I wipe a hand over my face.

Seeing her around men has always made me a little jealous, but that’s nothing compared to what I’m feeling right now.

Maybe it’s because I now know what it’s like to kiss her, to feel her tongue slide against mine as I wrap my fingers in her hair. The thought of another man experiencing the taste of her lips has my body vibrating and my blood boiling.

I quickly slide back into the driver’s seat and close my door before I can go storming over to her and demand answers.

Elle is still busy talking into her phone, the smile still plastered on her face, so I lean back in my seat and try to stay calm as I wait for her to start heading home.

My eyelids feel so heavy from lack of sleep.

It’s been days since I’ve had more than an hour or two, and it’s really starting to take its toll.

I know I’m not any good to Elle when I’m this exhausted, but I’m even less willing to sneak in a few hours of sleep now that I know it’s my father who was behind her kidnapping.

The Koslovs might be keeping an eye on Elle, considering who her cousin is married to, but from what I can tell, their protection is half-assed.

I haven’t spotted any of their usual cronies hanging around the hospital or her apartment, which makes me think they’re not taking the threat on her life seriously, so Elle’s safety falls on my shoulders.

Alexei considers himself such a family man and yet, he lets Elle walk around New York with a target on her back.

Does he not realize how precious she is ?

“Selfish prick.” I stretch out my neck.

All this pent-up anger and stress are not good for me. At some point, I’m not going to be able to suppress it any longer, and that’s when I’m most likely to have an episode. I need to try and keep calm, which is hard to do considering the fact that I’m always stressed or angry over something.

With a quick look at Elle to make sure she’s not going anywhere, I lean back against my seat and close my eyes for a second as I take a deep breath.

The tension is already building behind my eyes, and the muscles in my neck feel as if a boy scout has been using them to practice tying knots.

I count backwards from sixty, giving myself only a minute to sit in the darkness. Any longer, and Elle could be in danger. So, I let the world around me fade into nothing as I try to calm down my nervous system…

I jolt awake as a horn blares from behind me.

My heart pounds painfully in my chest as I blink.

My body’s heavy, and my eyes are struggling to focus. It feels as if I’ve been asleep for days, and yet, I only closed my eyes for a second…

More horns sound around me, and I glance out of my window to find that the front entrance of the hospital has been replaced by the busy interstate highway that leads from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

“What the fuck?”

Cars speed past where I’m parked in the emergency lane, with no fucking idea of how I got here.

I look at the clock on the dashboard.

Two hours have gone by .

How?

“Fuck!” I slam my hands against the steering wheel.

I blacked out, again.

I tighten my grip on the steering wheel as I try my best not to panic at what could have happened in the time that I’ve lost.

Two hours is more than enough time for something to have happened to Elle. Hell, it only took me being gone for five minutes at the bar for her to be kidnapped, so I can only imagine what my father could have done to her in two hours.

Or worse… What I could have done.

Ignoring the blaring horns as I pull back out onto the busy interstate, I cross over the lanes and turn my car around so that I’m heading back toward Manhattan.

No matter how many times I black out, the terror that accompanies the blank spots never fades.

Maybe it’s because I know I can’t trust myself. My track record isn’t exactly clean and even though no blood currently coats my hands, that doesn’t mean that I’m innocent.

I know all too well what I’m capable of, and that scares the shit out of me.