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The glint of its metal slowly drew her gaze away from the dying man. When they shifted to Luka, for the first time he found he couldn’t look away from a woman. He couldn’t look away from what might have been.
Alina took the knife from him and moved forward. Her foot left a smear of blood on the sidewalk, but that was nothing compared to what flowed from the Balakin leader.
“My sons will avenge me,” Mikhail wailed. He had become weak the closer death loomed.
The softest of sounds escaped her as she fell on his body with the knife. She was silent after that. Silent as she carved away at the chest of what was soon to be a corpse. It was Mikhail who screamed until he no longer could.
And still Alina stabbed. Tears fell silently from her eyes as she made mark after mark. Luka had never seen a sight quite as beautiful.
Eventually, she left the knife where it was, buried to the hilt in Mikhail Balakin’s chest.
Luka held a gloved hand down to her. The pain of her grip glittered within him as she rose. Then she dropped his hand again, and the pain faded.
The pale legs his shirttail failed to cover were now covered in blood.
Luka looked away. He resumed his progress toward the safe house. It wasn’t far.
Alina wordlessly fell into step behind him.
Normally, Luka would have returned to Ivankov after a job, but he didn’t give his decision a second thought. There was no way he would bring Alina to him.
Not when she had freed herself, freed herself in a way Luka hoped he would someday get to do.
Chapter 4
Numbness continued to fill Alina as she walked behind the man, enough that she was within the townhouse with the door locked behind her before she even questioned why she felt okay following him. Even the sound of the lock turning didn’t bother her, and she watched the gloved man pocket the key without fear.
He led her to the bathroom, and soon, the sound of running water crept into the nothingness she’d wrapped around herself. It fractured the cocoon, and she clung to the pieces, not ready to see what she had become.
She stared at the water that beaded on the glass of the shower door as the man left her alone. She wasn’t certain how much time had passed before he returned with a bundle of clothes he set on the back of the toilet.
Alina let his stare harden the ice around her again. Of course he was staring. She’d lost herself once the knife was in her hand.
When she forced her head to turn toward him, though, she found he wasn’t looking at her at all. His eyes were purposefully shifted away, as if it would be rude to look.
He was so strange. Not saying anything; not looking. Not trying to get closer. He was just there.
His gloved hand pointed toward her feet. “Get clean. Then bandage.”
Alina’s gaze dropped to her feet. Smears of blood led into the bathroom. It was nothing life-threatening, but enough to worry her. As if seeing the blood pooling beneath her awakened the nerve endings there, a stab of pain shot through the arch of her left foot.
When she lifted her gaze to try to avoid it, the man had already slipped away, closing the door behind him. Farther away, the sound of another door shutting came to her. The man was a shadow when he moved. He let her hear him leaving the townhouse.
It was as if he was telling her he wasn’t like the other man, the one who had tortured her. She wondered if her vague trust in this particular killer was misplaced.
Steam from the shower curled over the top of the glass doors and filled the small space of the bathroom. Still she didn’t move.
The long-sleeved shirt he had given her clung to her skin, wet with blood, most of which wasn’t hers. Alina told herself to drag it off so she could clean herself. If the shadow of a man returned, he’d already seen all she had to offer, even if he had barely looked at her nakedness before covering it the first time.
She couldn’t reach for the hem of the shirt. It didn’t seem possible. Instead, she slid the glass door open. Spatters of water reached her feet on the tiles, and the warm feel of it encouraged her to step inside and close the door behind her.
The water didn’t run clear as it hit her body; instead it awakened even more pain. A gasp left her lips, one that sounded very much like a sound she’d made not long ago. She bit her lip and reached for the green box of bar soap, which was already soaked. The paper fell into the red, running water. The green bar inside it lathered well, and the smell it gave off was a mix of woodsy and citrusy, with hints of spice.
She worked it over the black, cotton shirt she still wore, watching the water continue to run from her in murky pools. Pass after pass she took, until the water ran clearer. The cuts under the material burned. Most of her ached with pain. She wished the numbness would return.
The soap slipped from her fingers as she lathered again. It skittered along the wet tiles beneath her feet, and she left it to scrub her lathered hands over her face. Her eyes closed, but doing that made her see it again—the moment the man told her to beg for it or he would kill her.
Her eyes popped open reflexively before she could rinse, and the soap stung. She hissed and then stuck her face in the spray of lukewarm water. The water had stopped creating steam, and she wondered how long she’d remained in the shower stall.
