Page 79 of Essence of Fear

He just pushed the door open.

What was happening?

“Miss, you should wait out here a moment,” called the driver behind her.

Viktoria ignored him altogether. “Pav, wait!”

He was already inside the house now. Who knew if he’d even heard her calling for him. Wasn’t there supposed to be someone watching her house? She was sure that’s what Konstantin had told Pav in the airport. Had they given the guard the keys to her house for him to be inside? Because she didn’t like that at all.

The inside of the house seemed normal. Nothing was out of place, and everything was just as she had left it before going to Russia. Even the glass bowl on the stand near the door was still full of the bobby pins, hair ties, and a set of random keys. Her junk bowl, for all purposes. The coats still hung on the wall and her shoes were still lined underneath them. The floor didn’t have a speck of dirt to be seen, and the place was quiet.

Eerily so.

Maybe too quiet.

“Pav?”

She heard the footsteps above her head instead of him answering her back. She didn’t bother to call for him again, instead, heading down the hall and up the stairs to the second level on the home. She found him in her bedroom.

Along with a nightmare.

A new nightmare.

There was a dead man on her bed. He’d been gutted and his blood stained her white sheets.

On the mirror, heavy strokes of congealed crimson wrote out her greatest fear. It had her heart racing, and her head crackling with static as she went silent. Everything went quiet, then. The whole world just stopped turning.

Pav stood in front of the mirror, reading the message that had been written in what she suspected was the dead man’s blood.

I miss you, Vik, the message read.

Pav’s faint Viktoria calling out to her was the last thing she heard before she hit the floor, and everything went dark. The mind was such a funny thing … it was always there to drag her away from hell when she couldn’t do it for herself. Except the bigger problem was it always delivered her to another hell.

There was no escape.

• • •

Pav stood in the doorway of the bedroom as Viktoria sipped on a hot cup of tea. He said nothing as the conversation continued in the sitting room, but his gaze didn’t leave her, either. He’d been like this since she woke up—silent and stewing. She didn’t have very much to say. What needed to be said?

The message was enough.

The hotel was one of the more expensive ones in Chicago. The Astoria was always known for its large rooms, and big-name guests. Honestly, she was just happy Konstantin had decided to pick a hotel for her that had better security.

But how much would that really do?

“We need to settle on a plan,” she heard Kolya say. “For everyone.”

“And we will, no? But we need to wait—”

“Zoya.”

Maya’s soft greeting had Viktoria glancing up from the cup of hot tea in her hands. She had been perfectly fine to stay in the bedroom while her brothers and their wives went over the plans. She didn’t need to put in her opinion when in the end, Konstantin was going to decide what to do with her, and she would just follow his orders, anyway.

But at the sound of her sister-in-law greeting Zoya, her half-sister, Viktoria decided it was time to show her face. She didn’t understand why her brothers would have the young woman come over to begin with—she wasn’t involved in this and she didn’t need to be. They were purposely dragging her into the danger zone, and she didn’t deserve that.

Pav stepped out of the way when Viktoria passed him by in the doorway. He trailed close behind her, as she headed down the short hallway and came into view at the entryway to the sitting room. All eyes turned on her, including her half-sister’s.

The two stared at one another.