Page 5

I look down at the digits, and I know them. Maksim’s number, the one I typed back in from memory five months ago, after I deleted him in a rage and could not stand having no emergency contact at all. Except the last figure is wrong. A seven where a one should sit.

I never listed my ex as my emergency contact. I listed a stranger I had never met—my ex’s own twin.

I forgot to update it. And the mistake is standing in front of me, waiting for an answer.

2

DELANEY

The private room above the floor is so still that I’m scared to breathe.

He’s walked me up a back stair to a lounge I didn’t know existed — leather, low light, a wall of amber liquor behind glass. His oversized jacket still swallows me whole, hanging past my thighs, long enough to pass for a dress on its own. Underneath it my soaked shirt clings, and I keep the lapels pinned shut in both fists.

He sits across from me, phone cradled in one broad hand and watches me with a stare that edges into something predatory. It travels my mouth, then my chest, then my hips, slow and unhurried, and it makes my skin prickle everywhere it lands.

Breathe, Delaney. Men like this one eat girls who forget how.

“How does a wrong number end up saved in your phone?” I ask, because the silence is worse.

He taps the screen, scrolls to one contact, and turns it so I can read. Two numbers glow there, identical except for the very last figure.

I lean in a fraction to see—and understand my error a half-second too late. The jacket gaps. His steel-gray eyes flick down to where my soaked shirt has gone sheer, and I straighten up so fast I’m sure it looks ridiculous.

“The other number belongs to Maksim,” he says, unbothered by my fluster. “My twin. Our father bought us matching lines the year phones came into the family. His ends in a one. Mine ends in seven.”

Two matching lines, a single digit apart, and a stranger’s emergency dropped into the palm of the twin my ex never once let me see. The last piece falls, and my stomach drops with it.

“You’re Lev Volkov,” I breathe, naming him before I can catch the words.

Every bratva story I have ever half-heard rises up at once. A Pakhan spoken about only in the ugliest corners of this city, brutal, violent, and remorseless. So that is what Maksim was always burying under those ugly drunken stories—not just a brother he resented, but this.

I should be terrified. I should already be running. Instead, I stay rooted to the couch and do absolutely nothing useful.

I cannot line up this elegant, mannerly presence with the cold tyrant Maksim always described. The tailored suit disarms me. The quiet courtesy disarms me. The only thing in this room that reads as dangerous is that unfairly handsome face watching me back.

“And your name?” he asks, leaning in until only inches remain.

“Delaney Cox.”

“Delaney.” He repeats it slowly, savoring the shape, as if he’s tasted it many times already tonight. “A beautiful name.” Then he smiles, and it’s easily the sexiest thing I’ve ever been on the receiving end of.

“You’re nothing like your brother,” I tell him. “Maksim is arrogant and cruel. You stepped in. You actually helped.”

“Reading me as gentle would be a very serious misjudgment, Delaney.” His voice brushes my ear, and heat pours up my neck. “But my brother did you real harm tonight, and I intend to handle it. At the very least, let me replace what he ruined.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

He rises without warning and braces one hand on the couch beside my head, boxing me neatly against the cushions. A knock breaks the quiet. At his word, an enormous man steps in—shorter than Lev but packed thick with muscle, arms bent as though he can no longer straighten them fully. In his huge hands he carries a delicate white garment bag that has no business anywhere near a person built for violence.

“It’s ready, Pakhan,” the man rasps, dipping his head.

Lev takes the bag, murmurs a few words in Russian, and the man leaves at once, silent and obedient. Then he presses the bag into my hands. “You’ll like this. I promise.”

I peel it open and forget how to breathe. Inside waits a custom Elie Saab piece, unmistakable couture, the kind of craftsmanship money alone cannot summon. I do the quiet math and nearly slide off the couch. This dress is five full years of my income. Women wait weeks for an appointment at that house, and somehow, he conjured a finished garment in the span of an hour.

“This is far too expensive,” I say, shoving it back at his chest. “And it will never fit me. That house dresses tiny socialites, not—” I gesture down at all of myself.

He returns it to my lap without hesitation. “It will fit. It was cut for you and no one else. Stop underestimating yourself, Delaney. You’re beautiful.”