Inked Adonis: Chapter 35

“After that little show, you probably don’t need to hear this—” The tires squeal as Myles pulls into traffic. A horn blares behind us, and he rolls down his tinted window to make sure they get a clear view of his middle finger.

“Then don’t bother,” I snarl.

I don’t intend to listen either way. The second Ilya and my father cleared out of the boardroom, my thoughts were back at the penthouse.

I check the security footage on my phone again, but Nova hasn’t moved. She’s still sitting cross-legged on the sofa, two hundred pounds of dog piled on her lap.

Looking so fucking innocent. So perfectly placed in my world.

“—but,” Myles continues anyway, “I confirmed the meeting between Kat and Nova in the park. Their walk, the cell phone—all of it. No deep fake bullshit here. Ilya’s evidence was legit.”

“You were right the first time,” I tell him angrily. “I didn’t need to hear that.”

I already knew it was real. What I don’t understand is why it happened at all.

And why Nova never breathed a fucking word of it to me.

“Okay. Then do you need to hear that this reeks of some sleazy plan Ilya and Kat dreamed up during pillow talk?”

Fucking hell, I knew Ilya was up to something this morning. I knew Katerina’s connection to Nova would whip around and bite me in the ass sooner or later. The question wasn’t when, but how? And how badly?

I have my answer now.

It fucking stings.

Myles grips the steering wheel, anxious energy rippling off of him. “She was cleared, man. I cleared her. I know you’re pissed, and I know I’m probably on that list, but⁠—”

“Most people are.”

He snorts, but there’s no real humor in it. His head is probably spinning around the same thoughts mine is.

Nova doesn’t look like an Andropov spy. If she is, she’s gone deeper undercover than most people would ever dare.

Then again, if Nova is a spy, she’s working with the only other woman who did dare. There are no lengths Kat wouldn’t go to get what she wants. I’ll be the exact kind of weak man my father claims I am if I don’t assume Nova is capable of the same.

And there’s no fucking chance I’m weak.

So when I see Nova, I’ll do what has to be done. Choke the truth out of her, if necessary—and if the truth turns out to be what Ilya says it is…

Then I’ll keep choking until the threat is eliminated.

I have no room in my heart for weakness.

“Do we have a game plan?” Myles asks as my building comes into view. “We have to clear Nova again, obviously, but do you want to lay out an approach to make sure we⁠—?”

“We talk to her. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.”

But as the elevator doors slide open, soft music from the living room speakers and her perfume wafting in the air, an ugly truth rears its head in my face: this shit is already way too fucking complicated.

It’s been too complicated since the day we stripped each other bare in that cramped apartment of hers. I made mistakes out of lust, out of simple-minded desire to fucking ruin her with my mouth, my hands, my cock. I saw what I wanted and took it, same as I’ve always done.

How could I have known that the sweet little fruit was all poison inside?

Myles hangs back next to the elevators as I charge down the hall. I see the next few minutes playing out in my head as vividly as Ilya’s candid camera footage did this morning.

I’ll force Nova down and ask her the last time she saw Kat. I’ll give her the opportunity to come clean about the burner phone, and, when she does, Myles and I can figure out how deep this plot goes.

The steps are laid out in front of me. I see the path I should take.

Then I turn the corner and see her.

She’s curled in the corner of the couch that she’s wordlessly claimed as hers over the last few weeks, a bottle of nail polish resting on the arm. The music is loud enough that she doesn’t notice me right away.

So I pause.

And I watch.

I search her for signs that she’s trespassed into my life to fuck me over. I monitor the pinch of her lip between her teeth, the tapping of her toes to the music. I trace the outline of her body in her leggings and tank top like the clues are hidden there somewhere.

But if they were, I would’ve found them. Last night or the night before or the night before. I would’ve tasted them the very first time I lifted her onto her bathroom sink.

But I didn’t notice a goddamn thing.

Finally, Rufus spots me and leaps off the couch to weasel between my legs. Nova jolts in surprise at first. But when she sees who it is, she grins, reaching with wet nails for the remote to turn off the speakers.

That joy, that hope, that light in her eyes as she recognizes me—it all does something, some unholy fucking thing to the gaping hole in my chest where most people have a heart. It’s like a living creature in me that’s been dormant since the day my father showed me that video comes to life again.

Then I picture Katerina slipping the burner phone into Nova’s hand.

And I put two bullets in the skull of that living creature.

There is no room in my life for it.

“Hey! You’re back early.” She closes the nail polish and places it on the fireplace mantle, jabbering mindlessly all the while. “Both of my morning appointments got neutered today. Isn’t that weird? A dachshund and a German Shepherd lost their manhood, and I got a surprise slow morning. No complaints from me, but I won’t speak for the doggos. Poor guys.”

She beams across the room at me. As if me standing in front of her is the best thing that could’ve happened to her day. Like she doesn’t have a damn thing to hide.

And just like that, the straight, simple path ahead of me explodes.

My voice is barely restrained when I ask, “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?” She’s still smiling. Still waving her wet nails in the air to dry them. Still standing in front of me like everything is fine even as I feel our last few weeks together fracture into a thousand unfixable little pieces.

“Where the fuck is it?” I storm towards our bedroom. “I know you have it. I saw you take it from her.”

“Sam?”

A crazed, delirious laugh tears out of me at the confused sound of my name on her lips. It shouldn’t sound so good and pure. Doesn’t she know I’m a violent man?

“Your boss would be pleased with your performance. You’re really selling the innocent confusion. I’d almost believe it if I didn’t know better.”

I rip through the top two drawers of the dresser. They used to house my boxers and socks, but I cleared them out for Nova. Lace and nylon fly over my shoulder as I dig for her hiding spot.

“My boss as in, like, Hope? I don’t—” She gasps in the doorway at the pile of delicates littering the floor. “Sam, what are you doing?”

She shifts into my peripherals, and even the rough outline of her makes my blood thunder in my ears. When I reach the bottom of the drawers and find nothing, I slam them both closed hard enough that the entire dresser rocks onto its back legs and cracks against the wall. Plaster billows out in plumes of white smoke.

Fitting. It’s like everything around us is crumbling to pieces, too.

“The phone, Nova. Where are you hiding the fucking phone?” I force myself to turn to her because I need to see the way the color leeches from her face. I need to watch the guilt bloom and the lies form. If I don’t see it for myself, I’ll never fucking believe it because, damn it, she almost had me fooled.

Her lips part, wavering between the truth and a lie.

Just like that, I lose it.

I cross the room in three huge steps. She tries to retreat, but I’m too fast and too huge and she’s too out of her fucking element. Nova stumbles back until she’s pressed flat to the wall, shaking.

I drag a hand down her body, checking her hips and each pocket roughly. “Is it on you? Have you been carrying it around? Waiting for the chance to use it?”

“Sam, stop. I’m not— Stop!” She manages to shove my hands away, though only because I know she’s clean. Her clothes are tight enough I can be sure she isn’t carrying it.

“You’re not denying it, Nova. Not any of it.” I rip away from her, charging into the closet to figure out which of the shelves I gave her holds all of the secrets she’s been keeping.

I made room in my world for her. I built walls around this place for her.

She’s repaid me with a knife in the fucking back.

“Sam,” she sobs, “stop! Just⁠—”

Her words are lost in the crash of her clothes rod hitting the floor. Other shit breaks, though I don’t stop to see what or where. I do want to find the phone, but the destruction feels good.

I gave her these hiding spots.

Now, I want to shred them to pieces.

But no matter how much I ruin, nothing untoward appears. When the closet is cleared, and I’m panting with unspent rage, I turn to find Nova standing just outside the doorway.

Her eyes say everything.

I stare at them for a long, long moment. They’re so golden. I’ve noticed that before, but have I ever truly noticed it? Have I savored it?

And her skin—it’s so flawless. Not scarred and tattooed like mine. Hers is soft and supple to the touch and the eye alike.

I track down her body. Past the curve of her neck and the thin, slanted line of her collarbone. I dip below the swell of her breasts and the flat plane of her stomach…

And then I see her fist.

It’s closed around something.

A black, rectangular phone.

She offers it to me without meeting my eyes. Her voice, when it emerges, is the most broken thing I’ve ever heard. “I should have given you this the second I had a chance.”

But you didn’t.

Now, it’s too late.

I take the phone from her. The rage is gone. Or transformed into something else, maybe. Sorrow? Is that what you’d call it?

I wouldn’t know. I haven’t felt sorrow in twenty years.

The phone is surprisingly small in the palm of my hand. Such an insignificant thing for all the trouble it’s causing me. Something this little shouldn’t be able to wreck my world.

“It would’ve ruined your plans to fuck me over if you’d confessed right away.”

She flinches like I slapped her. “There isn’t a plan, Sam. I don’t have one. I never have.”

“This is the plan,” I rasp. “You became part of it the second you let Katerina talk you into keeping it.”

“She didn’t talk me into—” Nova presses her hands to her temples and rubs like the headache might kill her. “I wanted to tell you the moment I got home that day, but you weren’t here. And then you left. There wasn’t a good time.”

“Of course. You’re so innocent in all of this. I disappeared, so you decided to become pen pals with my ex-wife, and it’s my fault?” I growl. “Sounds like a fitting punishment for me. I’m sure she had plenty of poison to pour in your ear.”

Her eyes snap to mine, but she doesn’t deny it. “I wasn’t punishing you. I didn’t seek her out. She came to me. She showed up and started tossing around all these crazy accusations about you being violent and your childhood and⁠—”

“And you trusted her over me. Because why wouldn’t you?” I ask sarcastically. “Why not?”

“You don’t exactly make it easy to trust you!” She lifts her shoulders with a gut-wrenching hiccup. “You don’t tell me anything, Sam.”

“Good thing, too, if you’ve got Katerina in your ear.” I remember her “accidental” visit to Ilya at the Litvinov Group offices, and I can’t stop the bitter laugh that rumbles out of me. “Ilya, too, right? That’s why you were in his office.”

Horror washes over her face. “I was at the office looking for you!”

“Sure you were. It’s a great alibi. Hell, I bought it.” I offer her a few slow claps. “Tell me: did you fuck him before or after you organized this plan?”

“Fuck you!” Her hand flexes like she wants to slap me. Hot, angry tears stream down her cheeks. “I want nothing to do with any of this—your brother, your ex, none of it.”

Or your world. The words are hovering there, unspoken but no less true.

“And yet you kept the phone. You could’ve told Myles. You could’ve tossed it in the lake on a walk. Anything, Nova. But you kept it.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You want to know the truth?”

I laugh in her face. “As if you’re capable of telling it.”

She raises her chin defiantly, her red-rimmed eyes meeting mine. “I kept it because I was scared. I was scared that, maybe, Katerina was right about you. That one day, I might need that phone to call for help.”

A kind of rage I usually keep tethered down flashes through me, and I lift the phone between us and crush it in my palm.

The plastic cracks and splinters, and then I throw it to the floor where it shatters once and for all.

“If you thought for even a second you could rely on Katerina Alekseeva if you were ever in trouble, then you’re even more of a fool than I realized.” My voice trembles with anger I have no other outlet for. “Even if you are telling me the truth, the risk you took by letting that venomous bitch inside your head, Nova… You were careless with your own life and the lives of countless others.”

I swore I’d never be responsible for her tears again, but she’s sobbing now. She wraps her arms around her body like a shield. “I was alone, and I… I didn’t know. You weren’t here. You weren’t fucking here.”

“Because I had a mess to clean up. Little did I know you were busy making an even bigger one.”

“Samuil—”

I turn back, and the sight of her—tear-streaked and shattered but still standing—nearly undoes me. “What? The floor is fucking yours, Nova. Make me understand.”

She shudders. Says nothing.

I grit my teeth. “That’s what I thought.” I pivot and start to march for the door.

But just as my hand is closing on the knob, she speaks.

“You’re right.”

That freezes me in tracks. I don’t turn, but I listen.

“You’re right,” she says again. “I kept the phone because I was afraid of you. Of this.” She gestures at the destruction around us. “And look what happened. Look what you did the second you thought I betrayed you.”

That’s a fucking dagger in the back. This is exactly what Katerina wanted—to prove to Nova that I’m the monster she painted me as.

And I played right into her hands.

All I hear is a hitched gasp before I slam the door shut behind me.

I don’t intend to open it ever again.