Inked Adonis: Chapter 47

I’ve been in Moscow for six fucking days, and all I’ve done is bury good men and watch my empire hemorrhage money while breathing in the bitter winter air of my homeland.

The view from my office in the Litvinov Tower would impress most people. Floor-to-ceiling windows showcase Moscow’s skyline—a mix of harsh concrete architecture and the gleaming sculptures of new Russian money.

But I don’t see any of it. My focus keeps sliding to my dark phone screen, willing it to light up with Nova’s name.

Another dead soldier. Another torched warehouse. Another client jumping ship to the Andropovs.

None of it compares to the torture of Nova’s silence.

I knew she’d be angry. I prepared myself for her rage when I chose to leave without explanation. What I didn’t anticipate was how her absence would hollow me out, scraping away at my concentration until I can barely function.

Usually, Moscow is where I’m most focused. Where I come to get shit done without the distractions of Chicago drama. Without Ilya’s games or Katerina’s schemes or my father’s expectations crushing my throat.

But now? Now I fall into restless sleep thinking of Nova’s face. I wake reaching for her warmth. Every time I close my eyes, I see her devastated expression just before those elevator doors closed between us.

I shove away from my desk and look up at the ceiling. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Before my brain conjures up the long, long list needed to answer that question, my phone rings.

This time, it’s Myles’s name.

“I want good news,” I say in lieu of a real greeting.

“Then you should get another job,” he fires back. “Have you heard from Nova?”

I sit up, the chair squeaking under me. “Don’t pretend you don’t know she’s pissed at me.”

“That makes two of us, then. She won’t answer my calls. No sign on the cameras, either.”

Nervous energy zips and skitters under my skin. “Okay, so go to the penthouse and find her. I didn’t force her to stay there for nothing.”

I didn’t destroy everything we built for nothing.

Fuck, someone tell me I didn’t throw it all away for nothing.

“Already on it. I’m on my way upstairs now.”

An image flashes through my mind: Nova curled in the corner of our bedroom, tears tracking down her face because I earned her trust just to crush it like everyone else in her life has. Unlike her father or her brothers, I did it to protect her.

But that argument won’t mean shit to her.

Not when the alternative was sitting her down and explaining the realities of my world. I could have told her that my life exists under a perpetual shadow of threats and enemies. That being with me means those shadows loom over her too.

I could have done that… and watched her walk away.

So I did the only thing I could to keep her safe while keeping her mine. It was selfish, but I’ve never pretended to be anything else.

Myles stays silent as the elevator climbs. Floor after floor, that familiar ding echoes through the phone. I’m on the other side of the globe, but my chest tightens with each ascending level. I hold my breath, straining to hear Nova’s voice through the connection.

I don’t need much. Just a word. A whimper, even. Some proof that she’s there and this was all worth it.

That little bit of her would untangle some of the restlessness in my chest. Just knowing she’s okay and in my house would be… well, not enough. I’ll never have enough of her.

But at least I’d be able to breathe.

But it isn’t Nova’s voice I hear through the line.

“Where’s Nova?” Myles asks.

It’s Frederik who answers. “She’s resting in her room like Samuil told her to. She was pretty banged up.”

Banged up?

“What the fuck is he talking about?” I put the call on speaker and cue up the security footage. I’ve done my best not to look at it since I left, afraid I’d lose hours watching Nova sit on the couch with the dogs.

Now, I scrub back through the footage to this morning, stopping when I see Nova fill the screen.

But—

“Fucking hell.”

She barely looks like Nova. She’s bandaged and bruised and limping along with the aid of a fucking crutch.

“What in the hell happened to her?” Air rushes out of my lungs like crushed cans. “Put Frederik on the phone.”

“I’ll check her room,” Myles mumbles before he hands off the phone.

“She told me she spoke to you,” Frederik explains, voice pitching high in confusion. “She said she told you about the dog attack…?”

“She was fucking attacked?”

Nova was attacked, and I wasn’t there. I haven’t been there.

“You didn’t know?” asks Frederik.

“Stop asking me what I know and fucking tell me what you know,” I snarl. “Now.”

He runs through Nova’s dog attack and recovery, though he says he has no clue where exactly she recovered. Then he talks me through this morning: Nova’s arrival and how she went to take a nap after, supposedly, talking to me on the phone.

A color guard of red flags is waving in my head.

Something is wrong.

“She isn’t here!” Myles roars in the background. I hear Frederik drop the phone as Myles confronts him. “Where the fuck did she go, Frederik? You were on guard!”

“I-I left. But she said— Nova said she was going to sleep. I thought— She told me she’d stay put!”

My mind splits between planning exactly how I’ll make Frederik suffer for this failure and calculating where Nova would run.

“Myles!” I shout his name loudly enough he must hear me, because he scoops his phone off the floor. “Check her apartment. She probably went there to⁠—”

My phone buzzes in my hand, and I pull back to see Ilya’s name on the screen. The instinct to dismiss his bullshit with a swipe rises to the surface, but then…

I pause.

Ilya almost never calls me. Especially when he knows I’m out of the country.

A grim, icy certainty wraps around my chest. I hang up on Myles and accept my brother’s call.

“What the fuck have you done?” I growl.

Ilya just cackles. “There you go again, jumping to conclusions. These rash judgments are what keep getting you into trouble, brother.”

My heartbeat is thudding faster and faster. Cold sweat beads on my forehead and that dread snaking its way through my gut is getting heavy.

I never should have left her. I should’ve put her on that plane with me. She should be next to me right now, not⁠—

“Where is she?”

“That’s what you should’ve been asking the last few months. ‘Where is she? Where has she been? Who is she working for?’”

A wordless growl rips out of my chest. I’m beyond words. My hands are shaking.

“Oh, relax,” Ilya sighs. “I just emailed you a video update. You’ll see your little traitor is alive and well.”

I log into my email and click on the attachment. The video buffers and then focuses on an image of Nova.

She’s outside her father’s house, already in bandages and with the crutch. I guess that answers the question of where she went after her attack.

The video speeds up, tailing her father’s car through traffic until he pulls outside of my apartment building. Half an hour later, according to the timestamp, she comes back out with a bag on her shoulder and gets into a cab.

The cab heads to the South Loop, and I stiffen. I don’t ease as she climbs out of the cab and heads directly into Andropov Headquarters with her tote bag.

Five minutes later, she reappears without the bag. And the video cuts off.

Fuck.

“Should I take your stony silence as proof that you finished the clip?” Ilya muses. “Tough watch. How are you feeling?”

As if I’d ever fucking tell him.

“Do you have her?”

“Of course I do.” He chuckles, disgustingly pleased with himself. “I, unlike you, know how to handle a crisis. I don’t let spies roam free, even if I am fucking them.”

I can’t let myself think about what he’s doing to her. How terrified she is.

Mostly because I can’t stop wondering if she’s been lying to me this whole time.

“I don’t have time for your fucking games, Ilya,” I hiss. “Tell me where you’re keeping her!”

“If I tell you, you’ll come to rescue her, and she’ll manipulate you into believing she’s innocent, just like she did before. I should handle this interrogation myself.”

Nova, being interrogated by Ilya. The image sends ice through my veins. I’ve seen what’s left of people after my brother finishes with them.

“She’s my responsibility.” I grip the phone so hard the case creaks. “If anyone is going to question her, it will be me.”

I need to see her face. Need to look in her eyes when I ask her about the Andropovs. About her father. About every lie she may have told me.

Because if she has betrayed me…

No. I can’t finish that thought.

“How are you going to do that all the way from Moscow?” Ilya’s voice drips with mock concern.

“I will take care of Nova.” Each word comes out precise, measured. A promise. A threat.

Ilya just laughs again. “Go right ahead. You’ll just have to find her first.”

The line goes dead.