After all, he didn’t mind a nasty Viktoria. He liked her a little vicious, too. He suspected that’s exactly what she was going to be like for this.
He welcomed the challenge.
9.
VIKTORIA WAS doing her very best to ignore the man in the row next to hers in first class who kept glancing her way. She’d barely spoken at all to the flight attendant when the woman asked if there was anything she wanted while they waited.
A Valium?
Vodka?
She had that bottle of Xanax in her carry-on bag, but she didn’t want to actually take one. It wasn’t that she was panicking because of the flight, or even the people on it. More like, the fact her rapist had actually been alive for the past couple of years when she’d thought he was dead, and now he was just out and about. Roaming somewhere, apparently. Probably looking for her … ready to come back for another round.
Holy fucking Christ.
Viktoria felt like her throat was closing. The panic came in like a wave. Small, at first, and then progressively rougher and rougher until it took a good portion of the shore away when the wave went back out. If she were a shore, then it was dragging her out to sea, too.
She was going to drown.
Her fingers curved tightly around the edges of the seat, and she dragged in a shaky breath that stung the whole way coming in. Fuck her brothers for doing this to her … for putting her on this plane today without an explanation because they said so. Fuck them for lying to her for all this time about Boris, and what really happened.
Yeah, fuck them.
The next time Viktoria opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Pav making his way down the plane’s aisle. She didn’t even get the chance to make her mouth work to ask him what in the fuck he was doing there before he slid into the seat next to hers in first class.
There was no way that was coincidence.
Fucking Konstantin.
You know what, yeah, she wasn’t even going to blame Kolya for this. All of this shit just screamed Konstantin’s doing. He was the one who didn’t seem to understand personal boundaries and had no problem with pushing Viktoria right to her goddamn limits every chance he could. Because he was an asshole.
“Apparently, I was almost late,” Pav said, shrugging as he dropped a small messenger bag under the seat. “Do you know Uber drivers are very … chatty?”
Viktoria wanted to glare and snap at him. But knowing he was telling her some very important information, because the man had probably never needed to call himself a driver or something like an Uber before, made her just want to laugh for him.
And she did just that.
It was weak, sure, and still a little bitter.
But she laughed.
Pav shot her a look and smirked a bit. “I know you don’t want me here. You want space, I get it.”
“Yeah.”
“But it’s me or someone else. Maybe a stranger—whoever Konstantin felt like picking. It certainly wasn’t going to be one of your brothers, when they are better doing work in Chicago. So this trip to Russia for you, yeah, will have to include me.”
Viktoria nodded. “I hate them right now.”
“I bet.”
He offered nothing else, and she didn’t bother to ask. When those tickets showed up taped to her door with a note from Konstantin saying she was to be on the plane to Russia whether she liked it or not, well … she’d known better than to fight her brother on it. Konstantin would simply show up at her house, force her into a car, and take her to the airport himself. There was only so much he would take before he just did what he wanted to do, anyway.
Pav had a point, too.
She would not have reacted well, had some random Boykov soldier come onto the plane, and sat down beside her because her brother said she needed a babysitter for this little trip. If anything, she probably would have thrown a fit so bad that she would have gotten kicked off the plane because yeah … she was not in a good place.
Not physically.
Not emotionally.
Not mentally.
Pav was a slightly better choice.
All things considered …
“Is that why you came the other night?” Viktoria asked. “Because you knew that Boris had escaped, and my brother sent you to me?”
Pav didn’t lie.
She appreciated it.
“Partly,” he replied, “but I also came because I wanted to be with you. My involvement with you has very little to do with what other people tell me to do, but rather, what I want to do, Viktoria.”
That made it a little better.
Not much, though.
She swallowed hard and toyed with the phone in her hands. Putting the music on, she plugged in the earbuds, and put one of them into her ears. With music pumping into her brain as close as she could get it, it was easier to focus on not giving into her fear and anxiety.
It wasn’t missed by Pav, either.
Of course.
His hand slid across the seats and, wordlessly, he squeezed her thigh. Just as quickly as his hand was there, it was gone. She didn’t acknowledge the touch, although she appreciated it because it reminded her someone was there who might actually give a shit about her. He didn’t seem to mind.
“They didn’t give me a choice,” she muttered. “About this flight and hiding away with my father in Russia, I mean.”
Pav chuckled. “Me either, yeah?”
She gave him a good look, then. He wore his standard black ensemble—pants, shirt, and a leather jacket. He seemed calm on the outside. His hands stayed steady on his lap, and his body seemed
