Page 100 of Dirty Damage

Palm Beach glitters below.

So beautiful.

So deceptive.

Now that the adrenaline and endorphins have faded, I remember that emblem. The stylizedMwrapped in thorns—I’ve seen it before. On papers scattered across Drew’s desk. On the phones of men who used to visit our apartment late at night. Inked into their skin.

I glance back at Oleg. Even in sleep, he radiates power. The scarred side of his face catches the moonlight, and something in my chest tightens.

He’s lethal, dangerous, everything I swore I’d stay away from after Drew.

But he’s also… different.

As insane as it sounds, I trust the way my body responds to him. Trust the feeling of safety I get in his arms, even after watching him kill a man tonight.

I might even trusthim.

But I’ve been down this road before—caught between deadly men and their deadly games. Last time, I ran.

But last time was different.

Last time, my heart wasn’t involved.

28

OLEG

The Kangaroo is exactly what you’d expect from a place that serves watered-down piss and calls it beer. Dark wood, darker faces, and the kind of stench that makes you wonder if something died in here last week.

“This is a terrible fucking idea,” Artem mutters beside me, his usual grin replaced with a scowl that means business.

A few patrons are scattered around like forgotten garbage. Only the bartender is paying us any attention, his watery green eyes darting between me and the door like he’s expecting something.

“Ten minutes,” I say under my breath, moving toward the black door behind the bar. “That’s how long we have before this place fills up with more assholes than bullets.”

“Ten minutes? Since when did you become an optimist?” Artem follows close, his shoulder brushing mine.

Ready. Always ready.

“Since I started having something to lose.”

The words slip out before I can catch them, and I feel Artem’s knowing look drilling into the back of my head. He knows better than to poke at that right now, but I’ll never hear the end of it later.

It would be even worse if he knew how I spent the hours after the gunfight. Instead of diving into surveillance and recon like I normally would’ve, I was offline for hours, wrapped up in Sutton until I literally couldn’t keep my eyes open.

Every time I thought about leaving the room, I’d remember the fear in her eyes as she was crouched on the floor of the limo. I kept seeing a different outcome, one where she didn’t make it out of the car.

I needed to remind myself that she was alive.

Needed to feel her under me, around me.

I shove thoughts of her soft skin under my hands to the back of my mind as we approach the bartender.

“Private game back there,” he says, shaking his head. “Members only.”

I pull out a thick stack of hundreds, letting them land on the sticky bar with a wet slap. “Consider this my membership fee.”

His mustache twitches, eyes sliding to the ancient drunk at the end of the bar. A signal. Subtle, but not subtle enough.

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