Page 14 of Broomsticks and Bloodstains
The silence stretched, heavy with everything I wasn’t saying.
Finally, he exhaled a curse in Russian. “Christ, Maksim. You don’t fuck the liability. You erase her. You know this. You should’ve let Dima deal with this. You’re thinking with your dick.”
I ended the call without saying a word, shoving the phone back into my pocket.
He was right. I should have ended her.
Instead, I’d branded her into my very skin.
And as I approached my SUV, the only thing I knew for certain was that Sofia Rodriguez wasn’t merely a problem anymore.
I was going to play with her for a while.
Chapter 10
Sofia
I woke alone.
For several heartbeats, I thought maybe I’d dreamed the whole thing—the night of the party, the hallway, the black mask, him at the bar, the vodka, his hands on me in the dark. But the sheets were tangled, my body ached in places that had nothing to do with bartending, and the faint trace of his cologne lingered on my pillow.
“Ugh!” I covered my face with my hands.
A mistake. That’s all it was. A one-night mistake.
I told myself that over coffee, then during the shower that did nothing to rinse him off my skin, I muttered it around the mouthful of eggs that I forced myself to eat.
When I rinsed my plate, my head dropped. We were from two very different worlds.
He had slummed it in a weak moment of too much vodka—though he didn’t act like he’d drank more than water. He was gone without a word. I told myself that would be the end of it.
Except it wasn’t.
My phone buzzed just as I was shoving the stack of overdue bills back into a drawer.
I didn’t recognize the number, but it didn’t say spam risk.
Thinking it might be the catering company, I answered. “Hello?”
“Good morning, Sofia.”
My blood froze. That voice. That accent. I gripped the phone tighter. “How did you get my number?”
On the other end, a low laugh. Rich. Dangerous. Amused. “You gave it to me, kisa.”
The hell I did. I opened my mouth to argue, but the memory of his smirk in that hallway and last night at the bar stopped me. Men like him didn’t need you to hand them anything. They just took it. My name, my number, my peace of mind.
My body.
Except that wasn’t true. Last night was completely consensual. I wasn’t drunk. I knew exactly what I was doing.
“I… must have,” I lied, hating the way my voice faltered.
“Mm,” he hummed. “Lunch. Today.”
My jaw dropped. I should have said no. I should have blocked the number, pretended I didn’t hear the steel in his voice that made it sound less like an invitation and more like a command. But instead, I heard myself whisper, “Where?”
“You look ravishing,” he told me in his beautifully accented voice as we waited in the lobby of one of New York City’s elite restaurants.
