Page 22 of Immaculate Corruption (Romanoff Bratva)

“Oh, no, stop it, you’re making me blush,” she deadpans.

I glance over at her. That smile is fucking infectious. I’m trying hard to hold onto my motivations here. To remember my hatred, my fury.

But it’s getting harder and harder with every passing minute. She looks so goddamn good in that dress. That smile, that laugh—it’s a drug I can’t quit, can’t resist. And the smell of her floating through the car is making my head swim.

“You did good,” I concede.

“How good?”

“Good enough.”

She laughs again. “Never say with ten words what you can say with a grunt and a middle finger, am I right?”

“Something like that.”

She shakes her head as if this is all too crazy to comprehend. We keep driving. The highway whisks beneath the wheels of the car.

When she say anything for a while, I glance over again. This time, I notice Arya’s hands fidgeting in her lap nervously.

“What is it?” I ask, pumping the brake as we slide down the off-ramp and into the quiet part of town near her motel.

Arya takes a deep breath, then looks at me. “I met with someone this week. Before you came.”

Again, I feel that flash of jealousy hot in my chest. “Who?”

“A man. A guy who can acquire things.”

I turn into a row of empty spaces behind the motel and put the car in park. “And?”

“I’ve known him forever. He agreed to make me some passports. Fake passports. New identities. For me and Lukas and Ernestine and June”

My heart stops.

When it finally resumes, it feels like I’m being hammered in the chest with a bass drum mallet.

“You’re leaving.”

“Yeah,” she says, her voice breaking. “We are. They will be ready in a week.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

She shrugs like she doesn’t even know the answer herself. “I just… I thought you should know.”

“Because I’m going to have to stop you, you know.”

“That’s what you keep saying, yeah.”

“But you’re telling me anyway.”

“Yeah,” she mumbles. “I don’t… I don’t know why. I just did.”

I turn to face her. “Do you not believe that I mean what I’m saying?”

She nods. “I believed you. But I had to try running, didn’t I? I still have to try. If you mean what you say…” She gnaws at her bottom lip again, and fuck me, all I want to do is suck it into my own mouth, to taste it, to palm her hips and grind my cock against her sweetness. “Do you mean what you say, Dima? Are you going to keep us here forever? Are you going to kill us?”

There it is. The question I’ve been avoiding—even in my own thoughts.

Can I do what I vowed to do?

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