“Tinder,” I blurt, shrugging casually.
Milena gives me a look. “Uh, no it’s not.”
“Sure it is. New interface.”
Her grin widens. “Yeah? Prove—”
For once, I’m actually grateful for the cold, barking voice of Madame Kuzmina telling us to get off our lazy asses and to the barre.
Mercifully, Milena has either forgotten about what she saw or has decided to give me a pass on it by the time our day is over. I say goodbye to her and Naomi after they shower and change, then grab my stuff and head out the back door to go find a cab.
To my shame, when the hand clamps over my mouth, and another rough, powerful hand grabs my arm and shoves me against the brick wall, my first emotion isn’t fear.
It’s excitement.
A, because as I’ve mentioned, I’m a freak with issues. And B, because my first fucked-up thought is that it’s him. That he’s back. That he wants to play again…
“You fucking bitch.”
It’s the voice that takes me from deliciously, dangerously excited to freaked the fuck out.
It’s not my masked RaisedByWolves. It’s Grisha.
I gasp as he spins me around, his mean, slightly-too-skinny face suffused with anger and his cruel eyes boring right into mine. He’s flanked by three other youngish Russian guys I’ve seen him hanging around with. And behind them stands a terrified-looking Alicia.
“I’ve been fucking patient, you little bitch,” Grisha snarls at me. “I’ve been waiting for you to do the right thing. I know you fucking have it!”
My eyes bulge as he shoves me back into the wall again. My gaze rips past him and darts to Alicia, my mouth falling open.
She quickly shakes her head, her face paling. “Grisha, baby, I told you, those guys—”
“Shut the fuck up,” he snarls at her, his eyes still leveled at me as he leers close. “My idiot girl keeps trying to tell me that you lost the duffle—”
“I—!”
I choke on a scream as the back of his hand smacks hard across my cheek. Stars dot my vision as I hear Alicia shriek, and I taste my coppery blood on my tongue.
“Grisha!” I blurt. “I don’t—”
“Nobody throws away that much cocaine,” he hisses. I shudder as he grabs the front of my hoodie, yanking me close. “Nobody loses that much cocaine, either.”
“They took it!” I scream. “The men who were going to buy it!” My pulse roars. “They—”
“Do you think I’m fucking stupid?”
I blink. “What?!”
“DO YOU THINK I’M FUCKING STUPID!!” Grisha roars in my face, making me tremble.
“No!” I blurt, quivering.
“I fucking know you were working with those two, bitch.”
It feels like I’ve been slapped again.
“What?!”
“Make a big scene, send my girl and her friend running! Then, you come outta the alley totally fine, but mysteriously without my fucking drugs?!”
“Grisha,” I plead. “I swear to you, I don’t know those men! I…”
I want to tell them all about the masked man. About how he killed my two attackers and dumped the coke. But for some insane reason, I don’t.
Not just because I sincerely doubt they’d believe me.
You’re worried about betraying him.
Yeah, I’ve officially lost it. I’m actually standing here not disclosing this information because…it’s what, seriously, a betrayal?…of the masked man who may very well be an actual psychopath, who my only real relationship with—if you can even call it that—is that I let him chase me around an abandoned church with a knife until he caught me and fingered me to orgasm?
What the actual fuck is wrong with me?
I’m about to blurt the whole thing out when suddenly Grisha yanks something metallic and gleaming out of his belt and levels it at my face, and my entire world goes still.
It’s a fucking gun.
Alicia slams a hand over her mouth, looking terrified, her wide eyes staring at me past her insane boyfriend.
