Chapter 3 3

Ana had no idea, as she crossed the street toward the hotel, that she'd already been seen — that somewhere behind her, a man with an empire built on fear had just decided her face was something he needed to know.

"Why is my heart racing like this?" she murmured, pressing a hand to her chest, trying to will herself calm.

What could he possibly have planned? She smiled to herself, unable to help it. Her life wasn't much to speak of most days, but Damian — Damian had always been the one bright thing in it, the one person who made the rest of it feel survivable.

She walked into the hotel lobby with that same soft, hopeful smile still on her face and made her way up to the room he'd named.

Outside the door, she paused.

Something in her chest had gone tight, unease she couldn't quite place, a small warning her body registered before her mind caught up.

"Okay." She let out a slow breath, then reached for the handle, and it gave easily beneath her hand, unlocked — exactly as his message had promised.

She pushed the door open slowly, meaning to surprise him.

What she got instead stopped her heart cold.

"Ahh—!"

"More, baby — I want more—"

"You feel so good, baby." Vexia's voice, breathless and unmistakable, filled the room from the bed, tangled together with Damian's in a way that left absolutely nothing to Ana's imagination.

"God, honey, you're incredible." Damian's voice, low and satisfied, answered her.

Vexia beamed at the praise — and then, catching sight of the door standing slightly ajar, understood immediately what that meant.

'Perfect timing', she thought, and decided, in that instant, exactly what she wanted Ana to hear next.

"Baby," she said, deliberately loud, breath still uneven. "What about Ana? Do you still want her? Even after I've taken care of you like this?"

A pause. "No." Damian's answer came without much hesitation at all. "I don't want Anastasya. She's too innocent, too — she doesn't know how to satisfy a man the way you do."

"So can we stop talking about her?" His voice dropped, impatient, hungry. "The night's still young."

Vexia smiled, victorious, glancing once more toward the door that had already, quietly, clicked shut.

Ana stood frozen on the other side of it.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Her heart pounded so hard it hurt, her whole body locked rigid, her breath coming in short, useless pulls that never quite filled her lungs.

Anastasya, I love you. Be my girlfriend. You're the only one for me.

Trust me. I'll protect you. No one will ever hurt you again.

I promise I'll never leave you. I promise.

The memories surfaced uninvited, each one landing like a fresh cut. She didn't remember deciding to move, but somehow she was walking, staring at nothing, her feet carrying her out through the lobby and into the street without any input from the rest of her.

She didn't notice the rain until it had already soaked through her dress.

It was pouring — the kind of downpour that seemed almost personal in its timing, like the sky had been waiting for exactly this moment to open up.

Ana stopped walking and tilted her face up into it, eyes narrowing against the sting of it.

"Rain." A short, painfull laugh escaped her. "Of course. The universe really does love kicking me while I'm down."

"They're all liars," she said to no one, to the sky, to whatever might be listening. "Maybe they're right. Maybe I really don't deserve to be happy. Maybe I was never supposed to be loved at all."

"But—" Her voice cracked. "It still hurts. God, it hurts so much. He told me he loved me. He promised me. How does someone just — throw that away like it was nothing?"

"Why?"

Her hands curled into fists at her sides.

"Why does this keep happening to me? Why am I always the one left behind?"

"AAAAAA!"

She screamed it out into the empty street, the sound swallowed almost instantly by the rain, and then her knees gave out and she sank down right there on the wet pavement, eyes shut, praying — foolishly, desperately — that she'd open them and find this was all just a very bad dream.

She pinched herself. Opened her eyes... Still raining. Still alone. Still exactly as real as it had been a moment ago.

"Dad. Mom." Her voice had gone thin, almost a whisper now, barely audible over the storm. "Why didn't you take me with you? Is it because you hated me too? Because I'm — because I'm some kind of curse?"

"I'm so tired." She pressed her forehead to her knees. "I don't know how much more of this I can take. Would it really be so bad if I just — stopped?"

She sat there, soaked and shaking, the weight of everything finally, completely crushing her—

"Are you lost, little girl?"

The voice cut through the rain, low and unfamiliar, and a moment later Ana realized the water had stopped hitting her head.

She looked up.

A man stood over her, holding a black umbrella above her without a word of explanation, his sharp blue eyes fixed on her with an intensity that made something in her chest go very still. There was a faint curve to his mouth that didn't look entirely kind.

"I asked you something." His voice hadn't changed at all, still even, still carrying that same strange weight. "Are you lost?"

Ana blinked up at him, momentarily unmoored, before her surroundings finally registered — the hotel entrance, the rain, the fact that she was sitting directly in this stranger's path.

"Oh — I'm sorry." She scrambled to push herself upright, her legs unsteady beneath her, her whole body feeling wrung out and hollow. "I'm sorry, I must be in your way—"

She kept her eyes down, too embarrassed and too exhausted to properly look at him, already trying to step past.

"I'll just—" Her head swam. "I'll get out of your way now—"

The world tilted sideways.

She didn't remember falling. She only remembered, briefly, the sensation of arms catching her before she hit the ground, solid and sure, and the umbrella slipping from her grip and clattering somewhere out of reach, leaving her exposed to the rain all over again.

"Hm." Alexander looked down at the woman now cradled against him, taking in her pale, rain-soaked face with something sharpening behind his eyes. "Beautiful."

"Almost too beautiful," he murmured, mostly to himself, already lifting her fully into his arms. "I think I want to keep her."

He carried her toward the waiting car without any further hesitation.

"Boss." Kai swung the door open the moment he saw them approaching, careful to keep his expression neutral, though his mind was working overtime.

Alexander had never once asked him to follow a stranger before. Not like this. Not with this kind of urgency. Kai had watched his boss track down enemies, rivals, men who owed him money or worse — but never, in all the years he'd worked for him, had he seen Alexander De Graham cross a street specifically to chase after a woman he'd spotted through a car window.

He said nothing about it. Some things weren't his to question.

He simply held the door as his boss settled the unconscious woman into the seat beside him, then closed it behind them, already mentally preparing the questions he wasn't going to ask.

Neither of them — not Ana, unconscious and unaware, not Alexander, already watching her face with something unreadable in his eyes — had any idea that the night's rain had just rewritten the entire shape of both their lives.