The Debt

by Sara Hubbard

  Fuck! I punch the steering wheel of my car, and it lets out a quick beep.

  She’s going to be the death of me. I see it now. Plain as day. A fucking avenging angel sent to ruin me.

  Growling, I open the door and go into the house after I disarm my alarm system. Yuri’s sedan sits outside so I know he’s still here. At least, he better be. I stop in the hallway when I find him sitting on my couch, staring at his phone. He lowers it to his lap. His bloodshot eyes and messed-up hair make him look as tired as I feel.

  “Privet,” Yuri says.

  We continue speaking in Russian.

  “The girl?” I ask.

  “Upstairs.”

  “She give you a problem?”

  “You could say that.”

  I sit down across from him in a leather chair. Leaning forward, my elbows on my knees, I tip my head forward and run my hands through my hair before meeting his curious gaze.

  “What are you doing, cousin?”

  I grit my teeth. I want to be angry at him for questioning me, but I don’t mind his opinions or questions because he’s family and he’s proven himself loyal and trustworthy all twenty-eight years of my life.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him.

  “Does Sergei know she’s alive still?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well, you better figure out some sort of plan, because if he finds out…”

  “I know.”

  “She can I.D us. All of us.”

  “I know that, too,” I say with a growl.

  He leans back in his seat and frowns. “You don’t ever do things that could hurt us.” He rubs a finger along the underside of his chin. “And she’s going to hurt us.”

  “Maybe not.”

  He shakes his head at me. “Was that true? Was she your nurse?”

  I nod. “Da.”

  “Tough one. But men like us have to make tough decisions all the time, right? She has to die. There’s no way around it. Whether you know her or not.” He inches to the edge of his seat and leans forward. “Let me put it to you this way—she was doing her job. That’s it. Saving you was her job, and she was paid to do it. She didn’t do it because she gave two sweet fucks about you, right?”

  I nod. But he doesn’t know everything about my relationship with Luna. He doesn’t know I saw her for weeks after I left the hospital. He doesn’t know because I never said a word to anyone—to protect her. To keep her from my world because I didn’t want her spoiled by it. Or for her to see who I have to be when I live in it.

  “You have to do your job now,” Yuri says.

  “You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know. I just need to think. I need to be all right with it.”

  He sighs. “I’m not sure that’s going to happen, but if you need time, I’ll give you time. If Sergei asks…”

  “Don’t lie to him. It would be worse for you.” And it would. Sergei would have a hard time killing me because I’m his kid. Although I’m not entirely sure he wouldn’t kill me—he very well might. Yuri, on the other hand? He wouldn’t bat an eye. Nephew or not. Besides, he’s my mother’s blood, not Sergei’s.

  “What about the mother?” Yuri asks. “Should I find her?”

  I growl and curl my hands into tight fists. “No. He said to kill her if I didn’t find the watch.” I raise my wrist to show him the diamond watch secured around it.

  “One less thing to worry about.”

  “Yeah. One.”

  Yuri rises from his seat, and I mirror his movements.

  “I can stay,” he says. “I can take care of all of this for you so you don’t have to.”

  “Net,” I say quickly. “If she has to die, I’ll be the one to do it.”

  “She has to,” Yuri says simply. “There’s no if.”

  When I glare at him, he holds up his hands.

  “If I can’t tell you the truth, who will?”

  He has a point. Only I don’t want the truth right now because I don’t like it. Still, I need to hear it. Maybe it’ll help me snap out of this weak moment I’m having. I always do what’s needed. Always. I won’t let a tiny woman with a fucking thief of a father change that. No matter who she is. My mother taught me better than this. Love a woman if it’s convenient and she has value. Cut her loose if she doesn’t. Does Luna have value? Certainly not in the way my mother meant.

  Yuri claps me on the shoulder. “Careful with the girl. She has fight in her still.”

  Yuri hands me a key to a set of handcuffs. Apparently, she tried to escape twice while I went to her father’s to retrieve the watch. It was where he said it was. I was sure he was lying, but I was glad to be proven wrong, especially since I didn’t kill Luna like I was supposed to. I need the watch to calm my father. Not that getting the watch back would make my father more sympathetic to her. No. She saw him murder her father. He’ll want her dead regardless, and there’s no way around that. I just hope if he has the watch, he’ll focus his attention on something else until I can figure this out.

  “What about the body?” Yuri asks.

  “Took care of it before I got the watch.”

  “You work quick.”

  “Well, I didn’t have a choice,” I say. And I didn’t. I needed to come back here fast.

  He nods before leaving.

  Slowly, quietly, I unlock the door to the spare bedroom upstairs. When I push it open, the hinges strain until it gently connects with the wall behind it. The lights are on inside. The girl sleeps on her side in the middle of the bed, her back to me. She’s still in her pale blue scrubs with crimson stains on the legs. One of her arms is over her head with her wrist handcuffed to one of the metal rails on the otherwise wooden headboard. The door to the bathroom has a massive hole in it. It’s open, and the frame is splintered. There are shards of glass on the floor from the broken mirror on the wall above the dresser.

  Yuri wasn’t joking.

  I knew she was strong when I met her even though there was so much about her that was innately soft.

  As I approach her, the floorboards creak. It startles her, but as I reach the foot of the bed, I see her eyes are still closed. Instead of waking in a panic, she continues to quietly puff air through her fattened lips. Her face is a rainbow of black, blue, and purple splotches, and she has a goose egg on her left temple. Her hair fans out on her pillow behind her while a lock of her golden hair falls over her face. While I have the urge to brush it away, I leave it where it lies.

  She would be flawless if it wasn’t for the hits she took tonight. And she’ll be flawless again when her cuts and bruises fade to nothing. Beautiful women have the power to break men. They’ve won the genetics lottery, and they use it to their advantage to bend and sway. But not her. She doesn’t even know how beautiful she is or the power that comes with it.

  I want to hate her. Not because she walked away from me, but because she’s caused me to do something that isn’t good for me or my family. In fact, I want to hurt her. Curling my fingers into fists, I imagine wrapping my hands around her swan-like neck and tightening them until all the air inside of her has left her lungs. She’d stare at me with those topaz eyes, wordlessly begging me for mercy but unable to utter a single word. That wouldn’t be a bad way to go. It’s certainly the kindest option I can afford her. Would a kinder death repay my debt to her for saving my life? Assuming I owe her anything at all.

  But my stomach turns thinking of strangling her and watching as the light inside of her fades to nothing.

  I grab the back of the chair near the dresser, take it over to the bedside, and set it down on the hardwood, just far enough from the bed so that I’m not in arm’s reach if she wakes. Then, I lean back, stare at her, and think. It’s the middle of the night, nearly five in the morning, and I’m wide awake.

  She makes a quiet noise—an intake of breath. Then her eyes flutter open and lock with mine. I tip my head to the side and calmly watch her, waiting for her reaction. I expect her to freak out—any normal woman would do
that—but she jumps back and sits up abruptly. That’s it. Her panic fades and she sits calmly. But her quick moving chest betrays her. She’s afraid. I don’t like that she’s afraid of me, and yet, she should be.

  We say nothing for a few moments. She studies me, and I study her.

  “Good morning, Luna,” I say finally.

  Silence.

  “Are you in pain?” I ask.

  Slowly, she shakes her head.

  Liar. I point to her face. “Who did that to you? The bald one or the one with the moustache?” I shouldn’t care, but one day, I’ll punish Trevor or Allan for hurting her. I’ve never liked either of them, so this gives me a reason.

  “I don’t remember. It was dark.”

  I spy the hand marks on her neck then and narrow my eyes. It’s not lost on me that while I debate killing her, I’m enraged that someone else has laid hands on her.

  “Why am I here?” she says. Her voice is so hoarse she barely manages to get her words out.

  “That’s a very good question. One I hope to have an answer to very soon.”

  “And you’re going to keep me chained to this bed until you figure it out?” She yanks on her handcuffs, and they clank against the metal rail.

  I breathe in deeply and let it out. Then I stand and lean toward her. She tenses, her back pressing against the headboard while she watches me like a trapped animal.

  I slide the key into the lock and free her. She rubs her wrist while I sit back down.

  “Thank you,” she whispers.

  I nod.

  “Are you going to let me go?”

  I shake my head.

  Her head falls forward, and she sighs. It’s a long while before she lifts her head back up. “Maxim, you don’t have to do this. You’re different from them.”

  “Am I?”

  She opens her mouth but snaps it shut. I’m no different from them, and she knows that now. There’s no more pretending. Before, when I was with her, I was a different version of myself. A better one. But deep down, I know who I am, and I was not the kind of man she wanted—or needed.

  “Let me go. I’ll get my mother, and we’ll leave town. We’ll never come back. No one ever has to know what happened. People will assume we’re missing, and you can tell your boss that we’re dead. He’ll never know the difference.”

  “My boss? You mean my father.”

  “That man’s your father?” Her voice is barely a whisper.

  I nod slowly.

  She slumps back, and the color drains from her face. “Please, Maxim.”

  “We both know I can’t let you go.”

  “Then what are you going to do? Kill me? Keep me locked in this room for the rest of my life?”

  “I suppose that depends on you and how cooperative you can be.”

  She scoffs at that. “You killed my father, Maxim!” she snaps. She takes a breath and calms herself. “You were supposed to kill me, and you expect me to cooperate. You’re insane.”

  “But I didn’t kill you, did I? And I didn’t kill your father.”

  She clucks her tongue at me. “You’re all responsible. Everyone in that warehouse has his blood on their hands.”

  I shrug at her. “True. It could have been any of us to pull the trigger. We wouldn’t have hesitated.”

  “You really are a monster, aren’t you?”

  I lean back and frown at her. “Yes. I am.”

  She’s not the first person to call me that, and I don’t suspect she’ll be the last. It doesn’t bother me, though. Not really. I know what I am. And I know that who I am will never change. She’s very lucky I cared for her once upon a time or she’d already be dead. I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would have done it.

  “What about my mother?” Though it’s barely noticeable, her bottom lip quivers. She doesn’t cry. Her face is flushed, and her eyes are bloodshot, but not a single tear falls. I like strong women. Maybe that’s the problem. I like her, but also, if I’m being honest, I respect her.

  “Is she dead?” she asks.

  “I have no interest in your mother.”

  “What does that mean? Is she safe?”

  “Yes. As far as I know. And she’ll stay that way as long as you remain here. But if you leave? You’ll seal her fate—and yours. I won’t be able to help you anymore.”

  She draws in a breath and lets it out slowly. “Help me…?” She scoffs at that. She waves her hands around the room. “This is you helping me!”

  I say nothing.

  “When you were in the hospital, people told me about you,” she says quietly. “All the ugly rumors my coworkers said about you… I thought they were exaggerating. They couldn’t possibly be true. One of my colleagues asked me how I could care for a client like you. They said you made them sick to their stomach. I thought, ‘I pity them.’ This is our job. It doesn’t matter who our patients are or what they do. We have to look past that.” She takes a moment, as if she needs it to draw strength to continue. Her voice is shaky, and the raw emotions that emanate from her words stir something very unfamiliar inside of me. “I won’t lie. I was attracted you. No, I was curious about you. I wanted to see who you really were and to prove to myself you can’t judge someone by their cover. That’s the reason I agreed to go out with you in the beginning. But I guess it’s a good thing I eventually came to my senses and walked away from you before I could see you for who you really are. If I could go back…to the day I first met you, I’d let you die.”

  I smile at her. I’m not sure she would, because that’s not who she is. Even if she does think the worst of me.

  “You don’t believe me?” she says, heat building in her tone.

  “You’re not like me, Luna.”

  Her eyebrows draw inward. “We barely know each other.”

  “You’re right about that.” I want to know more. Want to know all the horrible, ugly things about her that will make it easier to kill her and stop me second-guessing myself. I lean forward, just within her reach. Her eyes narrow, and I dare her to try to fight me like she did with Yuri. I want her to draw the beast inside of me out, want her to push me to a point I can’t pull back from. She doesn’t provoke me, though. I wonder if she senses this about me.

  I lean back, disappointed but not surprised. “Your father was willing to trade your life for his. But not you. Even after he threw you to the wolves, you still would have died for him.”

  She opens her mouth but promptly snaps it shut. Her narrowed eyes become slits, and then she falters. Her eyes fall closed and her face scrunches up as she fights a sob. She turns her face away so I can’t see it.

  “Don’t cry for him. Self-preservation is a powerful instinct, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snaps. “And spare me the life lessons. I certainly don’t need to learn anything from you.”

  I scoff at that. “You could learn a lot from me.”

  “You can’t keep me here!”

  “I can’t let you leave, so what other choice am I left with?”

  “What do you want? Sex? Is that it? To keep me here as a plaything as punishment for blowing you off?”

  Her opinion of me pisses me off. I’m a lot of things, but I’m no rapist. And it fucking stings my ego that she says that she blew me off. “Women throw themselves at me,” I say. “They want my money, my body, my power. They want to be my queen. So no, Luna, I have no interest in a woman who no longer wants me. As for punishment? It was nearly two years ago. I’d all but forgotten you. You’re only alive right now because you saved my life and not because I ever gave a shit about you.”

  She shakes her head and aims those sad blue eyes at me. It’s like looking at the sun. You want to look but you can’t. I look away and feign boredom. She can’t ever know she got under my skin. How much I looked forward to seeing her come to work every day when I was in the hospital. How easily I remember the first time she went out with me. The sex that followed. But what I remember the most still is her holding my hand wh
en I was in the hospital. Running her thumb over my skin. Talking to me and being there for me in a way no one ever has.

  “I hate you!” she says suddenly. She lunges forward and slams her fists into my chest. The spark inside of me is lit. I don’t let people talk to me this way, let alone put hands on me. I spring to my feet, and she tumbles backward onto the bed. She looks up at me with her chin up. Proud. Stupid. I climb on top of her, hovering over her on my hands and knees.

  “You want to hurt me?” I ask her as I look down her.

  “Yes! I want you to die! I want you to hurt like you made him hurt!”

  “Yeah?” I remove my gun from the holster under my arm. Her eyes widen in alarm. She doesn’t beg for her life now. Not once. She waits for me to make a choice while she pales and stops breathing. My blood boils and my fingers twitch; the beast inside of me is alive and ready. And it wants blood.

  Just not hers.

  I hate her all over again.

  I press the gun into her hand.

  Her chest rises and falls faster and faster.

  “Take it,” I say.

  “Is this a trick?” she says. I barely hear her words.

  “Take it!”

  I straddle her middle and sit back on my heels. Boldly, she sits up and looks up at me with hate-filled eyes. I forcibly curl her fingers around the grip of the gun and make her press the hard, circular edge of the barrel into the center of my chest. The color drains from her face and her narrowed eyes open wide. Though my adrenaline spikes, I feel no fear. Instead, I smile wide at her. Does she see the beast inside of me? Can she feel it? It radiates through me like vibrations moving through water.

  “Have you ever held a gun before?” I ask her.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then you know what to do. Go ahead. Shoot me.” Please pull that fucking trigger. I dare you. Make it easy for me to kill you. “Do it! See what it feels like to be me.”

  Tears well in her eyes. “Don’t make me do it. Just get off of me and let me go.”

  “You’re going to have to pull that trigger if you want to leave here.”

  “Maxim, please.”

  “Pull. The. Trigger,” I growl.

  She sniffles as her faces scrunches up. She closes her eyes tight as if trying to escape her situation. There’s no escape, and we both know it. The barrel begins to shake. Of course, she’s not going to do it. She can’t.