go, and live out his days in relative peace. He didn’t need a lot to get by because he had never been given a lot in the first place. He never asked for anything because no one ever cared to listen to what he wanted, anyway.
Except … well, that was about to change, wasn’t it? That’s what Konstantin had said days earlier. It wasn’t as though Pav had been able to forget.
Pav was still trying to decide how he felt about all of that. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t like feeling like the ground he currently stood on was unstable for some reason. He found comfort in familiarity and routine, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out what would happen when someone decided to change everything he was accustomed to.
The clock’s second hand hit the twelve at the same time Pav looked up again to check. Despite the thoughts still running wild in his head and the shit he had yet to figure out about this whole plan of Konstantin’s, he moved away from the wall and across the hall. He knocked on the door twice—fast and loud raps of his knuckles against metal that made his bones ache.
Not that he needed to.
Up above the door rested a camera trained on whoever was standing in front of the door, and probably capturing a large portion—if not all—of the hallway. He bet Konstantin had been watching him stand outside of the door for a while now, wondering what in the hell he was doing, or why he hadn’t already knocked on the door to be allowed entry.
The answer was simple.
Twelve was twelve.
Pav was told twelve.
A humming buzz echoed throughout the hallway before Konstantin’s voice came through a speaker next to the door. “You may come in, Zhatka.”
Pav was already pushing open the door with a muttered, “It’s Pavel.”
He hadn’t asked for that nickname.
He didn’t want it at all.
Pav already laid eyes on the woman inside the office before the door shut behind him. She sat across from her brother at Konstantin’s desk with wide eyes as she looked at Pav over her shoulder. He thought, like he had earlier when he’d run into her downstairs and realized she was lost, that she looked awfully dainty for such a cold woman.
How did he know she was cold?
She radiated it.
In her gaze …
The hard set of her lips …
The way she carried herself.
The woman was cold all over.
Not that it bothered Pav one way or another. If anything, he found her coldness comforting, seeing as how he felt the same way a lot of the time. But there was something else about the platinum blonde, blue-eyed woman that interested him more. Something beyond the high cheekbones and cream skin that showcased her very obvious beauty that made him take a second look at her. Oh, sure, she was something else to look at—bow-shaped lips, and round eyes; soft features, and a sharp gaze.
But it was her fear …
He could practically smell it.
Was that because he constantly spent time with people who felt only fear when he was near, or something else? Pav didn’t really know, but that changed nothing about what he felt first and foremost when in this woman’s presence.
Her fear was vast.
Thick and real.
Visceral, even.
And he liked it.
That was probably wrong.
“Yes, Pavel,” Konstantin said, “my apologies. Or Pav, Viktoria, he likes that, too.”
“We met already,” she muttered.
Pav didn’t miss the way Konstantin’s gaze drifted between the woman—who hadn’t looked away from him since he walked into the room—and Pav standing near the doorway. “Is that so?”
“I was lost. He helped me.”
“Hmm.”
Konstantin didn’t sound surprised. Pav didn’t believe he was, either. Nothing happened in this place without one of the Boykov brothers knowing. If someone didn’t tell them what went on, they were capable of watching it all happen as it played out on one of the many security cameras.
Konstantin drummed his fingertips to the desk, bringing Viktoria’s attention back to him. “Pav, this is Viktoria. My sister. She’ll be doing your tattoos today.”
Pav didn’t miss the way Viktoria’s shoulders tensed at that statement. Just like earlier when she had run into him, her fear bloomed.
Visceral, again.
Thick, again.
If fear were a physical color someone could see on someone else, Pav swore Viktoria would have been covered in it in those moments. And yet, other than the tensing of her back and shoulders, one couldn’t tell simply by looking at her. Her delicate features—still pretty, but cold—remained like stone. Unmovable