Fractured Ties by Bethany-Kris Page 0,20
a relatively decent area and safer than a lot of others. Chicago’s crime rate was through the roof, but here, people could walk their dogs at night and not feel like they should probably carry a weapon with them while they did it.
Then again …
Maya glanced at the man driving the vehicle and second-guessed that theory of hers. She wondered how safe someone might feel if they realized the man they lived near was a killer, vor—a genuine, real criminal—and probably a hell of a lot more.
With his eyes firmly on the road in front of them, Kolya seemed somewhat innocuous. Harmless, even, if someone discounted his size and the tattoos coloring up his hands. Like this, a person was only getting a shadowed view of his features, and not a full-on glance at the things Maya had seen earlier—his coldness and calm; his indifference and his flashing bouts of rage.
She’d seen other things, too.
Things that said he wasn’t all that he appeared.
And Maya didn’t know what to do with it.
“Why are you staring?” Kolya asked quietly.
Maya quickly glanced away.
How had he even known that? It wasn’t like he was looking at her or anything.
“I was—”
“You’re not now, no? You were. Just then, before I asked.”
“You weren’t even looking at me.”
“Your point?”
Maya wished he was staring at her then so he could see the dirty look she was sporting, but she let her tone do the talking instead. “Sorry that I find you a little … confusing and disconcerting. After everything that happened tonight, can’t I have a little reflection to absorb it.”
Kolya chuckled.
She frowned.
“What is so funny about that?”
“Confusing and disconcerting,” Kolya murmured, “is that all?”
“Well …”
“People tend to have a lot of things to say about me, but I don’t think confusing or disconcerting are one of them, Maya.”
He’d offered her that statement as though it was bait on a hook, and like the stupid little fish she was, Maya chased after it and bit on—hook, line, and sinker.
“What do people say about you, then?” she asked.
The slow curve forming on Kolya’s lips could only be described as a sneer. Nothing more and nothing less. Maya wasn’t even sure what to make of it—sure, it made his features darker and even more handsome, if that were possible, but it also chilled.
Her, the vehicle, and the air.
It all felt a little colder.
Was something wrong with her?
Broken, even?
How could her instincts feel the way this man gave off the aura of danger, yet her body and mind remained calm, and collected? No part of her wanted to get away, or try to run. She was perfectly comfortable right where she was.
It was … strange.
Shit, maybe she was confusing and disconcerting.
“The things people whisper about me would not be something you want to hear this late at night when the streets are quiet and dark,” Kolya said, finally glancing her way.
He delivered the words with a cold flatness.
Yet his eyes—there, he blazed like a roaring fire.
“You must think I’m some innocent, naive angel,” Maya replied, “who frightens easily.”
“Quite the opposite.”
Maya’s brow lifted. “Pardon?”
“You can’t be innocent or naive in your position, Maya. You know who and what I am—the same as who and what your father was. I think you’ve probably seen and heard quite a bit in your lifetime. And instead of begging to be freed when you were found, you fought. Instead of keeping a distance from obvious vory at the bar, you approached. Why would I think you frighten easily?”
“Then why not tell me what people say?”
Kolya shrugged. “Maybe I don’t want you to know what people say about me. Maybe I don’t want you to hear it, too.”
Oh.
She wasn’t sure what to make of that, either.
Kolya quieted then and glanced down at the napping pup on the large armrest between them. Sumerki had curled himself into a tight ball of black fur, with only his short ears occasionally twitching to say he was still alive and heard their voices.
Lifting a hand from the wheel, Kolya placed it on top of the pup’s back and stroked Sumerki before leaving his palm to rest on the dog’s lower half. His hand was so large, and Sumerki so small, that it practically swallowed half of the pup whole.
The kind act—the fact he even remembered the quiet pup sleeping there—made Maya smile, but at the same time, her gaze was drawn to the ink coloring Kolya’s hand and fingers.
The upturned spider—an active thief in a life.
ОМУТ across his knuckles—her uncle had