Flynn
In the most fucked up scene ever, Lake and I sit in Cadence’s living room with her to try to figure shit out. They’re both hitting the weed to get through this.
I’m stone sober.
I know better than to turn to a substance when I’m in this dark of a place. I’ve been around drugs and alcohol my whole life. I know how bad it can turn when you don’t have your shit together. And I am about as far from having my shit together as I could possibly get.
I’ve been mostly catatonic on my couch for the past six days trying not to think about how much I miss Nadia. I played the shows we had booked, but it was just going through the motions and as soon as we finished our sets, I bailed.
I actually spent a lot of the time this week not thinking at all. Just blank as fuck.
The lights are on, but no one’s home, as they say.
Now I sit with elbows on my knees, my head low, trying to parse all the wild energy in the room.
Apparently, Lake still wants to be with Cadence, so I guess we’re pre-negotiating how this is going to work or something. He’s pissed as hell at me, as if me hooking up with her before he did was some kind of violation.
I literally played wingman for him to get with her. Maybe he’s just pissed it’s not his. I still think it could be.
I’m the kind of guy who plays guitarand lifeby feel. And everything about this feels off.
But I’m gonna do all the things I’m supposed to do.
I rub my palms together trying to remember the last time I showered or ate. I honestly can’t recall.
“So, obviously I support you whatever you want to do, Cadence.” The words sound rehearsed because I’m having an out-of-body experience, like this isn’t actually my life. I’m playing a part I just got handed a script for, and I don’t actually relate to any of the characters in the scene.
I’m supposed to be in a different play altogether.
One that’s happening across town, on Lake Shore Drive, at the Kremlin. That’s where I’m supposed to be.
“What do you think you want to do, Cadence?” Lake sits beside her and takes her hand, but she pulls it away.
“I don’t know.” She scrapes the fingers of both hands through her thick brown hair. She’s going full drama with this although I don’t see any actual tears.
“Well, we should at least get to the doctor for a real test.” I don’t know what made me say that, but when I do, I realize I’ve hit on something because she kind of freaks out.
“What do you mean a real test? Don’t you believe me?” Her voice is at a screech. She stands and paces away from the ratty couch that smells like stale beer and has seen too many parties. “God, I knew it would be like this!”
My next lines come easily. “Like what?” I go super innocent. “Wanting to get you appropriate medical care?” I glance at Lake for support, but his gaze is on Cadence.
She’s hotI get it. But she’s also a hot mess.
“I’ll pay for the visit. Let’s just go to get the facts. When you conceived. If the baby is healthy. When we can do a paternity test, if you decide to keep it.”
Lake shoots me a deathray glare, but I’m watching Cadence.
She’s gone pale.
“Yeah, okay. It might be too early for an appointment, but I’ll call around. It might take a few weeks to get in.”
Jesus. She didn’t think this shit through at all. I honestly don’t think she’s even pregnant.
I really don’t.
If she is, I know it’s not mine. I’m careful. I know condoms aren’t fool-proof, but my gut just tells me this is drama.
I stand. “I think we should go right now. They have walk-in pregnancy clinics. They could at least give us the run-down on what your options are and how things work, right?”
“I know how things work!” Cadence stomp-paces through her living room, still at screech level. “I Googled it, okay?”
“Come here.” I make my voice coaxing and hold out my arm to her, showing the sympathy she seems to be begging for.
She comes running to me, wrapping her arms around me. Lake looks like he’s going to poke a fork through my eye.
“You’re so good in a crisis,” she whimpers against my chest. “I knew you’d be here for me. Just like you needed to save that Russian girl. I told her you’re the rescuer type.”
I heard the needle-scratch on a record in my ears. What fuckery is this?
Was that why Nadia broke up with me? She thought I had a rescuer complex? My mind spins back to the night she broke up. We’d just come from my mom’s car accident. Then Cadence showed up with her big reveal.
Fuck.
It must seem like I am a rescuer. But just because I’m solid in a crisis doesn’t mean I seek that shit out. It’s not why I’m in love with Nadia. Not even close.
I’m in love with her because…she rescued me. She opened my eyes to so much more my life could be. That I could be. She challenged me to step up and be a man instead of slinking back in the shadows afraid to even have a dream, much less go for one.
“You what now?”
She goes still, like she realizes she fucked up.
I’m not the type of guy who gets pissed easily. I consider myself pretty laid-back. Live and let live.
But right now, I am pissed as hell.
I look over the top of Cadence’s head and meet Lake’s gaze, and I know he finally gets it, too. This chick is trying to play us both, and I’m not having it.
“Lake and I will take you to a clinic right now,” I say.
“No.” She pushes away from me. “I’m a total wreck right now. I can’t deal with a place like that. I’ll make an appointment on my own.”
“Nah, I feel like we need to get this worked out. It’s a big deal, and you’ve been hitting the weed, which probably isn’t good for the baby.”
“It’s okay. I Googled that, too.”
“Well, it’s supposedly my baby, and I need to hear it from a doctor. Let’s go.”
“I’m not going to a clinic.”
“It will be all right. We’ll take care of you.” Lake picks up her coat and holds it open for her, but I know he’s playing her right back now, too.
We hustle her out the door and into the van. Lake takes the passenger front seat where he slouches low and keeps scrubbing his hand over his chin. He’s obviously coming to terms with the sitch. Hopefully realizing Cadence isn’t the one for him.
He scrolls on his phone and gives me an address to a clinic.
“These clinics are the kind that try to talk you out of abortion,” Cadence pipes up from the back. “They try to arrange families to adopt the baby or something.”
“Yeah, but it’s a free and an immediate test. It’s a place to start.” Lake is totally in my camp now.
We both know there’s no baby.
“I really don’t feel comfortable with this, you guys.” She’s working herself back up to a fever pitch. “Shouldn’t it be about what I’m comfortable with? It’s my body. I’m the one who’s pregnant.”
I stop at a red light and twist to look over my shoulder. “Are you, Cadence?”
Lake twists to look, too.
She gets wide, scared-rabbit eyes as she looks between the two of us.
“Well, I’m not positive. I mean”
“There it is.” Oops. Did I say that out loud?
“Did you even take a test?” Lake explodes. His anger has now fully redirected her way.
“No, but I’m late, and”
“So let’s go to the clinic.” I’m just fucking tired at this point.
“I can do a home test. Let’s pick up a home test.”
I curse under my breath and whip a U’y to head to a pharmacy.
Twenty minutes later, we’re back in her apartment, and she’s talked us into waiting until tomorrow for her first morning pee, when the hormones are stronger.
I just get up and walk out.
“Okay, I’ll call you!” she calls after me.
“There’s no baby,” I say. I don’t know if I’m saying it to myself or to Lake or to her.
I think, really, I’m saying it to Nadia although it seems like our problems go beyond this situation. I knew there was a piece I was missing, but now I think I understand.
I still don’t know how I’m going to fix it, though.
As I walk back out to the van, I take out my phone to try to call her then change my mind and put it back in my pocket. I need to think this through. Figure out what I can say or do that will show her that she’s more than a fix-up project for me.
That she’s my everything.
I need to find a way to show her that before I try to beg back into her life.
Nadia
The scent of cigar smoke fills my nose, suffocating me. The links of the chains that bind my wrists and collar my throat clang against the metal frame of the cot.
Open that pretty little Russian mouth, whore.
“Nyet!”
I jolt awake in bed, my heart pounding, my shirt damp with sweat.
The nightmares have gotten worse since I broke up with Flynn. Much, much worse. So bad that I don’t even want to go to sleep at night.
This time, though, the nightmare seemed clear. More like a memory and less like a dream. The edges weren’t as fuzzy as usual.
And that horrific scent…it lingers in my nostrils.
This time, I saw a face. I remember his face.
I catch my breath and cover my mouth with my hand. Tears spill over my fingers. I know that face. I saw it outside the basement of the sofa factory.
I saw it last week at Rue’s.
That was what triggered my attack. It wasn’t just a random scent of a cigarit was his.
The man who raped me night after night for months. The man I want to kill.
My heart pounds. I get up to use the bathroom and wash my face, my mind churning. I could tell Adrian. Maybe this mudak is a regular for burlesque night. Maybe he’ll be there tomorrow night.
I missed rehearsal this past week. I spent my days in bed crying over Flynn. Every time I thought about him living his life out with Cadence and their baby, I wanted to hurl myself out the window. But it was the right choice. I made it in a moment of strength, and I wasn’t going to change it in a moment of weakness. So I didn’t allow myself to answer his texts or check his Tiktok to see his beautiful face.
Between my bouts of crying, I sewed the costumes, which I should have finished by tomorrow. I texted Danica early in the week to say I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t know whether I’d make it to the show.
I spent all week going back and forth over whether I could try to perform againnot just this week, but ever.
Doing it without Flynn there to make me feel strong seems impossible.
And yet, that’s precisely why I had to end things with him. I need to stand on my own two feet.
I couldn’t face them this week. I thought I might send Adrian over with the costumes but didn’t think I’d be able to do much more than lock myself in my bedroom and cry my eyes dry tomorrow.
But nowI gasp and meet my own gaze in the mirror, shocked by my thoughts.
I can prove to myself how strong I am. I can take the ultimate actionenact my own vengeance.
I don’t need Adrian to do it for me.
All I need is his gun.
Adrian
I grill a couple of steaks up on the roof for dinner Thursday night and bring them down to our apartment. Kat’s in the kitchen making a salad.
Nadia has been a holy mess all week, but she refuses to talk to me or even to Kat about what happened with Flynn. I still want to kill the kid because I saw this outcome from a million miles away, but I guess it’s not his fault.
Nadia broke it off with him.
“Nadia,” I call. “Dinner is ready.”
I’m not surprised when she doesn’t answer. It just breaks my fucking heart. She’s been this way before refusing to leave the apartment, not even showering or taking care of her basic needs.
Kat and I exchange a worried glance, and I go and knock on her door.
“Nadia?”
I push it open then suck in a breath.
“Where did she go?” I call back to Kat.
“What?”
“Nadia isn’t here.” I check the bathroom. Look around her room.
“Flynn rehearses here on Thursdays, maybe they made up.”
I grab my phone to open the tracking software Dima installed for me to track her phone.
“Blyad’!”
“What?” Kat asks from the kitchen.
“She left her phone here in the apartment. I can’t track her.”
I’m already heading out the door. “I’m going to see if the band is still rehearsing.”
I try to ignore the sense of panic rising in me. I had this before, and she was just with Flynn. She was totally fine with him. Better than fine, actually. She actually bloomed this past month.
Hopefully, whatever lovers’ quarrel she and Flynn had has been resolved, and she’s with him.
I go downstairs to the practice studio, but it’s empty. The band has already gone.
Blyad’. Why don’t I have Flynn’s number?
Kat calls my phone and relief sweeps through me. Nadia must be back. Maybe she went out for a walk or something. I answer, but Kat’s terse tone makes my fingers curl into a fist.
“Adrian. You have to come up here and see this.”
“What is it?”
“Your safe is open.”
I bolt back upstairs trying to make sense of it. Did someone came to kidnap Kat again? They robbed me in the process?
No, that’s impossible. No one gets in this building who doesn’t belong. Maykl makes sure of that.
A brick sinks in my stomach. So that means…Nadia opened the safe.
But why? We have plenty of money in the bank. She wouldn’t need the stacks of cash I keep in there, the cash that comes in from the bratva.
I get out of the elevator and jog back to the apartment and into my bedroom, where the safe is standing open. The stacks of cash are still there.
What’s missing is one of my guns. The one with a silencer.
“Nyet.” I stumble backward, ice and heat flushing simultaneously through my veins. “Nadia.”
“What did she take?” Kat asks.
My back hits a wall. Adrenaline courses through my veins, but I don’t know where to direct it. “My gun.”
“Oh shit. Okay. Where would she go?”
Are we both assuming she’s going to kill herself here? Fuck!
“I don’t know!” I roar.
Kat rushes in to wrap her slender arms around me. “Let’s ask Flynn. Maybe he knows.”
I nod, grateful for the direction. “Story,” I say. I don’t have Flynn’s number, but his sister is upstairs.
Kat comes with me to the top floor where I pound on Oleg’s door.
“We’re down here!” Story opens the main door to the penthouse and waves brightly.
“Flynn. I need to talk to your brother. Where is he?”
“Oh. He’s at home, I think. Honestly, he’s not doing great since Nadia broke up with him. He didn’t come to rehearsal this afternoon. He made up an excuse about having food poisoning, which I knew was bogus.”
I’ve closed the distance between us by now, and I hand her my phone. “Call him,” I order.
Oleg appears behind her, giving me a glower for being a dick to his girl.
Flynn doesn’t answer.
“Call him on your phone,” I snap.
Oleg growls. His tongue was cut out, but he’s fully capable of sounding threatening when he wants to.
“Please. It’s very urgent. Nadia is missing.”
Oleg’s expression softens into concern.
Story runs for her phone and returns with it to her ear. “He didn’t answer the first time, but he should pick up if I keep calling.” She ends the call and tries a third time.
When I hear the low, “Whassup,” from the other end, I snatch the phone from her hand.
“This is Adrian. Do you know where Nadia is?”
There’s a pause, and Flynn’s voice comes through more clearly. “What do you mean?”
“She’s gone, and she has my gun.” I can barely choke out the words. “She left her phone in the apartment. I’m afraid” I can’t say it. “Where do you think she’d go?”
There’s silence for what feels like an eternity, and then Flynn snaps, “Oh fuck!” I hear his breath catch and release, and the sound of rustling clothing, then jingling keys.
“What?” I roar.
“I know where she is.” A door slams.
“Tell me now.”
“There was this guy last week.” It sounds like Flynn is jogging. “He came to the burlesque show. He smelled like cigars, and the scent triggered her. Like, the worst I’ve seen. And then later, she wondered if he was The Guy.”
I instantly understand his meaning. Nadia doesn’t like to talk about what happened to her, but she’s said enough. She’s mentioned cigar smoke and the guy. Why in the fuck didn’t she tell me she thought she saw him?
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Oh.” I suddenly realize Nadia isn’t going to kill herself. She’s going to kill him.
“I’m on my way,” Flynn says.
“Where is it?” I shout. I’m already at the elevator, banging the button to go down. Kat’s right behind me, and Story chases us both because I still have her phone.
“At Rue’s. She’s at Rue’s. I’m close. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
We get on the elevator. “I’m on my way.” I thrust the phone at Story just as the doors close.