My heart swells a bit at the thought of him being attacked. He seems like a genuinely sweet person who was caught in the wrong place.
“He will be,” Viktor assures me. “He’s been recovering for a little while now, but he needs to take shit easy now.”
As fucked up as the situation is, the reason that Viktor killed the bar owner feels justified to me. In the world of organized crime, I can’t imagine that attempting to kill someone you owe money to goes over well.
“Okay, I understand,” I respond quietly. I shouldn’t excuse it, but I’ve been around so much crime that this doesn’t feel as big a deal as straight-up murder.
Viktor falls silent and begins to move about my apartment, examining every square inch and evaluating the safety of the windows and doors of my ground-floor dwelling. He seems unimpressed, which doesn’t surprise me but gives me a pit of anxiety in my stomach. I wasn’t expecting company. It would at least look presentable had I known Viktor was keeping such close tabs on me.
“You really need to live somewhere safer. Someone like you shouldn’t be in a place like this,” he says, playing with the lock on the living room window and breaking it by accident.
“It’s been broken, not your fault. But you should really reconsider criticizing me for the place I live when I’ve been paying such expensive rent elsewhere,” I say. “With all the rent increases you’ve given me the last few years, I’ve had less and less to spend on my living expenses. My apartment is no exception.”
He stops in his tracks, considering my words. “Let me give you money for a better place then. You need to be safer than this. It’s a miracle nobody’s broken in already.”
What he doesn’t know is I’ve had two break-ins in the past year.
“Absolutely not. The way I live is none of your business,” I reply, feeling a sense of righteous indignation creeping up my spine.
“I’m still allowed to care about you,” he replies defensively, and I have to admit that seeing him so adamant about keeping me safe is a huge turn-on. My exes were the ones who loved living in places like this because it was cheap and easy to find drugs. They never gave a fuck about my safety.
“Well, it isn’t your responsibility to worry about me,” I reply defensively. As attractive as it is that is to me, I can’t help but feel that everything I’ve worked so hard for is being reduced. Even if it isn’t much, I earned all of this myself.
“You can stay with me if you need to. It would be so much safer, and you could save money for a better place,” he suggests.
My face flushes.
Being able to live in a luxury penthouse all the time would change my life astronomically, and having a man around would make me feel so much safer than I feel in this apartment. There’s always a vague unease that I feel when I’m home by myself, and that kind of toxicity would be terrible for the baby.
But we’ll get to that later.
Maybe I’d just stay for a month or two.
“You know what? Fine. I’ll come stay with you,” I relent. I have to admit that I’m excited about the prospect of staying with him for a little while, even if it puts additional pressure on me to hide the pregnancy.
“Perfect, I’ll make arrangements for you and have your lease canceled,” he replies, and I can see behind his stoic exterior that inside, he’s thrilled to have me moving in with him.
This is completely insane. I’m moving in with a killer!