The Don's Innocent Collateral

Chapter 7

"Get her out of here," Nicolai ordered as his cell phone began to ring.

The sharp tone cut through the quiet of the study. Nicolai pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the screen. Something shifted in his face—just a fraction of a tightening jaw, but it was enough. He looked up, his dark eyes finding Lev across the room. There were no words exchanged. Just a look.

Lev was already on his feet. He turned to Amelia, the easy amusement dropping from his expression instantly. He gestured toward the heavy doors. "Let me show you to your room."

"Alright," Amelia breathed, not arguing. She followed him out. Behind her, she heard Nicolai answer the phone, his voice dropping into something low and clipped as the study door swung shut, cutting him off.

The hallway outside was wide. The marble floors felt freezing through her sneakers. Through the tall windows at the far end, she caught a glimpse of the distant cliff line and the dark stretch of ocean churning under the storm.

She hadn't fully registered how large the mansion was until now. Walking through it felt like walking through a museum—a place built purely to intimidate, not to be lived in.

Lev moved at an easy pace beside her, hands in his pockets. He looked like a man who had nowhere better to be at this hour, completely unbothered by the fact that he was wearing hours-old dried blood on his collar.

"So," Lev said, breaking the heavy silence. "How are you doing?"

Amelia let out a breathless laugh. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. Seriously."

"I'm not sure," she said, turning to look at him. "Coming here, having my apartment broken into, signing that blind contract in a diner... and then sitting in a room while a mob boss tells me there are rules on top of everything else." She paused, rubbing her temples. "It's a lot."

"That is a full night," he agreed, nodding slowly.

They turned a corner, and the corridor opened into a wide landing. She caught a glimpse of the foyer far below—the crystal chandelier, the white marble, all of it looking smaller and more deliberate from up here.

"Honestly," Amelia admitted, her voice dropping, "I never expected any of this. I knew signing that contract was a risk. I just didn't know exactly what kind."

"What did you think it was?" Lev asked, glancing down at her.

"I don't know. I thought he was just some rich, eccentric man who needed medical privacy and didn't want questions asked. I thought I would do the job, clear my father's debt, and go back to my life." A heavy pause hung between them. "Clearly not."

Lev made a low sound in his chest that wasn't quite a laugh. "What was your life like? Before all this."

"Not much to tell." Amelia thought about how to summarize twenty-four years of survival. "Small hospital, average pay. My little apartment, my twelve-hour shifts.... That was mostly it." She shrugged, suddenly feeling very small. "Quiet."

"You don't sound like you miss it."

"It's hard to miss quiet when you've been wearing it like a cage." She heard herself say the words out loud and immediately winced. "I didn't mean—"

"No, you did," Lev interrupted gently. "And you're not wrong."

They walked in silence for a long stretch. They turned down another corridor, the windows showing the city lights in the distance, far below the elevated ground the building sat on. From up here, the entire city looked contained.

Amelia thought about the study. She thought about Nicolai's cold voice delivering words like *loose end* and *they are coming for you* with the exact same casual tone other people used to give driving directions.

"The contract," she said, her voice tightening. "What does it actually mean? Not the legal version his lawyer pitched me. The real one."

Lev stopped walking. He took a slow breath, turning to face her.

"The real version is that you are under his protection. In our world, that means you are his responsibility," Lev said straight, offering no polite softening. "There is no clean exit while the threat against you exists. You don't leave until he says it's done." He held her gaze. "I'm not saying that to scare you, sweetheart."

"I know," she said quietly. And she did.

"But it also means nobody in this building touches you. Not because they're good people." Lev gave a dark smile. "Because he won't allow it."

They reached the east wing. The floors transitioned from cold marble to dark hardwood. Lev stopped at a set of double doors near the end of the hall and pushed them open.

"Your room," he announced.

Amelia stepped inside, and her breath caught in her throat.

It was enormous—easily larger than her entire apartment. She stood in the doorway, paralyzed. The far wall was entirely glass, facing the dark water of the ocean.

Her thirty-dollar canvas duffel bag sat on the velvet bench at the foot of the bed. It looked completely wrong against the luxury of the room. It looked like someone had accidentally dropped her pathetic life into somebody else's.

On the nightstand sat a landline phone and a white notecard. Two numbers were written in sharp ink. The kitchen. And one other.

*For medical emergencies only.*

She stared at the writing, then set the card back down.

"Get some sleep," Lev said from the doorway. "Tomorrow will be its own thing."

"Does it get easier?" Amelia asked. She wasn't entirely sure why she was asking him, but he was the only lifeline she had in this place.

Lev actually thought about it. "Some parts do," he finally answered. "Some parts you just get used to carrying." He pushed off the doorframe. "But you'll be alright. I can already tell."

He left, pulling the door shut behind him.

Amelia listened to the room settle around her. She was exhausted in a way that went far past tired, settling into something hollow. She collapsed back onto the mattress without taking off her sneakers and stared at the ceiling.

She could not sleep.

Twenty minutes later, she gave up. Her throat was painfully dry, but the water jug on the dresser was empty. Remembering the rules Nicolai had barked at her, she hesitated. *You stay in your room.* But thirst won out.

She slipped off her shoes and padded silently down the hall in her socks. Finding a small side-bar near the landing, she filled a glass from the tap. She drank half of it standing in the shadows, looking out the window at the rain.

Then, she heard his voice.

Low. Clipped. The lethal tone of someone communicating a final decision.

Amelia froze, pressing her back against the wall. Nicolai was standing somewhere on the floor below, his voice drifting up the open staircase. He was speaking rapid, fluent Russian. The harsh consonants ran together in a dark current. She couldn't understand a single word.

Until he said her name.

*Amelia.*

It was dropped into the middle of the Russian sentence like a heavy weight. Hearing her own name in his gravelly voice made her heart slam against her ribs.

She stood there for exactly one second. Then, terrified he would catch her, she turned around, clutching her glass, and practically ran back to her room.

She shut her door as quietly as possible, scrambled onto the bed, and sat there with her knees pulled to her chest. The glass of water was going warm between her shaking hands.

Then, the knock came.

Three quiet, authoritative raps against the wood.

Amelia’s stomach plummeted. She already knew who it was.

"Come in," she managed to say.

The door opened. Nicolai didn't step inside. He simply stood in the doorframe, his broad shoulders blocking the light from the hallway. He looked at her.

His phone call was finished. His face was entirely composed, back to the unreadable mafia boss. But his dark eyes dropped to the half-empty glass of water in her hands, and a knowing look flashed across his features.

He knew she had left the room.

The air felt incredibly thin.

"You should sleep," Nicolai finally said, his voice a low rumble.

Amelia blinked, gripping the glass tighter. "That's all?"

Something dangerously close to a smirk almost moved across his face, but he buried it.

"Tomorrow will come whether you are ready for it or not," Nicolai warned quietly. He stepped back into the shadows. "And Amelia? The next time you leave your room, assume I already know."

The door clicked shut.

Amelia sat frozen, listening to his deliberate footsteps move down the corridor until she couldn't hear them anymore.

She set the glass on the nightstand next to his emergency phone number. She lay back down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The fear was still there. It hadn't gone anywhere.

But it was different now. It was quieter. Less sharp than it had been an hour ago in the alley, replaced by a strange, terrifying curiosity about the monster sleeping down the hall.

She hated that. She hated it enough to pull the heavy duvet completely over her head like she was twelve years old, hiding from the monsters in the dark.