23: Fire

VIKTOR

Breakfast was surprisingly peaceful especially because Natalia wasn’t at the table with us.

I didn’t ask where she was, to be honest I didn’t really care.

Anya talked the entire time, happily switching from Russian to scattered English words she was picking up faster than I expected. She talked enough for 3 people.

Katherine who sat across from me like a woman who had nothing on her conscience laughed at the things Anya said and at all the right times too.

I pretended to focus on my coffee, unfortunately my eyes had a mind of it’s own.

My eyes kept drifting to Katherine and she caught me staring. I wondered what she was thinking of me. Especially after that night.

I tried my best to stay focused on the different types of food in front of me, all to no avail.

She looked more like the food I wanted to eat.

Fuck.

I can’t be thinking of that now. It would be hard to leave the table if my cock decided to get erect. These days my body decides to go against me. I can barely even control my own thoughts whenever I was around her.

I looked at Romanov who was standing at one corner of the dining room and he smiled.

He had noticed. Of course he had.

Romanov was basically the only person left from my childhood. He started working with me from a very young age too.

Anya finally finished eating and excused herself from the table making the silence between me and Katherine even worse.

Luckily Yuri came with something that needed my attention and Katherine picked up her coffee cup excusing herself from the table.

She smiled at Yuri before leaving. I looked between her and Yuri wondering what the smile was about.

Yuri said nothing.

___________________

By evening I watched how Katherine left to visit her Grandmother and how she came back before sunset.

She would always go to her house to visit whenever her schedule with Anya allowed it.

Watching her every move through the cameras in the house whenever I could was no longer something new to me.

I told myself that it was for security, which was not entirely a lie.

She moved through the front entrance, said something to the guard that made him almost smile before wandering through the ground floor with enough energy for someone who had just been out.

What exactly did she tell the guard? And why did she smile at Yuri this morning too?

Even Romanov doesn’t bother me about how letting a private investigator into the house was the most dangerous thing I could have ever done.

How in the world is she cozying up to all of my people.

I looked at Romanov who was standing beside me and he raised a brow, wondering why I was looking at him.

I turned back to the cameras and saw she was still in sight. The only places in the house that had no cameras are the rooms. Although I had bugged hers with an audio device. She hadn’t said one thing to incriminate herself.

If she wasn't talking to her grandmother on the phone, she would be talking to Gabriella. Her best friend, who sounded familiar like I knew her.

Her life was pretty boring to say the least. She had not gotten a new boyfriend.

Good.

Her figure moved through the cameras and I watched how she slowly came to a stop at the front of my office.

The door was slightly opened. She looked around before slipping into the office.

I leaned forward in my chair.

She moved around the desk carefully, picking a document from it. She looked at it for a moment before setting it back down, exactly how it was placed.

Then she brought out her phone and took pictures of all of them, one after the other.

“Should we stop her?” Romanov asked.

“No”

“Isn’t those documents incriminating to us?” He said after looking at the screen and back at me.

I smiled.

“That’s what I want her to think”

Romanov was quiet for a moment before speaking again.

“Do you really think she’ll take the bait?”

“She already has” I said with a bit of disappointment in my tone.

What did I expect really?

She was sent here to destroy me. Did I really think she’d have a change of heart after staying here for just a month?

When she was done she walked out of the office like she had never been there before.

She finally disappeared out of the camera’s sight and into her room.

I sat quietly in my chair for two minutes… thinking.

“She would want to submit those pictures to someone tomorrow, I want you to follow her when she leaves the house” I said to Romanov before I got up and walked out of the room we were in.

I wanted to listen in on what she would probably be saying and to who.

I walked straight to my room and brought out the audio feedback. Even Romanov didn't know I bugged her room.

I put the earpiece in my ear and listened in.

There was nothing.

Just the sound of running water, sheets and breathing.

She was probably fast asleep. That was what I thought before I heard her giggling.

It took me a while to figure out that she was reading a book. She had read more books than the owner of the library.

I listened to her, laugh, curse and talk to herself before I finally removed the earpiece from my ears and decided to do some work.

When I was done it was already past midnight. I opened my fridge for a bottle of water but it was all filled with alcohol.

I sighed and basically jogged downstairs to find a bottle of water from the kitchen only to find Katherine.

She was in a short red nightwear.

“Are you done staring?” she asked and I froze.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I thought everyone would be asleep” she said not answering my question.

“I was about to say the same thing” I folded my hands.

Who in God’s name cooks in the middle of the night?

Why is she always putting something in her mouth at ungodly hours.

Makes me think of what else can fit into her mouth.

“I was hungry”

“So you decided to cook a full meal?”

She gave me an awkward smile.

Before I could guess what she was making, she reached for a bottle of wine from the counter.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“It says to add red wine”

Before I could blink she poured a generous amount of wine directly into the hot frying pan and it caught fire.

My body froze.

Fire.

I was no longer standing in the kitchen, I was back to 18 years ago.

Smoke filled my lungs.

My mother’s and sister’s screams echoed.

The heat, the smell, the sound of wood collapsing.

I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything.

I couldn’t save them.

“Viktor...”

“Viktor are you okay?” Katherine’s voice pulled me out.

She looked at me terrified. She had turned off the burner.

I realized I was shaking.

Fuck.

“I’m fine” I tried to sound firm.

“You don’t look fine to me”

“I said…” my voice got higher “I’m fine”