Sasha: Chapter 9

Well. Moye Serdtse kept his promise.

For the next three months, each time I went to the gym, he’d been there. Oftentimes, I felt his presence when I walked around campus, either alone or with Autumn. And I knew it was him. I could feel him like the sun on my skin.

Weird? Fuck yeah.

Stalkerish? Double yes.

Did I tell my brother? Fuck no.

I liked Moye Serdtse. My sixth sense didn’t flare up warning me he’d hurt me. He was safe. Maybe not for the world, but definitely for me.

So I allowed my stalker to become my shadow. The best part, my self-defense skills improved tenfold. He’d even taken me to the gun range and taught me how to shoot. I was good.

Autumn didn’t question my need to go to the gym every day. Some days I even went twice. Moye Serdtse was there. As if on cue, everyone in the gym would disperse every time the two of us were there.

After another round of vigorous self-defense exercise, the two of us sat on the mat drinking the water. His bottle had initials on it too. C.H.

I tilted my head towards it. “Wrong initials?”

“Yeah, they were all out of M and S.”

I scoffed. I didn’t believe him. It was a custom printed sprout lid water bottle by Takeya. Not exactly cheap. In fact, there was nothing cheap about this guy.

“So what do you do for a living?” I asked conversationally as I stretched my legs.

“Nothing interesting.”

“I bet,” I retorted dryly, not believing him. A heartbeat of silence followed and I couldn’t let it go, so I continued with my questions. “So how do you know the Konstantin twins?”

He cocked his eyebrow. “You know who they are?”

I rolled my eyes. “Duh. They own the best malls on the West Coast.”

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t being completely honest but neither was he. I started to wonder if this man wasn’t part of the underworld. He had that air about him, and it would make sense, except I had never heard of that name. Moye Serdtse.

Mentally, I made a note to look up his name. It couldn’t hurt, right?

“So you work out a lot?” I questioned as I switched to my other leg, stretching it and then moved to my shoulders. “You look like you do,” I remarked with a tiny bit of drool possibly showing at the corner of my mouth. I ignored it. Drooling after men was not my hobby.

I rolled my shoulders next. My muscles were getting an intense workout with him. My reflexes became better by the day, and I was getting stronger. It was exactly what I needed. It gave me the confidence that I could defend myself if my father tried to hurt me again.

“How are your studies coming along?” he asked casually, doing his own stretches. He wore black sweatpants and a super-tight white shirt that showcased his amazing body and gave me a glimpse of the ink on his skin. It would seem he was really a big believer in tattoos.

I locked my eyes on his chest, wishing he’d take the shirt off so I could study his ink without any obstacles in my way. Instead my eyes lowered to his hands marked with those fascinating symbols.

“They’re going okay,” I told him. “Autumn, my friend, is a lot more dedicated to it.”

“Don’t you enjoy marketing?” There was nothing but curiosity in his voice.

“I do, but sometimes I wonder what’s the point,” I muttered. “If I’m not able to work in the field at the end of it all.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” he demanded to know.

I shrugged. There was no way I could explain to him something that made sense. Alessio would never let anyone take me or let Father marry me to someone neither one of us approved of. However, Alessio was honest from the get-go. The Russo family had way too many enemies for me to have a normal, average life.

Marriage was a hard pass for me, but it would seem it might be a necessity to survive.

Whatever. I’d think about it when the time came, not now.

“Do you love it?” he questioned and when my eyebrow arched, he elaborated, “Do you love marketing?”

It didn’t surprise me that he remembered. It was something I mentioned the first week I met him. He seemed to recall all our conversations.

I nodded. “I do. As stupid as it sounds, I like the notion of persuading people to look at something.” My lips curved up. “Autumn, she hates it, but she loves photography. She’s really good at it too. One day she’ll take photos, and I’ll blast them across the internet.”

He chuckled. “I look forward to seeing your blast on the internet.”

This time we both laughed.

“I have to leave town,” he said minutes later. My head swished his way and he gave me a heavy look that expressed feelings I couldn’t quite understand. Was he worried about me? “I might be gone for a while, but keep up with the training.”

A strange disappointment settled in my chest. I waited for him to say something else. Anything else.

He didn’t elaborate. And it’d be another three years before I saw him again.