Updated Apr 20, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 2: Fortress
Nadia
Riot moves into her penthouse like he’s staging a military occupation, and Nadia spends the first hour of what she’s already mentally categorizing as ‘the worst decision of her life’ watching him systematically dismantle everything she thought she knew about privacy and personal space.
He starts with the windows—all floor-to-ceiling glass that Nadia specifically chose for the view of downtown Seattle and the sense of openness they provide—and proceeds to evaluate each one with the kind of intense scrutiny usually reserved for bomb disposal, muttering things under his breath about sight lines and firing angles that make Nadia’s stomach clench with renewed awareness that someone actually wants her dead. Then he moves on to the doors, the locks, the ventilation system, the goddamn houseplants that apparently could be hiding surveillance equipment, and by the time he’s finished his initial security assessment, Nadia’s gone from irritated to furious to a kind of numb resignation that feels uncomfortably close to defeat.
“You can’t just rearrange my entire apartment,” she says when she finds him moving her furniture for what seems like the seventh time, dragging her favorite reading chair away from the window and replacing it with a side table that offers significantly less comfortable seating but apparently much better defensive positioning. “I live here. This is my HOME, not some tactical operations center—”
“It’s both now.” Riot doesn’t even look up from whatever he’s doing with the end table, just keeps working with the kind of methodical focus that suggests he’s done this a thousand times before and knows exactly how long it should take. “The chair was a sniper’s dream—backlit by the window, consistent positioning, predictable timing if you sit there every evening like the indentation in the cushion suggests you do. The table provides cover and breaks up the silhouette. You can sit there if you want, but you’ll be doing it behind three inches of steel plate I’m having installed tomorrow.”
Nadia opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again like a fish gasping for air because what the actual fuck is she supposed to say to that? “I don’t want steel plates in my living room.”
“And I don’t want to explain to Marcus why I let you get shot through your favorite reading chair.” He finally straightens up and looks at her, and there’s something in his expression that might be sympathy if it weren’t wrapped in so many layers of professional detachment. “I know this is invasive. I know you hate having me here, hate having your life disrupted, hate feeling like you’ve lost control of your own space. But Viktor Antonov killed your parents and now he wants to kill you, and I’m not going to let that happen, which means you’re going to have to accept some temporary inconvenience in exchange for staying alive.”
The mention of her parents hits like a fist to the solar plexus, and Nadia has to physically force herself not to flinch because she will not give this man the satisfaction of seeing her break. “Fine. Move the furniture. Install your steel plates. Turn my home into Fort Knox if that’s what it takes. But you’re not sleeping in my bedroom, and that’s non-negotiable.”
“I’m sleeping in the room next to yours with the door open.” He says it like it’s already decided, which it probably is because Riot seems like the kind of man who makes decisions and then informs people of them as a courtesy rather than actually seeking input. “I need sight lines to your door and clear access if something goes wrong during the night.”
“Absolutely not—”
“Ms. Volkov.” He crosses his arms over his chest, which should look defensive but instead just makes him look even larger and more immovable. “There’s a bed in the guest room adjacent to yours. I’ll be sleeping there, and I’ll be keeping the door open so I can respond immediately if someone tries to kill you while you’re unconscious. You can accept that, or you can accept me sleeping on the floor outside your bedroom door, or you can accept me sleeping IN your bedroom on the chair I just moved away from the window. Your choice, but those are the only options on the table.”
Nadia wants to throw something at his infuriatingly calm face, wants to scream that this is HER apartment and HER life and she doesn’t need some overbearing mercenary with a savior complex telling her where she’s allowed to feel safe. But she’s also exhausted from the adrenaline crash of the morning’s death threat and the logistical nightmare of being essentially kidnapped from her own office, and she can recognize a battle she’s not going to win when she sees one.
“Guest room,” she concedes through gritted teeth. “Door open. But if I catch you watching me sleep like some kind of creepy stalker, I’m firing you and taking my chances with Viktor.”
“Noted.” He turns back to his furniture arrangements like the conversation is over, and Nadia realizes with sinking certainty that this is going to be her life for the foreseeable future—arguing with a brick wall who happens to be armed and legally empowered to overrule her on matters of personal safety.
🔥
By evening, Nadia’s penthouse looks like a cross between its former self and a military bunker, and she’s developed what feels like a permanent headache from grinding her teeth every time Riot makes another unilateral decision about her living space.
He cooks dinner—because of course he cooks, probably some SEAL survival skill involving MREs and questionable water sources—and produces an actually delicious steak with roasted vegetables that Nadia would compliment if she weren’t committed to maintaining her hostility on principle. Instead, she eats in silence at her dining table while Riot stands by the window, eating his own meal without sitting down because apparently relaxing is against his personal code of honor or something equally ridiculous.
“You know you’re allowed to sit, right?” Nadia finally says when the silence becomes more uncomfortable than her desire to avoid conversation. “I’m not going to spontaneously combust if you stop treating dinner like a military operation.”
“I can see the approaches better standing up.” He doesn’t turn around, just keeps his attention fixed on the windows and whatever threats he’s imagining might come crashing through them at any moment. “And I’m used to eating on my feet. Sitting makes me twitchy.”
“Everything makes you twitchy.”
“Not twitchy. Alert. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” Nadia sets down her fork with perhaps more force than necessary. “Because from where I’m sitting, you look like a man who expects an attack at any moment and can’t remember how to exist like a normal human being.”
That gets his attention. He turns to look at her with those dark, unreadable eyes, and for a moment Nadia thinks she might have actually offended him, which would require him to have feelings beyond ‘tactical assessment’ and ‘professional detachment.’ But then his expression shifts into something that might be amusement, and he says, “I haven’t been a normal human being since I enlisted at eighteen. Occupational hazard.”
“And that doesn’t bother you? Never relaxing, never feeling safe, never—” She stops because she’s not sure where she’s going with this, not sure why she suddenly cares about the psychological wellbeing of a man she met approximately eight hours ago and has been actively despising for seven of them.
“Feeling safe is overrated when someone’s actively trying to kill you,” Riot says, which is probably meant to be reassuring but lands somewhere closer to ominous. “And I’m plenty relaxed. You should see me when I’m actually tense.”
Despite herself, despite her commitment to hating everything about this situation, Nadia laughs—sharp and startled and over before she can stop it. “That’s terrifying.”
“Probably.” He almost smiles again, that same barely-there quirk that makes him look fractionally less like a killing machine and marginally more like a human being. “Finish your dinner. You need to maintain your strength, and I’m guessing you didn’t eat lunch based on the way you’re destroying that steak.”
He’s right, which is annoying, so Nadia doesn’t dignify it with a response and just goes back to eating while Riot returns his attention to the windows and the imaginary threats lurking in the Seattle skyline.
🔥
Later, after Nadia’s retreated to her bedroom and changed into the silk pajamas she specifically chose because they’re comfortable and absolutely not because they make her feel like she’s reclaiming some small piece of feminine power in a day that’s been all about masculine control, she finds Riot standing in her doorway.
Not inside her room, exactly, but close enough that she can see him clearly in the soft light from her bedside lamp, and when she looks up from the book she was pretending to read, he’s already watching her with that intense, assessing gaze that makes her skin prickle with awareness.
“I don’t remember inviting you to stand there and stare at me,” Nadia says, proud of how steady her voice sounds when her heart is doing something complicated and entirely inappropriate in her chest.
“Just doing a final security check before I turn in.” His voice is rougher than usual, scraped raw in a way that makes her think maybe he’s not as unaffected by this situation as he pretends to be. “Making sure all the locks are engaged, the perimeter alarms are set, the windows are secured.”
“And you need to do that from my bedroom doorway?”
“I need to do that everywhere.” But he doesn’t move, doesn’t retreat back to the guest room like a normal person would, just keeps standing there like he’s waiting for something neither of them can name. “Get some sleep, Ms. Volkov. Tomorrow we’re establishing protocols for your office, your transportation, and your personal security procedures, which means you’re going to need all your energy for arguing with me.”
“Looking forward to it,” Nadia says, which is absolutely a lie because she’s dreading tomorrow almost as much as she’s dreading the way her body is responding to having Riot’s attention focused on her like this—all heat and tension and something that feels dangerously close to attraction.
He must see something in her expression because his eyes narrow fractionally, and for a heartbeat Nadia thinks he’s going to say something about the elephant in the room, about the fact that they’ve been circling each other all day like predators trying to decide if they want to fight or fuck. But instead he just nods once, sharp and final, and disappears back into the guest room with the door left conspicuously open between them.
Nadia stares at the empty doorway for a long moment, listening to the sounds of Riot settling in for the night—boots being removed, weapons being checked and stored within easy reach, the creak of bedsprings under considerable weight. She should be furious about the invasion of privacy, the loss of autonomy, the fact that a dangerous stranger is sleeping fifteen feet away with full access to her bedroom.
Instead, what she feels is safer than she has in weeks, and she hates that almost as much as she’s starting to suspect she doesn’t actually hate Riot at all.
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