Updated Apr 20, 2026 • ~9 min read
Chapter 3: The Wall
Nadia
One week of living with Riot Hawke, and Nadia is approximately seventy-two hours away from committing homicide, which is ironic considering he’s supposed to be preventing her murder rather than driving her to become a murderer herself.
The problem isn’t that he’s bad at his job—if anything, he’s horrifyingly competent, turning her previously comfortable life into a series of security protocols and threat assessments that make going to the bathroom feel like a covert military operation. The problem is that he’s EVERYWHERE, a constant shadow that follows her from bedroom to kitchen to home office, watching her with those dark, assessing eyes like he’s cataloging every movement for some future tactical briefing. And the worst part, the absolutely infuriating part that Nadia refuses to examine too closely, is that she’s starting to notice things about him that have nothing to do with his professional capabilities and everything to do with the way his tactical shirt stretches across his shoulders when he’s checking the perimeter or the rough timbre of his voice first thing in the morning before he’s fully awake.
She’s attracted to him, which is both inconvenient and deeply annoying, and she’s dealing with it by picking fights over increasingly petty things because at least anger is an emotion she knows how to process.
“You can’t seriously expect me to cancel my dinner with Claire,” Nadia says on Day Seven of her captivity, standing in her living room with her arms crossed and her patience worn down to a thread so thin it’s practically transparent. “She’s my assistant, she’s been with me for three years, and we have dinner together every Thursday because that’s what normal people do when they have actual lives outside of tactical paranoia—”
“She can come here,” Riot interrupts without looking up from the security tablet he’s been glued to for the past hour, probably monitoring camera feeds or running background checks or doing whatever it is hypervigilant bodyguards do when they’re not actively preventing assassination attempts. “I’ll order in from wherever you want, do a full sweep of the food for contaminants, and you can have your dinner in a controlled environment where I can actually protect you if something goes wrong.”
“Or—and I know this is a radical concept—I could go to an actual restaurant like a functional human being instead of treating social interaction like a hostage negotiation.”
“No.” Still not looking at her, which makes Nadia want to throw the tablet out the window just to get his attention.
“You can’t just say no—”
“I can and I am.” He finally looks up, and there’s something dangerous in his expression, something that makes her breath catch despite her fury. “A restaurant means public exposure, multiple entry points, civilians who could be collateral damage if someone decides to take a shot at you over the appetizers. You want to see your friend? Fine. She comes here, I secure the location, and nobody dies. Non-negotiable.”
“Everything with you is non-negotiable!”
“Because you keep trying to negotiate things that will get you killed!” His voice rises for the first time since they met, sharp enough that Nadia actually takes a step back before she can stop herself. “Do you have any idea how many ways there are to kill someone in a public restaurant? Do you understand that Viktor Antonov has professional assassins on his payroll who could put a bullet in your head from three buildings away while you’re enjoying your overpriced pasta? I’m not being paranoid, Ms. Volkov—I’m being REALISTIC about the fact that a very dangerous man wants you dead and I’m the only thing standing between you and a closed-casket funeral!”
“Don’t call me Ms. Volkov when you’re yelling at me,” Nadia snaps back, her own voice pitched high with frustration and something else, something heated and electric that’s been building between them all week. “And don’t act like I’m some naive idiot who doesn’t understand the danger—I testified against Viktor when I was sixteen, I’ve been living with this threat for twelve years, I know EXACTLY how real it is!”
“Then why do you keep fighting me on basic security protocols?” He’s moved closer without her noticing, close enough that she can see the muscle jumping in his jaw, the tension coiled through his shoulders like he’s restraining himself from physically shaking sense into her. “Why do you insist on making my job harder when all I’m trying to do is keep you alive?”
“Because I’m not going to let fear control my life!” The words explode out of her, raw and honest and more vulnerable than she intended. “I didn’t survive witness protection and build a billion-dollar company just to hide in my apartment like a frightened child because some mob boss wants revenge. If I can’t live my life on my own terms, then what’s the point of staying alive?”
Riot stares at her, his chest heaving with barely controlled emotion, and for a moment Nadia thinks he’s going to yell again, going to double down on his paranoid security measures and his unilateral decisions. Instead, he says something that catches her completely off guard: “You’re the most infuriating woman I’ve ever met.”
“Good. Maybe now you understand what it’s like living with you.”
“Stubborn, reckless, absolutely determined to give me a heart attack—”
“Controlling, paranoid, completely incapable of treating me like an adult who can make her own decisions—”
“I treat you exactly like what you are—a brilliant, successful woman with terrible self-preservation instincts who needs someone to keep her from getting killed while she’s busy being brilliant and successful!”
They’re shouting now, close enough that Nadia can feel the heat radiating off his body, see the way his pupils have dilated until his eyes are almost black, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knows this is getting out of control but she can’t seem to STOP, can’t seem to do anything except stand there and match his intensity with her own.
“You don’t get to decide what my self-preservation instincts should be—”
“Someone has to, because yours are clearly broken—”
“MY LIFE, MY CHOICE—”
He kisses her.
Just grabs her face in both hands and crashes his mouth down onto hers with enough force that she staggers backward until her spine hits the wall, and then he’s everywhere—pressing her into the plaster with the solid weight of his body, one hand tangled in her hair and the other splayed across her lower back, kissing her like he’s been thinking about it for days and finally ran out of reasons to resist.
Nadia should push him away, should slap him or knee him in the groin or do any of the dozen things she knows about defending herself against unwanted advances. Instead, she kisses him back with the same desperate fury she’s been channeling into arguments all week, her hands fisting in his tactical shirt and dragging him even closer, and somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, fighting turns into something else entirely.
He kisses like he does everything—intensely, thoroughly, with absolute focus and devastating competence—and Nadia hears herself make a sound that’s half-gasp and half-moan before she can stop it. His tongue traces the seam of her lips and she opens for him immediately, lets him lick into her mouth with the kind of possessive hunger that makes her knees go weak, and when he breaks away just long enough to drag his mouth down the column of her throat, she tips her head back and thinks: *Oh, I’m in so much trouble.*
“Fuck,” Riot breathes against her pulse point, sounding as wrecked as she feels. “Fuck, this is—we shouldn’t—”
“Agreed,” Nadia manages, even though she’s already pulling him back for another kiss because apparently her brain has completely disconnected from her body’s decision-making processes. “Completely inappropriate, totally unprofessional—”
“You’re my client—”
“And you’re supposed to be protecting me—”
“I am protecting you,” he growls, and then he’s kissing her again, harder this time, desperate enough that she can feel it in the way his hands are shaking slightly where they’re pressed against her skin. “From everyone except myself, apparently.”
They break apart simultaneously, both breathing hard, staring at each other with matching expressions of shock and horror and lingering heat that makes Nadia’s stomach clench with want.
“That can’t happen again,” Riot says, his voice rough and unsteady in a way she’s never heard from him before.
“Agreed.” Nadia’s pretty sure she’s never agreed with anything more in her entire life, even though parts of her body are staging a vocal protest about that decision. “Completely out of line. We’re both adults, we can pretend this never happened and go back to a normal professional relationship—”
“Nothing about this situation is normal or professional.”
“Then we make it professional starting now.” She straightens her shirt with hands that won’t quite stop trembling, tries to reassemble some semblance of dignity despite the fact that her lips are swollen and her hair is a mess and she’s pretty sure she has a mark on her neck from where his mouth was doing absolutely sinful things approximately thirty seconds ago. “You’re my bodyguard. I’m your client. What just happened was a momentary lapse in judgment brought on by stress and proximity, and it won’t happen again.”
“Right. Won’t happen again.” He takes a deliberate step back, putting distance between them that feels simultaneously necessary and devastating. “I’ll… I need to check the perimeter.”
He disappears toward the security panel like his life depends on it, and Nadia slides down the wall until she’s sitting on her expensive hardwood floor, trying to catch her breath and failing completely.
Because that kiss just changed everything, and they both know it.
The tension that’s been simmering between them all week isn’t going to magically disappear just because they’ve agreed to ignore it—if anything, now that she knows what he tastes like, how he feels pressed against her, the sound he makes when she bites his lower lip, it’s going to be approximately one thousand times worse.
Nadia drops her head into her hands and thinks: *I’m absolutely fucked.*
In more ways than one.
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