Anastasia

2-progress

"How have you been, my dear? I hadn't heard anything from you all day. Are you okay?" Alex knew better than to be worried about his sister. She was the princess of the most dangerous Russian Mafia, but she was still his sister. She was trained by the best and beloved by the deadliest. He just missed talking to her and thought put a smile on her face.

"I'm sorry, Alex. I got carried away with a project for school. Is everything okay?" He could tell she was asking when she could come back home, but unfortunately, they don't know why or who was coming after her. It has been 6 months since she's been kidnapped and tortured before she escaped. All they could tell was that they wanted to know family secrets, but she held strong, like she was trained to.

"Just like dad," he joked. "When given a task, nothing else exists to you"

"Crazy. I say the same thing about you" she retorted with a smile. It didn't pass her attention that he refused to answer her question.

"I really miss you, Alex. is there anything I can do to aid the search?" she asked quietly. She knew no one around her knew Russian, but she still felt the need to lower her voice.

"No, Annya. Just stay quiet and keep your head down. I can't work if I'm worried about you. I will let you know if we come up with anything" she let out a sigh and ended the conversation.

When she came back in, she saw Sean looking intently at his laptop. The table was cluttered with textbooks, notebooks, and binders as well as their laptops. When he noticed her coming in, he looked up at her with a small smile reaching across his face.

"Russian?" he asked

"Huh?" Annya tried to suppress her panic. What if he was one of the people looking for her? She reached the small of her back to make sure she still had her gun.

"I took it in high school. I don't remember anything other than asking to use the bathroom, but I could tell the accent. I thought you said you were born here" Annya relaxed a bit, but there was still suspicion lingering in her gut.

"I didn't. My family is Russian." she responded making sure she kept any sign of her lie from her voice and face. He nodded, then went back to looking at his textbook. She relaxed and went back to her research.

"Any hobbies?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"No." Her response was cold and abrupt, making sure he knew she had no interest in getting to know each other.

"Come on. It's like pulling teeth with you. We have to work on this thing for the rest of the semester. We might as well get comfortable with each other" that got her attention

"What do you mean, rest of the semester?" rather than an answer, Sean's response was light laughter.

"You really aren't there in the mornings," he chuckled.

"fuuuuck."She groaned and laid her head on the table which made him laugh harder.

After about another hour's worth of work, Sean started getting antsy and Annya wasn't able to take it anymore. Once she started packing up, Sean straightened up so that his chair would be on all fours and his eyes were glued to hers.

"You're leaving?" he asked and Annya couldn't help but notice the emotional change in his voice but chose to ignore it.

"No," she corrected. "We are leaving. I'm dropping you off at home." he stared at her in disbelief. "I don't need to like you, I want to make sure you get home safe. Now, let's go before I change my mind." without another word, Sean quickly shoved everything in his bag and threw it over his shoulder. Annya tried hard to ignore how messy this man's bag must be, but she couldn't help but cringe.