ADDICTION • 𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐱 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑

Y/n shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "No, I have not." It was a lie, however.

He found himself staring at the floor often times they spoke. And when he lifted his own eyes to meet Andrei's green eyes, it was terribly easy to get lost in them. There were times when Y/n had looked at Andrei's face out of fiery indignation, confusion...and all he saw were the eyes of someone who loved him. Someone who loved him for reasons he couldn't fathom.

Now a small smile graced Anna's features. "You are unlucky and lucky to have gained his affections. He would cut down the world for you, but it is precisely because of that you will either find yourself extremely loved, or suffocated."

"You speak like you know him well."

"Well," Anna shrugged her shoulders loosely, "I am a little like him, my dear. Yes, he chose me because of my skill, but he needed someone like him to see his reasoning, his madness...it takes a little bit of craziness to serve someone like him closely. Which begs the question, Y/n, are you mad?"

"Mad? Like angry, or..."

"Crazy," Anna tilted her head. "You seem perfectly normal, truth to be told. Yes, your looks are appealing even to me, but the idea of the Tsar in love, amongst all people...it is baffling to me."

"It is baffling to me too," Y/n muttered under his breath. "I did not ask for this. I am only here to repay my father's debt to the Ivanov Mafia. Once that is paid, I will leave, and surely Andrei's affections would have simmered by then."

"Ah? Your father..." Anna paused. "Oh yes, L/n. You came initially from [country], is that so? But you looked mixed—"

"My mother is from Russia," Y/n said as a way of explanation. "And my father is from [country]."

"That makes sense," Anna soon led Y/n to the greenhouse—the greenhouse that he had been admiring earlier—and sat him down. "But L/n is an extremely familiar name...have I seen you before?"

Y/n paused, letting her words simmer into his mind. Then he opened his mouth to answer.

"Apparently I used to come here as a child. That I used to be friends with Andrei. But—why would I come here? What part of this place seems like a fitting place for a children's playground?"

"—Wait," Anna snapped her fingers, making Y/n flinch because why was that sound so unnecessarily crisp?—"Your last name...your father worked here last time. I remember his name. I was tasked to kill—"

"What?" Y/n interrupted, "my father worked here?"

"On second thoughts, perhaps I wasn't supposed to tell you this..."

Y/n stilled. It seemed that a buzzing, white noise had started to fill his head: he was reeling from her words. No, now it was painful, suffocating noise. In an instance, it seemed like all the air had been sucked brutally out from his lungs.

Liar, he thought. My father is a vile, wretched human being. Yet I do not share the blood of a murderer—!

Y/n thought back to the gaps in his childhood. So many unexplained things.

Then he found himself breathing shakily; his breaths coming out in mottled gasps, punctuated by his quick, desperate attempt to think. Nothing came out but broken syllables in his mind. Break—get out—

Leave.

What was Y/n doing here? He needed to...

He needed—it's a need, not a want—to leave.

"Y/n." Anna's tone was firm, calm. "You didn't know? Your father is in debt because he betrayed the Ivanov Mafia. That—and when I say that, I'm meaning the connections between him and us—is why you came to this place frequently."