Anya Petrova thought she could finally breathe. Orphaned at seven, she had been sent to live with her uncle in Canada. What should have been a safe home had turned into a nightmare. Her uncle had started assaulting her when she was eight, and the flashes of those dark days never stopped. The trembling never stopped. She had grown up learning to hide her fear and her pain. At nineteen, Anya finally escaped. She stole enough money to get to the airport and boarded the next flight back to Russia. She had won a scholarship to study Arts and Humanities and believed that it was her chance to start over, to be free at last. She was wrong. Because freedom did not always mean safety. Nikolai Volkov was the man everyone feared. Silent, brilliant, and merciless, he moved around the campus with his black cat and said almost nothing to anyone. Rumor had it he was mentally unstable. Others said he was violent. No one knew what he would do next. And the moment his eyes landed on Anya, everything changed forever. He was a force that terrified and mesmerized, a man who could destroy her in ways she never imagined and make her crave it at the same time. Anya had come to Russia hoping to escape her past. What she found was obsession, danger, and a darkness that followed her everywhere she went. The question is whether she can survive it or fall completely under his control.