***
The next morning, I wake up tangled in his arms, feeling safer than I have in years. The peace is so complete, it feels fragile, like a soap bubble.
Then, a sharp buzz cuts through the silence. The intercom.
Igor’s body tenses beside me. He slips from the bed, pulling on a pair of trousers, and crosses to the wall panel. “Da?”
I can’t hear the voice on the other end, but I see the change in him. His shoulders stiffen. His jaw sets into a hard line of granite. A cold, quiet fury radiates from him. After a moment, he speaks a single, dismissive word in Russian and cuts the connection.
The silence that follows is heavy. Wrong.
“Who was that?” I ask, sitting up, the sheets pooling around my waist.
He turns, his face a mask of indifference, but his eyes are like chips of ice. “No one.”
“Igor.”
He walks to the window, staring out at the manicured grounds. “I said it is unimportant.”
“It’s nine in the morning,” I press, my own anger starting to simmer. “And deliveries don’t make you look like you’re about to execute someone. Who was at the gate?”
He’s silent for a long moment. “Daniel,” he finally grinds out.
The name hits me. Daniel? My friend? How did he even find this place? A dozen questions swirl in my head, but one feeling rises above them all: fury. Not at Daniel, but at the man who just dismissed him without a word to me.
“And you sent him away?” I demand, throwing back the covers and standing. “Without even asking me?”
“You don’t need to be bothered.”
“Bothered?” The word is so condescending my jaw sets hard. “He’s my friend! You don’t get to decide who I see. I won’t be a prisoner here.”
He turns on me, his control snapping. “No,” he stalks toward me, his voice a low, dangerous growl. “You won’t be a prisoner. But you’ll be my fucking wife. And my wife doesn’t have anything to do with some man who is not her husband.”
“He’s a friend,” I snap, standing my ground as he invades my space.
“My wife does not have friends.” The declaration is absolute, a law handed down from a king.
I stare at him, incredulous. “Then you shouldn’t either.”
“I don’t,” he says, his voice flat and cold. “I have family. That’s all.”
The certainty in his voice, the sheer isolation of his world, chills me to the bone. The safety I felt in his arms last night feels like a lie, a gilded cage snapping shut.
“What if family isn’t enough?” I ask quietly but aim at the very heart of his world.
His face shutters. A muscle in his jaw leaps. For a second, I see a flicker of something raw—doubt, maybe even fear—before it’s gone, buried under layers of steel.
“It had better fucking be,” he snarls. And with that, he turns and storms out of the room, the door slamming behind him with a crack that splinters my newfound peace.
Igor
Thecoffeeinmymug is as cold, black, and bitter as my mood. I stare down at the map spread across the desk in my office at the shipping yard. I’d rather be in bed with my wife, but she’s pretending to freeze me out, and I’m pretending to let her. It’s been forty-eight hours of our personal cold war, and my cock says I’m losing.
I focus on the red marker slashes across the Southern District. The Southern District is supposed to be neutral ground, a buffer zone, but the latest reports show Lepin is moving product through the scenic routes. He’s testing the fences. He’s trying to expand into our territory of the city. Like a rat looking for a hole in the wall, and I’m going to have to burn the rat out.
I rub a hand over my face, the stubble scratching against my palm. This should be a slice of cake. My mind is supposed to be a steel trap of logistics and counter-moves. But today, the trap is rusted shut. My mind keeps drifting back to the master suite. To Aria.
I hated leaving her on bad terms. Walking out while she looked at me with that mixture of hurt and defiance felt like swallowing glass. But like any other man, I have to go to work. The empire doesn’t pause for marital disputes, even if my chest feels like a hollowed-out cavity.
