I leaned into his touch, letting Advisor Sophie fade just slightly. Not all the way to Little—I couldn't go there yet, not when I was still wearing my tailored trousers and thinking about offshore accounts. But enough to be just Sophie. Just me.
"Did I really do good?" The question came out smaller than I meant it to.
"Baby girl." His thumbs stroked my cheekbones. "You did perfect."
Heat rolled through me. Fast. Sharp. I felt the shift in my body the way I felt music in my bones—one beat, then another, then the rush that meant I was about to fly.
“Show me?” I asked, voice smaller. Not Little. Just soft. Wanting.
His eyes darkened. “What do you want me to show you?”
“That I did perfect.” I swallowed. “That you’re proud.”
His hand slid down my throat to the first button of my blouse. He paused. Waiting. I gave him a tiny nod. Permission. The button slipped loose. Then the next. His fingers were steady. Precise. He opened me like a present he already owned.
“You stand there, command a room, break a syndicate with a spreadsheet—” His mouth brushed my jaw. Not a kiss. A claim. “—and then you ask so sweet.”
His fingers parted the last button and the gray blouse fell open. Cool air kissed my skin. His gaze tracked down, slow and deliberate, like he was reading a page he’d authored.
He tugged the blouse from my shoulders. It slid down my arms and pooled at my wrists, caught by the cuffs. He didn’t remove it. He left me bound by my own clothing, sleeves tugged high so the fabric pinned my elbows back just enough to make my chest lift.
“Hands on the table,” he said.
I flattened my palms on the mahogany. The wood felt warm from the sun. Solid. Real. My tablet still glowed beside my fingers, numbers frozen mid-cell like they were holding their breath for me.
He stepped behind me. I felt him before I saw him—heat and authority, the weight of his attention like a hand between my shoulder blades. His knuckles skimmed down my spine, stopping at the waistband of my trousers. He unhooked them with precise hands, slid the zipper down, and dragged the fabric over my hips. They caught on the curve of my ass and then dropped to my ankles.
And then, to my horror, there was a knock at the door.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “We have to wait. More meetings.”
“Don’t worry, Daddy,” I said. “We’ll have time.”
Somehow,Icamedownfrom my lusty high.
I was in the library. It smelled different now—like my lavender hand cream and the specific brand of tea I kept brewing in the corner, not just old books and Nikolai's sandalwood cologne. I'd claimed this space over three months of organizingfiles and tracking assets, turning it from a room where I'd hidden into a room where I worked. Where I built something that mattered.
I’d just heard that my cousins had arrived at the compound.
Cousins.
The word still felt strange. Foreign. Like trying on clothes that fit perfectly but you'd never expected to own.
Alexei Volkov entered first, his ice-blue eyes scanning the library with the same tactical assessment he probably applied to everything. He'd shed his suit jacket, his white shirt rolled to the elbows in a concession to the warm afternoon. Behind him came Ivan, leaner and quieter, carrying a laptop that was probably running seventeen different programs simultaneously.
"Sophie." Alexei nodded, his gruff voice still sounding weird when he used it to greet me instead of threaten someone. Three months since the cathedral, and I still wasn't used to him saying my name like I was family instead of a problem to solve.
"Alexei. Ivan." I stood, smoothing my blouse even though it didn't need smoothing. Nervous habit. "Thanks for coming. The files I mentioned are pulled up on the main screen."
Nikolai appeared behind them, his hand finding my lower back immediately. The touch was automatic now—his way of grounding both of us, of reminding me he was here, of showing anyone watching that I was his. I leaned into it without thinking, without the self-consciousness that would have made me freeze three months ago.
Ivan claimed one of the leather sofas, his laptop already open, fingers flying across keys. "Show me the discrepancies you found."
We fell into work like we'd been doing this for years instead of months. Like it was normal for the daughter of an exiled Volkov to sit with the current Pakhan and his brother, trackingthe remains of Anton Belyaev's empire through financial records and shipping logs. Like family.
"The final Belyaev warehouses need to be cleared," Alexei said, settling into the other sofa with the kind of stillness that suggested he could explode into violence at any moment but was choosing not to. "Our people have been cataloging inventory, but there are questions about three shipments that came in the week before Anton disappeared."
Disappeared. The polite fiction for what had actually happened—Alexei leading Anton away from the cathedral, the man's hands zip-tied behind his back, his expensive Italian shoes leaving scuff marks on the marble floor. The last anyone outside the inner circle had seen of him was the back of his head as the heavy wooden door closed. Three days later, his passport had been used at a border crossing. A week after that, his accounts in the Caymans had been emptied. Every few months, a postcard from somewhere exotic arrived at his former residence. Life went on as if he still existed somewhere in the world.
