“You were young,” she says after a while. “When you thought the title meant freedom. Did age change your perspective?”
“Yes. I was young and angry about Olga. I thought the chair would make me taller. It made me a wall. I did not like it until I learned what it held up. A legacy of men through the years, working to keep their families and this city safe. I run guns, and I don’t pretend to be innocent about any of that. But I keep the guns out of the wrong hands. It’s not easy?—”
“I never thought it was.”
I lace my fingers with hers. “I do my best to protect innocent people. I don’t always succeed, but I try.”
“You sound tired.”
“I am. Not the kind a bed fixes.”
She nods. She knows that kind.
I watch our reflection slide along dark windows and vanish. The city lifts and dips. The bridge climbs. The river passes under us, black and simple. For a second I imagine stepping over the rail and letting the cold water take everything it can take from me. The thought arrives and leaves. It is not the first time I have thought about that.
But I have work to do. The river can have me when the world does not need me.
Mina shifts. “Do you ever wish you had chosen something else?”
“Every man wishes that at three in the morning. Then he wakes up and does the thing he said he would do. Or he is not a man I would ever trust.”
She looks back out the window. “I do not like that your answer makes sense.”
“I do not like it either.”
I flex my hand and feel the small ache in the knuckles where winter lives now. I roll my shoulders once under the jacket to set the weight the way I want it. The mask I use for this place is an old one. It fits. It takes work to put it on and more work to take it off.
“You should not worry about the boys tonight. Worry is wasted energy, and you’ll need all the energy you can muster in this place.” It is the advice I give and can never heed.
She breathes out through her nose. “I am their mother. Worry is my job.”
“You are more than that.”
She seems to consider it as she stares out the window.
“Once we are inside, you stay with me. If a hand you do not know reaches for you, you do not pull away. You step into it and put your heel on their foot, and then I will break their face, and security will handle the rest.”
She nods. “Understood.”
“No, I’m not sure you do. In Rope, I am the dominant everyone else takes their lead from. I set the tone. Those there will see you as my submissive?—”
“But I’m not.”
“Perception is reality at Rope. My point is, they will see you that way, and some dominants like to believe they can cow any submissive, even one that belongs to someone else. If they touch you or approach you, it is to challenge my claim on you.”
She blinks. “I am your wife, the wife of a pakhan.”
“And yet, there are those with too much ego and not enough sense. My illegal activities are a well-founded rumor here. One I never confirm, nor deny. It gives them plausible deniability. They do not know for certain who I am outside of here. They only know the rumors of it.”
“Why would they come here, if they’re normies who think you’re tied to the Bratva?”
“People like a taste of danger now and then, and attending the BDSM club of a suspected pakhan is its own kink.”
She settles in her seat, taking it all in. “So, they might come at me because they want to challenge you?”
“Weak dominants love to throw their weight around. It’s the behavior of a novice, and a good way to know who is on their game and who is merely a pretender.”
“Then, we’re being bait in two ways tonight.”
