I laugh, but it sounds brittle. “It was supposed to be one night. Then it became two. Then I ran. I didn’t know how to find him, and I didn’t want him to find me.”
“And now you’re here,” She shakes her head. “So what happened? You just…bumped into him in Boston?”
“On a plane,” I say. “First class. He was there. With me. With us.”
“So you saw him. Again. And…?”
“And I made a series of bad decisions in a very short time,” I say. I don’t tell her the part where we had wild sex in the bathroom. Something tells me that she wouldn’t approve. “We talked. We…caught up. It got complicated fast.”
“Define complicated.”
“There was a murder on the plane,” I say instead.
That shuts her up.
“You’re joking,” she says.
“I’m not.”
She stares at me. “Like, actual dead person?”
“Actual dead person,” I say. “Security, diversion, Boston instead of New York. It was…a lot.”
Maya is quiet for a few seconds, processing. “And hotel guy was just…chilling in first class while someone died on his plane.”
“He knew the victim,” I say. “They’d fought before. Publicly.” I rub my temples. “He’s not just some rich guy, Maya. Do you remember I told you he felt…dangerous?”
“You said he had ‘I own the building, not the room’ energy,” she says. “And that his smile made you think of crime novels.”
“Yeah,” I say faintly. “That part wasn’t a metaphor.”
Maya pulls up at a light, looks both ways, then looks at me. “Bella. Start at the start.”
I grip my knees. “His name is Aleksander Antonov. His family is…involved. Russian. Old money, old power, old something. He told me straight out he works for the Bratva.”
She blinks. “I’m sorry, the what now?”
“Russian organized crime. The real one, not Netflix.”
Maya lets out a low breath, then barks a disbelieving laugh. “So you’re telling me the guy who gave you the best sex of your life is also an actual mafia guy.” She’s quiet for a beat. “Oh my god.”
I tell her how he pulled strings to get us through that mess with the dead man on board. How there was a car waiting. How he carried Lily like she weighed nothing. How he told me the truth in that hotel suite and the world tilted.
I tell her about the shooting on the highway, the glass exploding, his body over ours like a shield, the way he moved like he’d done it before. Too many times. I tell her about the sticker on his sleeve and how domestically absurd it all looked for five minutes in that diner.
I don’t tell her every detail. Not the way he tasted between my thighs. Not the way my name sounded on his tongue when he was inside me. Some things I can’t say out loud without falling apart.
But she’s not stupid. She hears it in the spaces I leave.
When I’m done, my throat is dry and my hands ache from how hard I’ve been twisting them in my lap.
Maya exhales through her teeth. “So he’s not just some rich guy with a mysterious past.”
“No,” I say.
“He’s…mafia,” she says carefully.
I nod, feeling ridiculous saying it out loud. “Yeah.”
