"No. She doesn't."
We work in silence for a while, building the puzzle piece by piece. Outside, the world continues. Traffic, voices, life moving forward without caring about my past or my mistakes, or the fact that I can still feel Isabelle Davenport's skin under my hands.
I used to be The Wolf. Bratva enforcer, the guy you called when someone needed to disappear permanently. I earned my freedom by saving the Pakhan's nephew from a rival family's ambush. I took three bullets doing it, then walked away from that life covered in blood and promises I intended to keep.
But Elena's right about one thing.
You don't just retire from being a monster.
"Papa?"
"Hmm?"
"The lady whose perfume you smell like." Mila fits another piece into place without looking at me. "Is she nice?"
My hands still. "What makes you think I smell like perfume?"
"Mama said. And you do. It's pretty, like flowers and vanilla."
Isabelle's scent. Still clinging to my skin despite the shower, despite trying to wash her off.
"She's..." I search for words. "Complicated."
"Complicated like Mama?"
"Complicated like a puzzle with missing pieces."
Mila considers this, then nods like it makes perfect sense, because to her, everything is a puzzle. "Will I meet her?"
"No." The word comes out too fast, too firm. "It was just one night,ptichka. Nothing serious."
But even as I say it, I know I'm lying.
Because Isabelle Davenport, with her blue eyes and raw-edged grief, with her desperate need to forget, and her dangerous taste in men, is not just one night.
She's trouble.
The kind that gets under your skin and stays there.
And trouble has always had a way of finding me.
Or maybe I have a way of finding it.
Either way, I'm fucked.
5
Izzy
"I need you to marry me."
The words hang in the air of Sergei's office like a grenade with the pin pulled. He's sitting behind a sleek desk that doesn't match the rest of the industrial space, all exposed brick and steel beams, the kind of place that screams,I could kill you here and no one would hear you scream.His security company operates out of a converted warehouse in Brooklyn, far from Manhattan's polished towers and their polished lies.
Those slate-grey eyes pin me in place. He doesn't blink. Doesn't move. The silence stretches until my palms start sweating against my Birkin.
"You're insane," he finally says.
"Probably." I shift in the uncomfortable metal chair across from him, suddenly aware of how stupid this sounds. How desperate I look, showing up at his office three days after sleeping with him,making demands like I have any right to anything except the memory of his hands on my skin. "But I'm also serious."
