Not just to the dangerous silver-haired man who kills for me without hesitation. But to this. The softness underneath. The father who builds safe spaces for his daughter. The man who's trying desperately to be better than what he was.
"Checkmate," Mila announces, triumphant.
Sergei studies the board, then tips his king over in surrender. "Well-played."
"You let me win," she accuses, but she's smiling.
"I taught you well," he corrects. His gaze lifts, finding me in the doorway. Those grey eyes pin me in place, reading the expression on my face in a way that makes his mouth curve slightly. "Izzy, come sit. Mila wants to know if you play."
"Badly," I admit, moving to join them. "Your father will destroy me in three moves."
"Four, maybe," Sergei says. "I'll be gentle."
The way he says gentle makes desire curl through me. Mila resets the board, oblivious to the tension crackling between her father and me.
I take white, make my opening move, and try not to think about how easily I could fall for this. For him. For her. For the lifethey're offering me that's built on lies and violence and might be love, if I'm not careful.
11
Izzy
"I can't sleep."
My voice cuts through the darkness, and I hate how small it sounds. Vulnerable. Like admitting insomnia is admitting defeat.
Sergei's lying beside me—close enough that I can feel heat radiating off him, but far enough so that our bodies aren't touching. The space between us might as well be a chasm. Charged. Dangerous. Begging to be crossed.
We've been like this for over an hour. Both pretending to sleep while hyperaware of every breath, every shift, every moment the sheets rustle and we don't accidentally touch.
This is torture.
Mila's asleep down the hall, her door cracked open the way she likes it. The house is quiet, except for distant traffic and my pulse hammering loud enough that Sergei can probably hear it.
"Neither can I," he finally admits.
I turn onto my side, facing him. Moonlight filters through the blinds, painting silver across his profile. Sharp jaw. Silver threading through dark hair. The scar bisecting his left eyebrow that I traced with my tongue four nights ago.
Don't think about that.
Too late. Already thinking about it.
"Tell me something," I say. "Something real."
He shifts, mirroring my position. Those slate eyes find mine in the shadows. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything. Your Bratva years. What you did. Who you were before Mila and pancakes and this—" I gesture at the bed, the room, the domestic life he's built. "Before you became someone who makes his daughter breakfast."
"That's not a bedtime story."
"I don't want a bedtime story." I move closer. Dangerous. The sheets slip, my tank top—his tank top that I stole from his drawer—rides up, and his eyes drop to exposed skin before he forces them back to my face. "You know everything about me. My inheritance, my family, my dead father. I know nothing, except you kill people without hesitation."
The silence stretches.
I think he's going to deflect. Shut down. Put distance between us.
Then his hand finds mine in the darkness. Fingers threading through mine. Gentle. At odds with everything he is.
"I was fifteen," he says quietly, "when I made my first kill."
