"You have any idea who is claiming to be your wife?" he asks, too evenly.
"Not officially," I say. "Unless you do." I watch his face carefully, curious whether he landed where I did.
"Oh, I do." He lets out a single laugh, the kind that scrapes on the way up. He glances down the hall anyway and lowers his voice. "She’s not Ana Volcov. She’s—" He swallows. "They call herMetelitsa."
He says it like a prayer and a curse. Something in me stills. I lift an eyebrow. "My Russian’s a little rusty."
"The Blizzard," he explains. "White-out death. Quiet. Suffocating. Beautiful. You don’t see her until it’s too damn late."
Cold settles in my gut, then spreads, sharp and electric. So that’s who she is.
"And in English?" I ask mildly.
"In English, they say it fast and change the subject." He rubs his jaw, straightens a tie that doesn’t need it. "She’s also Grigori Arsenyev’s sister."
There it is. That's the part I figured out when she gave me her little Russian Bratva History 101 lesson. I give a low whistle because Dre needs something to breathearound. My eyes drift back to the corridor where Ana disappeared.
The New York Bratva Pakhan’s sister.Metelitsa.
I grin despite myself. I like the name. Even if, with that red hair, she looks more like a wildfire than a storm. But I saw her at the airport—cold, precise, merciless. Blizzard fits well enough.
Dre doesn’t give me time to settle into it. He barrels on, like he’s afraid of stopping. "And not just his sister. She’s his second. Enforcer. Assassin. Spymaster, whatever the job needs. She was eighteen when she became her father’s enforcer. You know what that means, right?"
I do. I’ve known since I saw the security footage. Since she lied too cleanly. Since she kissed me like she wasn’t afraid of consequences. And still—still—I can’t reconcile any of that with the woman in my guest wing. With Ana. With mywife.
I laugh, low and genuine, and Dre looks at me like I’ve finally snapped.
The universe has a vicious sense of humor. It finally hands me the one woman capable of getting under my skin, and makes her not just a Bratva princess, but a legend with a body count.
"What's her full name?" I ask.
"Records are scrubbed six ways, but internal Bratva files call her Oksana Arsenyev. The rest is a ghost: patronymic redacted, schools blacked out, birth cert gone. Here,some Italians who’ve met her call her La Tempesta di Sangue—the Blood Storm." He meets my eyes. "Boss… she’s a legend."
I exhale, and the room doesn’t get bigger. "You're sure?"
"Cross-checked against three separate sources," Dre says. "Faces matched, scars matched, voiceprint’s a maybe. And her cover?Odd jobsisn’t a lie; it’s just the smallest word for it."
I lean on the back of the chair that she just fucked me on and almost broke, trying to decide if the clawing in my chest is adrenaline, arousal, relief, or the old familiar itch of a mistake turning into a miracle. I like La Tempesta di Sangue a lot better than Metelitsa. It's more fitting.
"She kisses like a Tempesta di Sangue," I say before I can stop myself.
Dre stares. "You kissed her."
That and then some, but he doesn't need to know that. "Then she kneed me in the balls for not asking."
He winces. "She let you live?"
"Debatable."
He blows out a breath, and his edge returns. I never thought I'd see the day when Dre got frazzled. "Look, Metelitsa isn’t just a good operator. She’s the woman other operators blame when their plans die. She has contacts in Mexico who actually talk, a network of informants around the world who are scared to death of her,and a brother who will level states for her. If she’s under our roof, we either just gained a force of nature… or we brought weather inside."
"WeatherI can plan around," I reply thoughtfully. I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince him or me.
He flips his tablet around. The screen shows a quick dossier: grainy stills, a winter range with paper targets that look like they died of embarrassment, a list of ops with black bars where details should be. In the middle—her: younger, colder, the same jade green eyes I keep trying not to think about.
Dre nods once, then bristles again. "I’m not done. There’s more. The Mexican tail number Ana’s guy sent? It hits again south of Creel and ghosts near Guachochi. Plate switch on a convoy we picked up and lost. If Nico’s abductors are on the move, we’re chasing an overland shadow. Yourwife"—he grimaces around the word—"might be the only reason that shadow’s not imaginary."
"She’s not my wife." The lie tastes easy and useless.
