His voice matched the rest of him. Low, measured, the voice of someone who never had to raise it to be heard.
"Yes." The word came out steadier than I felt. "Thank you for having me."
He crossed to me. Extended his hand.
I braced for the dominance display—the too-hard grip, the intimidation tactic. Men like this, in my experience, used handshakes as weapons.
His grip was gentle. Firm enough to be real, soft enough to be respectful. The disconnect between his terrifying presence and his careful touch made my brain stutter.
"Maks talks about you constantly," he said. Something almost like humor flickered in those dark eyes. "It's exhausting."
Before I could formulate a response, something enormous and loud descended on me.
"Little bird! Finally!"
Arms wrapped around me—massive arms, attached to a massive chest, belonging to a man who seemed to take up half the foyer with his presence alone. I was lifted off my feet before I could protest, enveloped in cologne and gunpowder and something warm that might have been sandalwood.
Konstantin Besharov, I presumed.
He was laughing as he set me down. A booming sound that rattled the pictures on the walls. His face was scarred—badly,a roadmap of violence etched into his skin—but his smile was genuine, reaching eyes that crinkled with warmth.
"Don't look so scared," he said. "We're harmless."
"Speak for yourself, pussycat." Nikolai's voice was dry as dust, but there was a smile tugging at his mouth. The expression transformed him—made him look younger, less like a weapon and more like a man.
"Okay, fine. We're harmless to you." Konstantin clapped a hand on my shoulder—gently, for him, which still nearly buckled my knees. "Anyone Maks claims is family. That's the rule."
The word landed somewhere deep. Family.
I felt Maks behind me, his warmth at my back, his hand finding mine and squeezing. A silent message: See? I told you.
I was still processing when I finally registered what Nikolai was holding.
A baby.
Tiny, perfect, with her father's dark hair and serious eyes. She was maybe six months old, dressed in soft pink, her small fist wrapped around the collar of Nikolai's shirt. The juxtaposition—this terrifying man, this dangerous pakhan, holding something so small and fragile with such obvious tenderness—made something in my chest twist.
"This is Katerina," Nikolai said. His voice had changed. Softer now. The voice of a father, not a boss. "She doesn't bite. Usually."
"She's beautiful." The words came out automatically, but I meant them. There was something about the baby's solemn gaze, the way she studied me with the same assessing attention as her father.
Nikolai shifted her in his arms, and Katerina's attention moved from my face to somewhere lower. Her chubby fingers reached out—not toward my face, not toward my hair.
Toward my collar.
The leather was hidden beneath my dress. Invisible to anyone who didn't know what to look for. But babies didn't care about visible or invisible. They reached for what interested them.
Her tiny fingers brushed the fabric at my throat. Pressed against the hidden leather underneath.
She couldn't know what she was touching. Couldn't understand what the collar meant, or what it represented, or why the feel of small fingers pressing against that hidden claim made tears prick at my eyes. She was just a baby, curious about texture, about warmth, about the woman standing in her foyer.
But it felt like a blessing anyway.
"She likes you," Konstantin observed. His voice had gone softer too. "That's a good sign. Katya's an excellent judge of character."
"She's six months old." My voice came out rough.
"And already smarter than most people I know."
