Behind her, the bed looms in the mirror, its vast, unyielding presence framing her. She notices it too—her gaze flickering to the reflection, her lips pressing together like she’s trying to suppress some unspoken thought.
The way she tilts her head, her wide eyes tracing her own reflection, sends a pulse of something raw through me. She doesn’t know I’m watching, but the illusion that she’s looking straight at me feels too real, too charged.
I take another slow sip of cognac, letting the burn center me as I remind myself that this is my space, my control.
Then, abruptly, she looks away, breaking our unintended eye contact through the mirror.
Whatever the fuck that was, it breaks. Hard, and I let out a long breath.
She turns quickly, her flushed cheeks darker now, muttering something I can’t catch as she moves toward the row of doors.
Her hand fumbles with the first one—my weapons cabinet. Locked.Thank God.
The second door, the entrance to my reading room, holds firm under her growing frustration. By the time she reaches the third door—the bathroom—her shoulders slump in visible relief as it clicks open.
I drag a hand down my face, disbelief warring with something I can’t quite name.
“Bozhe moi,” I mutter under my breath. She’s not just intruding; she’s making herself at home.
The sound of water hissing to life echoes through the walls, followed by the faint rustle of clothes hitting the floor. My throat tightens. My mind fills in the gaps—her naked body under the spray of my shower.
I should leave. I should walk out of this room, call Arseny, and have her dragged out of here before she causes any more damage—or tempts me into something I’ll regret.
But I don’t move.
Instead, I sit there, my fists curling against the leather armrests as I listen to her muffled voice drifting from the bathroom.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
12
Konstantin
"Yob tvoyu mat’? What the fuck am I even doing?”
The one-way glass reflects my sharp, unsmiling face, keeping the turmoil buried where it belongs. My hidden reading room feels like a trap, too small to contain the tension building in my chest. From here, I can see faint trails of steam drifting in from the open bedroom door. The scent of cedarwood and something sweeter weaves its way into my head.
My fucking soap.
She’s using it. Wrapping herself in my scent like it’s hers to take.
In fifteen years of running the Bratva, I’ve seen some shit. Rival mobsters trying to kill me? Tuesday. International weapons deals gone wrong? Child’s play. But this—this tiny woman breaking into my fortress just to use my shower and talk to my portrait?
Un-fucking-believable.
I take another sip of cognac, the liquid burning a path down my throat. My reflection blinks back at me, equally dumbfounded. For the first time in my life, I have no fucking clue what to do.
Even when Irina disappeared, I didn’t let the cracks show. Alya was barely a year old, a fragile little thing who cried if I wasn’t within arm’s reach. The twins were 3, still stumbling over their words and learning how to navigate the world. They didn’t understand why their mother was gone. She was the kind of mother who handed them off to nannies, who showed up for birthdays with gifts so expensive they didn’t even know what to do with them and left before the candles were blown out.
But Nikolai—he changed.
At first, it was small. A subtle pullback. He stopped asking to be picked up. Stopped following Lev’s lead when it came to the games they made up. His wide, watchful eyes weren’t just curious anymore; they were wary.
I kept things together. I had to. Midnight feedings for Alya, soothing her screams that pierced through the night like knives, never letting her cry too long because it would wake the boys. Lev’s nightmares were another battle—him clinging to me so tightly I could feel his tiny fingers digging into my chest, his little voice shaking as he whispered about monsters I couldn’t fight.
And Nikolai? He didn’t cry. Not once. He just sat there, watching, as if trying to figure me out.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said to him one night when he wouldn’t stop staring at me from across the room. I was kneeling next to Lev’s bed, trying to settle him down, and Nikolai was sitting on the floor, silent, his toy truck clutched in his hand. “You can stop looking at me like that. I’m still here.”
