Now Liev embraces the space around him. It makes my chest ache to feel unwelcome in his home. I’ve been here many times before tonight, but I see the stiffness in his shoulders.
The light from the setting sun spills across the table. It’s been set for dinner, candles already lit, and fish dishes arranged with care. Liev has always loved the ocean, loved anything thatreminds him of the life he built away from the streets. This place reflects that hard-won pride.
Dinner begins stiffly. Conversation skims along the surface. It’s polite and careful, but there is a tension that refuses to loosen. Liev asks more than once what Aly does all day at the plantation, as if I’m keeping her prisoner there. I find ways to remind him that I’m not there often. My duties as CEO of Baranov Tech and in the darker corners of our business keep me away.
Aly sits between us; a fragile buffer. Her smile is a little too tight as she picks at her plate and talks about The Lennox. When Liev moves from appetizers to entrees, the smell of the fish makes the color drain from her face.
“You all right?” I ask her, leaning closer. My hand brushing her back in a way that is meant to steady her.
Liev practically growls. My gaze snaps to him, but beneath the irritation, I see worry.
She swallows and nods, but the movement is jerky. “I think so. It’s just…sorry. My stomach has been unsettled today.”
Liev watches us with a sharpness that borders on hostility, but his concern for her overrides it. “I’m surprised. You’ve always loved fish; any kind of fish. I used to joke you were part mermaid. Are you coming down with something?” His glance my way is accusatory, as if I’m the one who has made her sick somehow.
Her brow furrows and genuine confusion flickers across her face. “I don’t know,” she admits softly. “I just feel a little off. Maybe something else, do you have pasta, or…?”
I pull her plate away without asking and Liev slips into the kitchen to ask the woman who cooks for him to make Aly something else. Alone with Aly, my attention fixes on her pallorand the way she presses a hand to her stomach. She seemed fine on the drive here.
A protective instinct rises fast and unfiltered, and I don’t bother tamping it down. When she takes a careful sip of water and breathes through it, I keep my hand at her back until the tension eases from her shoulders.
“You should probably stop touching me,” she murmurs with a wan smile. “He might think something is going on.”
Neither of us acknowledge that somethingis,in fact, going on. That we’ve broken the rule so many times. I’ve broken the promise I made to her father. We’re both bound for hell in a handbasket.
I’d sell my soul to keep touching and tasting her though. I can never admit that out loud.
Liev comes back into the room and glances at us warily. Managing to keep my hands to myself, we make light conversation around government contracts, shipping routes, and partnering with adjacent industries. Liev seems to relax as we slip into a business conversation. Aly thanks the staff who brings her a dish of pasta and broccoli with butter.
When dinner finally ends, plates cleared and candles burned low, none of us moves. The air hums with unspoken suspicion that has been circling us all night.
It’s Liev who breaks the silence at last. He folds his hands together, eyes never leaving mine, and speaks with a measured calm that does nothing to mask the insistence beneath it.
“Kazimir,” he says, “we should talk more…about the business.”
Alyona doesn’t argue when Liev suggests she go lie down in the sitting room. It signals that she still doesn’t want toknow anything about what we do, even if she has some kind of tentative truce with the truth. She rises slowly, one hand braced on the back of her chair, but her face is still pale. Pale, but determined. As she passes me, her fingers brush my arm, light and deliberate, a silent question threaded through the touch.Is this okay. Am I safe. Are you?
I nod once, it’s barely perceptible, and her shoulders ease as if I’ve lifted a weight from them. She gives her father a polite smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes and disappears down the short hallway. The soft sound of her sandals fading into the quiet of the apartment.
I don’t miss the way Liev’s gaze follows that interaction. It’s sharp and restrained, his jaw tightening again as if he’s grinding his teeth down to stubs. When he looks back at me, the warmth that used to live in his eyes is gone, but it’s replaced by something hard and wounded.
“Balcony,” he says curtly, already turning away.
I follow him out into the evening air. The balcony stretches wide along the waterfront side of the apartment. The glass railing catches the last of the sun and throws it back in fractured gold. We’ve stood out here a hundred times over the years, drinking, smoking, laughing too loudly as we talked about Prague and Moscow, about running barefoot through alleys and stealing bread, about how impossible it felt that we’d crossed an ocean and built something this big. This balcony has heard a lot.
Tonight, it feels like unfamiliar ground.
Liev rests his forearms on the railing, staring out at the boats gliding across the water, and the tourists laughing on the docks below. I stand a few feet away, giving him space. I don’t reallyfeel inclined to offer it, but I know he needs it if this conversation is going to stay verbal.
“You’ve been unavailable,” he finally says, not looking at me. “More than usual.”
I huff a quiet breath. “I’ve been busy trying to figure out what our competition has in mind, but keeping the business running as well.”
“For two months,” he counters, turning to me and cutting his eyes. “That’s not like you, Kaz. Locking yourself in boardrooms. You disappear for days, maybe a week, not months. People notice. Your circle is getting smaller.”
I shrug, deliberately casual. “I had reason. We’ve both been busy, haven’t we?”
He snorts. “You put me on point to secure our routes and liaison with buyers. Me, personally, instead of the men I trust to do the job. Have you forgotten how our world is structured, Kaz?”
