And tattoos. God, the tattoos. They crawl up from his collar, dark ink stark against his throat. A wolf that seems poised to strike. More ink covers his hands, intricate patterns weaving across his knuckles and fingers.
This man has killed people. I know this the way you know fire burns. It's written in every movement, every breath.
And he's looking at me like I'm already his.
"Vera." His voice is deep, dark honey with gravel underneath. Command in every syllable. "Come in. Close the door."
I don't move. Every survival instinct I possess screamsrun.
My feet betray me. They carry me forward into the room, and I hear the door click shut behind me. Sofia's footsteps retreat down the hall.
She left me. Actually left me alone with him.
"Sit." He gestures to one of the chairs.
The word lands on my shoulders like a physical weight. I open my mouth to refuse, to demand answers, to assert some kind of control over this situation, but my knees are already bending. I sink into the chair before the thought to resist fully forms.
What the hell?
He smiles, slow and satisfied. "Good girl."
Heat blooms in my chest at those two words. Warm and liquid and completely unwelcome. I shove it down hard, burying it under layers of confusion and anger becauseno. I don't like this. Don't like how my muscles unknotted the second he gave me an order. Don't like how some traitorous part of my brain whisperedfinallywhen he told me what to do.
"Who are you?"
"Pyotr Maksimov." He moves closer. Each step deliberate. Each step erasing more of the safe distance between us. "A kapitan of the Volkov Bratva." He stops directly in front of my chair, towering over me. "Your husband."
The word bounces around my skull without landing anywhere that makes sense. "What?"
"Your husband. The man you're going to marry. The man you belong to." He says it the way someone might saythe sky is blueorwater is wet. Simple fact. Inarguable truth.
"I don't—I'm not—" My brain has stopped forming complete sentences.
He pulls papers from his inside jacket pocket, unfolds them, and hands them to me. My fingers shake taking them.
A contract. Dense legal language that swims before my eyes. I force myself to focus, picking out words through the panic. My name. His name.Betrothal.Binding agreement.Consummation upon marriage.
And there, near the bottom:Vera Reznikova agrees to marry Pyotr Maksimov upon university completion OR the death of Mikhail Reznikov, whichever comes first.
The signature beside my name is mine, I recognize the loops of the V and the R, but it's wrong. Shaky. Uncertain. The letters waver like they were written by someone half-asleep.
Or drugged.
The memory crystallizes. Age eighteen. Spring semester. Kitchen table covered in calculus homework. My father brought me tea that tasted too sweet, coating my tongue wrong. The room going soft at the edges, sounds muffled like I was underwater. Papers appearing in front of me that wouldn't hold still long enough to read.
"Just sign here, Verochka. For your university fund."
My hand moving without my permission. Black ink on white paper. His voice sounded far away, reassuring. Safe.
He lied.
"I never agreed to this," I whisper.
"You signed it." He taps the paper with one tattooed finger. "Right there. Your signature. Legal and binding."
"My father drugged me. I didn't know what I was signing."
"Doesn't matter." His voice is absolutely calm. "It's legal. Bratva-enforced. You're mine, Vera. Have been for two years."
