I feel it when she looks at me across the table. When she passes behind my chair and her fingers trail across my shoulders, light and casual, like touching me is a habit she's already building. When I come home and the house smells like her cooking and her perfume and something warm that I'm starting to think is just her.
It scares the hell out of me.
I'm not built for this. I was built for the other thing. The meetings. The violence. The cold, precise calculation of who owes what and what happens when they don't pay. I was built to be the Orlov who doesn't break, the one Artem sends when something needs handling, the one who walks into a room and everyone goes quiet.
I was not built to stand in my own kitchen watching my wife roll dough and feel my chest ache with something that has no tactical value whatsoever.
But here I am.
A week passes. Then two. The bruise on my cheekbone fades from purple to yellow to nothing, and Kira settles into the house like she was always supposed to be in it. She learns Darya's rhythms and works around them. She fills the pantry with things I didn't know I liked until she cooked them. She finds a throw for the sofa and a rug for the hallway and a set of curtains for the bedroom that block the morning light so I actually sleep past five for the first time in years.
She doesn't push into my study. Doesn't ask about my work. Doesn't flinch when I come home tense and quiet and needing twenty minutes of silence before I can form a sentence. She just exists in my space, warm and steady and patient, and she gives me room to be whatever I am on any given night.
And at night, in our bed, she gives me everything else.
She's learning me the way she learned my kitchen. Mapping what makes me groan, what makes me grip the sheets, what makes my control slip sideways. She's bolder now than she was that first night. She reaches for me in the dark without hesitation, slides her body against mine, whispers things against my throat that make my blood run hot.
I can't get enough of her. It's becoming a problem. I think about her during meetings. I think about the sound she makes when I push inside her, that soft, broken gasp, while I'm sitting across from men who would kill me if they saw a crack in my composure.
The council has gone quiet. No calls from Gregor. No messages through intermediaries. They got what they wanted, the marriage, the consummation, the proof that Anton Orlov is compliant, and they've moved on to whatever power play comes next.
But I haven't moved on. I'm stuck in this house with a woman who took everything I threw at her and didn't break, and the longer I'm here, the less I want to leave.
I come home on a Thursday evening, earlier than usual. There's a van in the drive I don't recognize. I'm out of my car with my hand on the gun at the small of my back before I've made a conscious decision to reach for it.
The front door is unlocked. I push it open quietly.
Voices. From the kitchen. Kira's, and a man's. Deep. Unfamiliar.
I move through the hallway without sound. My hand stays on the gun, my pulse steady, my breathing controlled. I stop at the kitchen doorway.
Kira is standing at the counter, her arms folded. Across from her is a man I've never seen. Tall, dark-haired, mid-thirties. He's wearing a delivery uniform, but the way he's standing tells me he's not here to deliver anything. He's leaning against my counter with his arms crossed and a smile on his face that makes me want to break his jaw.
"I'm just saying," the man says, "a woman like you, alone in this big house all day. Must get lonely."
"I'm not lonely," Kira says. Her voice is calm. Level. The same composure she wears like armor, but underneath it I can hear the steel. "And I'm not alone. I'm married."
"I know. Orlov." He shrugs, like my name is an inconvenience. "Doesn't mean you can't have a conversation with someone who appreciates the view."
My grip tightens on the gun. Red bleeds into the edges of my vision.
Kira unfolds her arms. She straightens to her full height, which isn't much, but the way she holds herself makes the air in the room change.
"Let me be clear," she says. Her voice drops, and there's a quiet authority in it that I've only heard once before. In the argument. When she told me it was my failure, not hers. "You were hired to deliver supplies to this house. That is the beginning and the end of your role here. If you have something that needs signing, put it on the counter and I'll sign it. If you don't, then you're done, and you can find your way back to your vehicle."
The man's smile falters. "I was just being friendly."
"No, you weren't. And I'm not interested in what you were being. My husband's name is on the gate you drove through, and I promise you, he would not appreciate finding you in his kitchen making conversation you weren't invited to have." She picks up a pen from the counter. Holds it up. "The paperwork. Now."
He stares at her. She doesn't blink.
He pulls a clipboard from under his arm, sets it on the counter, and steps back. She signs it with a quick, firm hand, slides it back across to him, and points toward the hallway.
"The door is that way," she says. “And just to be clear. As terrifying as you might find my husband,” she picks up a knifeand chops something I can’t see from where I’m standing in that fast, efficient way of hers. “I’m worse.”
He walks from the kitchen mumbling something about crazy bitches.
I step out of the shadows as he passes. He sees me and the color drains from his face. I'm still holding the gun at my side, not raised, not pointed, just visible. He walks faster.
