But underneath all that calculation, Aria's face flashes through my mind. The way she looked at me on the island, like I wasjust a man rather than a monster. The way her body fit against mine in our makeshift shelter, her breathing evening out as she fell asleep with her head on my chest. The way she jumped into a storm-tossed ocean to save my life, risking everything for a man she barely knew.
"You're different." Cyril's observation cuts through my thoughts like a blade. "The island changed you."
It's not a question, and I don't insult him by denying it. Cyril has been at my side for twenty years. He knows me better than anyone, sees things I try to hide even from myself.
"Yes." The admission costs me something, strips away a layer of the armor I've worn for so long it feels like skin.
His gray eyes study me with unsettling intensity, and I see him cataloging the changes. The way I hold myself, perhaps. The softness that creeps into my expression when I'm not actively suppressing it. The fact that I sent Aria home in a car rather than keeping her close, as if distance could somehow protect her from the violence about to unfold.
"Is she worth it?" Cyril asks, his voice carefully neutral. "Worth what you lost? Worth what you'll have to do to get it back?"
The question hangs between us like smoke, and I realize he's not just asking about territory or money or power. He's asking if Aria Levin is worth the fundamental shift in who I am, the crack in the foundation of everything I've built.
I think about her dark eyes meeting mine across the storm-ravaged deck, the moment before she jumped. I think about her hands on my skin, teaching me what it means to be touched with tenderness rather than calculation. I think about the way shechallenged me, refused to be diminished, and maintained her independence even when it would have been easier to submit.
"Yes." The word comes out with absolute certainty.
Cyril's expression doesn't change, but something flickers in those colorless eyes. Concern, maybe. Or the beginning of understanding that his Pakhan has become someone new, someone who might make decisions based on emotion rather than pure strategy.
Cyril leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees, and his gray eyes hold mine with uncomfortable intensity. "The woman, Aria Levin." His voice drops to something clinical and cold, the tone he uses when discussing problems that need to be eliminated. "Is she going to be a problem I need to handle?"
15
ARIA
The weight of the chef's knife feels foreign in my hand despite years of muscle memory. I turn it over slowly, examining the blade for damage, and marvel at the fact that Nikolai's people managed to recover my entire knife set from the yacht's wreckage. The custom Japanese steel gleams under my apartment's fluorescent lighting, each piece carefully cleaned and returned to its velvet-lined case like nothing catastrophic ever happened.
Except everything happened.
I set the knife down on my kitchen counter with more force than necessary, the metallic clink echoing through the small space. Three weeks stranded on an island with a man who terrifies and attracts me in equal measure. Of learning what his hands feel like on my skin, what his voice sounds like when he whispers my name in the darkness. Of pretending the rest of the world didn't exist.
Now I'm back, and reality tastes like ash on my tongue.
My phone sits face-down on the counter, deliberately positioned so I can't see the screen. I've been home for a couple of days, and I haven't checked it once. I know what I'll find there. Messages from clients asking where I've been, probably cancellations from the jobs I missed while playing castaway with a crime boss. The thought makes my stomach clench with anxiety that has nothing to do with the nausea that's been plaguing me since we got back.
The sound of a key turning in my lock makes me freeze, my hand instinctively reaching for the knife I just set down. Only two people have keys to my apartment. Me and Maya.
My sister stumbles through the door with a smile that's too bright, too wide, too familiar. The kind of smile that means she's high and trying desperately to hide it. My heart sinks like a stone dropped into deep water.
"Aria!" Maya's voice pitches higher than normal, the syllables running together slightly. "Oh my God, you're alive! I thought… when I was told you were presumed lost at sea, I thought you were dead!"
She rushes toward me, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, and throws her arms around my neck. I stand rigidly in her embrace, my body refusing to return the gesture. Up close, the evidence is unmistakable. Her pupils are pinpricks despite the dim lighting of my apartment. Her skin has that grayish cast I've learned to recognize. The faint chemical smell clinging to her clothes makes my nose wrinkle.
Eight months clean. Gone.
"Maya." My voice comes out flat, emotionless, because if I let myself feel anything right now, I'll shatter into pieces I won't be able to reassemble. "You're using again."
She pulls back, and I watch the performance unfold like I've seen it a hundred times before. The wounded expression. The hand pressed to her chest in mock offense. The tears that spring to her eyes with practiced ease.
"What? No! Aria, how can you even say that? I've been so worried about you, and this is how you greet me?" Her voice cracks on the last word, and I feel the familiar tug of guilt trying to take root in my chest.
I don't let it.
"Your pupils are pinpricks. You can barely stand straight. And you smell like whatever you've been smoking or snorting or shooting into your veins." Each word comes out sharp and precise, cutting through her excuses before she can fully form them. "Don't lie to me. Not now. Not after everything."
Maya's face crumbles, the mask slipping to reveal the desperate addict underneath. She sags against my kitchen counter, her thin frame trembling, and the tears that fall now look genuine. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just… when you disappeared, I couldn't handle it. I thought you were dead, Aria. I thought I'd lost you like we lost Mom, and I just needed something to make it stop hurting."
The mention of our mother makes my chest constrict painfully. I was seventeen when the car accident took her, suddenly responsible for a twelve-year-old sister and a mountain of grief I had no idea how to process. I became the parent, the provider, the one who held everything together while my own world fell apart. And Maya became my purpose, my reason for surviving when giving up would have been so much easier.
