But I can’t deny he’s here. That he’s protecting us. That he’s trying.
And despite everything—despite the lies and the grief and the four years of building a life without him—some part of me is still his.
I just don’t know what to do with that yet.
Chapter Eleven
Nikolai
Lauren is more beautiful than I remembered.
Four years of watching her through glass, and I still wasn’t prepared for this. For proximity. For the way the light catches her hair when she laughs at something Hannah says, or the unconscious grace with which she moves through a space. Childbearing has softened the angles I knew and given her a fullness that makes it difficult to think clearly.
Blyad.
I’ve noticed, of course. I noticed the first night, and every morning since. There’s no point pretending otherwise—I know my cock’s responses as well as I know my enemies’ patterns. The difference is that I can control my dick.
I have to.
I watch her from across the room as she sits on the floor with Hannah, the two of them bent over a collection of dolls. I requested those specifically—Hannah’s preferences were one of the few things I could learn from a distance. Small mercies. Lauren arranged them in a semi-circle on the rug, assigning each one a voice, and Hannah’s laugh fills the penthouse in a way that makes something tighten behind my sternum.
Hannah is Lauren’s image. Dark hair, the same angular jaw, her mother’s stubbornness written into every expression. But her eyes are mine. Blue and watchful, taking in the world with a seriousness that’s too old for four.
I wonder how much those eyes have cost Lauren. How often she looked at her daughter and saw the ghost of me looking back.
I push the thought aside and move to the windows.
Every ten minutes. That’s the rhythm I’ve settled into—a circuit of every room, every sight line, every potential entry point. The alarms are checked, the security feeds logged into and verified. Aslanov’s operations have never extended this far into Illinois, but I don’t make assumptions based on what I know. I make them based on what the bastard’s capable of.
And what he’s capable of is considerable.
Since I handed over my empire four years ago, he’s had time to grow even bigger. To consolidate. The organization I built over a decade is his now, fed and expanded by a man with fewer scruples and more appetite. He will have informants in places I haven’t anticipated. He will be methodical, and he will be patient, and he will eventually find us—which means I have to be ready long before that happens.
I chose this building deliberately. Quiet street, residential, no pattern of Bratva movement within fifty miles. Good sight lines. One elevator, two stairwells, both monitored. The penthouse is defensible. But defensible is not the same as safe, and I’ve never been foolish enough to confuse the two.
Lauren glances up from the floor, catching me mid-circuit near the window. Something passes between us—brief, charged, quickly suppressed on her end.
She’s been doing that all morning. Meeting my gaze and then pulling away from it, like she’s disciplining herself.
Blyad.
I know that look. I’ve earned the right to recognize it.
I also know better than to reach for it.
She has made her position clear without saying a word. Hannah is her priority. Everything else—including whatever still exists between us—is a complication she can’t afford. I respect that. I even agree with it, on a practical level.
That doesn’t make it easier to stand in the same room with her.
I finish the window check and head upstairs, phone already in hand. Timur hasn’t called, which is either good news or bad news, and I need to know which.
I close the bedroom door behind me.
The distance helps. Marginally.
I hit dial.
Timur picks up on the second ring.
