Nick
She falls asleep in my arms and I let her.
I watch the light change behind the curtains, gold thinning to grey, then to the deep blue of evening. Her breathing is slow and even against my chest. Her hand rests over the scar on my ribs, palm flat, like she's holding something in place.
I could stay here. I could stay in this bed with this woman for the rest of my life and never miss a single thing I've built or inherited or bled for.
But that isn't how this works.
My phone vibrates on the nightstand. I reach for it without moving the arm she's sleeping on. Dmitri. A text, not a call, which means it's important but not urgent.
Alexei met with Viktor's lawyer this afternoon. Separate from the wake. Karolina was there.
I read it twice, then put the phone face down.
Sadie stirs against me. Her fingers curl and uncurl on my chest, and her lashes flutter, and then she's looking up at me with sleep-soft eyes and a crease on her cheek from the pillow.
"You're thinking," she says.
"I'm always thinking."
"You're thinking loudly." She pushes herself up on one elbow. The sheet slips to her waist and she doesn't reach for it. Her hairis a wreck and there's a mark on her neck from my mouth, and she looks so completely at ease in my bed that what I'm about to say feels like it could be the end or the beginning and it’s all too heavy.
"I need to talk to you," I say.
Her face changes. It's subtle. A tightening around her eyes, the faintest brace in her shoulders.
"That's never a good sentence," she says.
"It's not bad. It's honest. And it's overdue."
She sits up fully. Pulls the sheet to her chest and tucks it under her arms. She's giving me her full attention the way she gives it to patients, calm and direct and ready for information she might not want.
I sit up beside her. I don't reach for her, because this conversation needs space, and I've learned that Sadie thinks better when she isn't being touched.
"You know what I am," I say. "You know what my family is. I told you the short version at the diner and you stayed. You've been in my house for four days, you've met my doctor, and you've seen enough to fill in the gaps I didn't give you. I'm not going to insult you by pretending you haven't worked most of it out."
"Bratva," she says. Flat. Simple. Like she's naming a diagnosis.
"Yes."
She nods once. She doesn't look away.
"My father is dead. The organization is mine. Every man you've seen in this house, every car on the street outside, every phone call I've made through the walls while you were sleeping, that's my life. It's not going to change. I can't walk away from it, and I wouldn't if I could, because it's mine and I intend to run it the way my father wanted it run. The way he taught me to run it."
"Okay." She says it the way she said it on the sidewalk when I told her I was a monster. Measured. Absorbing.
"If you stay with me, Sadie, and I'm asking you to stay with me, there are things you need to understand."
Her chin lifts a fraction. "Then tell me."
I look at her face in the blue evening light. The bruise at her temple fading to nothing. The scar on her lip. The steady blue of her eyes that didn't flinch when I put my hand on her throat in the back of a wrecked sedan.
"This world has expectations," I say. "The men who follow me, the families connected to mine, the structure that holds all of it together, it runs on tradition. Some of those traditions are ones I agree with. Some of them I tolerate because changing them costs more than keeping them. But the ones that matter to you, the ones that will affect your life directly, I'm going to lay out for you now."
She waits.
"A Pakhan's woman isn't a girlfriend. She's a wife. The men need to see stability. They need to know the bloodline continues. They need a marriage and, eventually, they need heirs. That's the expectation. I won't apologize for it, but I won't pretend it's something softer than what it is."
