If I’m consider reckless, he’s worse. Too sloppy. Too fucking eager to be seen. Men like that don’t build empires. They choke on them.
And Nikolai knows it.
Which means this isn’t about what’s best for the Bratva.
It’s about control.
Always fucking control.
He wants me under his roof, inside his walls, playing the son he can still summon across an ocean with one fucking demand. And when I don’t bend fast enough, he offers Kostya as the alternative like it’s a threat he knows will rot under my skin.
It does.
That’s what makes me want to go back and rip his throat open with my teeth.
I hear movement behind me. Quiet. Too quiet.
Ayla.
She’s been silent since we left the estate. No smart mouth. No questions.
No deliberate little defiance just to see if I bite.
Nothing.
At first I thought she was waiting. Storing it up. Sharpening her knives in private before she aimed them at me.
But the ride back passed in silence so thick it started pressing on my skull. She sat in the passenger seat staring out the window, arms folded, face turned toward the city lights sliding over the glass, and every now and then I caught her looking at me like she wanted to ask something and thought better of it.
I don’t know what to do with that.
I turn.
Ayla stands by the bed looking… tired. That’s the only word I have for it.
Tired.
I watch her. Wait for something. A question. An accusation. A demand.
She gives me nothing.
Just toes off her heeled boots and reaches for the hem of her shirt.
My jaw tightens.
Say something.
The order is there, mean and immediate, but I don’t know if I’m giving it to her or myself.
She peels the shirt over her head and drops it onto a chair. Her hair falls loose skimming her shoulders, mussed from the breeze and the long drive back. Then her hands go to the button of her jeans.
Still silent. No fight. No attitude.
No bait.
The rage in me shifts. It doesn’t ease.
Just changes shape.
