Page 44 of Marrying the Pakhan

I sit in the driveway a minute longer before actually driving anywhere, running through everything that’s changed in the last twenty-four hours.

A car that shouldn’t be there. A logistics man finally starting to talk. Two threads pulling toward the same conclusion I’ve been trying not to reach too quickly.

Pavel knows where we live. He’s known for a while, probably longer than the car outside suggests, patient enough to watch before doing anything else.

Eleven years of silence from a man everyone assumed was dead doesn’t end with a single sedan parked on a residential street.

“It ends with a man patient enough to sit outside my house for weeks, building a picture of my life piece by piece.

Harper’s asleep upstairs, no idea someone’s been tracking her comings and goings the same way Dimitri once tracked hers for me, minus the good intentions.

Ginger still walks to the mailbox alone some mornings. I let that happen because until this week, I thought it was overcaution to stop her.”

That changes today.

I call the head of my security detail before I even put the car in gear, keeping my voice level despite what’s actually running through my head.

“Full perimeter check today. I want eyes on every access point, including those we haven’t bothered to watch closely before. And I want someone with Ginger any time she’s outside, discreet, but present.”

“Understood. Any specific threat, or just general caution?”

“General caution, for now.” I’m not ready to name Pavel to anyone outside Dimitri, not until I understand the actual shape of what we’re facing. “Better we’re careful now than sorry we weren’t.”

“You want me to pull anyone off other assignments to make this happen faster?”

“Whatever it takes. This is the priority starting today.”

He agrees and ends the call, and I sit there another moment, hands on the wheel, feeling the familiar weight of a decision I’ve made a hundred times in this business: protect first, explain never, keep everyone I care about at a comfortable distance from the truth until the truth stops being dangerous to know.

It worked, that philosophy, for fifteen years running an organization full of men who’d use any vulnerability against me the second they found one.

It doesn’t sit the same way now, thinking about Harper finding out later that I knew about a car outside our house and said nothing.

I drive to the club anyway, because there’s nothing else to do yet, no threat concrete enough to justify frightening her over something that might genuinely be nothing. I tell myself that the entire drive, the same way I’ve told myself plenty of things lately that I’m not entirely sure I believe.

By the time I reach the club, Dimitri’s already texted an update. The sedan hasn’t moved. Whoever’s inside is either extremely patient or extremely confident that patience is all this requires.

I read the text twice, then put the phone away, and go inside to handle a day’s worth of ordinary business with half my attention still parked two houses down from the only two people I’ve ever let matter this much.

That night, once Harper’s asleep and the house has gone quiet, I walk the property myself again, the way I did the night I first recognized Pavel’s face in that courtroom. The men are in position, rotated exactly the way I asked, nothing visibly different to anyone watching from the street.

I check each post personally, exchanging a few quiet words with each man, confirming sightlines, confirming radios work, confirming nobody’s grown complacent in the months since the last real scare.

The gray sedan is gone by the time I check, according to the last update from the man watching it. Gone doesn’t mean finished. Gone usually just means they got what they came for, or they’re regrouping somewhere else to try again differently.

I stand at the edge of the property a while longer, looking at the dark street where it used to be parked, and think about how much longer I can keep doing this, protecting her by keeping her blind to exactly what she needs protecting from.

Harper trusted me enough to marry a stranger on the strength of one conversation. She’s trusted me with far more since then, more than I’ve earned most days. Somewhere along the way, that trust started running only in one direction, hers toward me, mine toward keeping her comfortably unaware.

I don’t know how much longer that balance holds before it breaks something neither of us wants broken.

Not much longer, I suspect. But not tonight either.

20

HARPER

Ginger talks the entire walk from the classroom to the pickup line, which isn’t unusual, except today the subject is a boy named Theo who just moved here from somewhere with actual mountains.