Page 64 of Marrying the Pakhan

“I understand it better than you think. I’ve spent months carrying exactly that feeling, multiplied by everything I actually know that you don’t.” His voice breaks slightly on the last word, something I’ve genuinely never heard from him before. “That’s not an excuse. It’s the truth. I’ve been carrying this alone because I didn’t know how to hand it to you without also handing you my own fear along with it.”

I want to push harder. Every instinct in me wants to demand the whole truth right now, standing in my own locked house with my heart still racing from a stranger’s voice at my daughter’s school.

But I also see, clearly, for the first time, how much this is costing him too, the man in front of me barely holding himself together, and that recognition makes me pull back instead of pushing further.

“Days,” I say. “Not weeks. I mean it, Viktor.”

“Days,” he agrees. “I promise you.”

I let him hold me a while longer, both of us shaking slightly in ways neither of us names out loud, and somewhere upstairs Ginger’s laughter drifts down from wherever she’s playing, blissfully unaware of how close today came to being something much worse than a strange man at a fence.

29

VIKTOR

Dimitri drops a stack of bank records on my desk like he’s laying down a winning hand of cards, entirely too pleased with himself given the actual content of what he’s holding.

“Confirmed,” he says. “It’s not just Pavel operating alone out of nostalgia for the old days. The surveillance is funded directly through Ivanov family accounts. Property taxes on the storage unit, the sedan lease, even the equipment purchases, all traced back to an account controlled by the grandmother.”

“The grandmother.”

“The sweet old woman who cried in court, yes. Turns out grief makes excellent cover for wiring money to a surveillance operation targeting your own granddaughter’s household.” Dimitri drops into the chair across from me, unbothered in the specific way that’s always separated him from men who scare easily. “I’ll give them this much. It’s a clean operation. If I weren’t currently furious about it, I’d almost respect the paperwork.”

“How’d you find the account?”

“Same way I find everything. Patience, a favor owed to me by a woman at the bank who owes me considerably more than she’d like to admit, and about six hours I’ll never get back staring at wire transfer records.” He shrugs, like six hours is nothing, and given the fifteen years I’ve known him, it probably is. “The old man’s not the only one running this. He never was. He just happens to be the one with the face I recognized.”

“So this isn’t Pavel acting alone.”

“This is a family business, same as ours. Pavel’s the muscle and the history. The Ivanovs are the funding and the legitimate cover story. Whatever they’re planning, they’ve been planning it together, probably since before Harper ever walked into your club.”

I sit with that a moment, the full shape of it settling somewhere heavier than anything Dimitri’s brought me so far. Not a lone wolf resurfacing. An entire family, patient, resourced, coordinated, hiding behind grief and a custody case for months while they built toward something neither of us fully understands yet.

“What’s the endgame,” I say, mostly to myself. “If they wanted Ginger back through the courts, they lost that fight months ago. This isn’t about winning custody anymore.”

“No. It’s not.” Dimitri leans forward, all business now, whatever ease he walked in with fully gone. “Which brings me to the actual reason I’m here, and I already know you’re not going to like it.”

“Say it anyway.”

“Tell Harper. All of it. Today, not soon, not once you’ve got one more piece of intelligence to feel comfortable about.” He holds up a hand before I can respond. “I watched that woman almost get her daughter grabbed off a chain link fence yesterday because a stranger felt confident enough to walk right up and start a conversation. That’s not a man testing distant boundaries anymore. That’s a man who thinks he can walk right up to your family in broad daylight.”

“I know what happened yesterday, Dimitri.”

“Then you know exactly how close we are to something worse than a conversation at a fence.” His voice stays level, no fear in it at all, just the flat conviction of a man who’s watched enough operations go sideways to know exactly what patient men eventually do once they’ve finished testing. “I’ve fought alongside you for fifteen years. I’ve never once told you how to run your own house. I’m telling you now.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’s exactly that simple. You’re protecting her from information. Meanwhile, the real danger isn’t waiting for you to feel ready.” He sits back, arms crossed, studying me with the particular patience of a man who’s decided he’s not leaving until this conversation actually lands. “You want to know what I think? I think you’re not protecting her at all anymore. I think you’re protecting yourself from watching her face when she finds out how deep this actually runs, and how long you’ve known parts of it.”

That lands harder than I expect, mostly because he’s right, and I hate how easily he’s diagnosed something I’ve spent weeks refusing to look at directly myself.

“I’ve buried men for less honesty than what you’re demanding right now, Dimitri.”

“You’ve also buried men who waited too long to act on information their own brother handed them, so let’s not pretend one of those facts outweighs the other tonight.” He says it dry, almost amused, though there’s nothing soft underneath it. “I’m not scared of Pavel Ivanov, Viktor. I’ve handled worse men with less patience and more firepower behind them. What scares me, if I’m being honest with you for once, is watching you make the same mistake our father made every single time he decided silence was a form of protection.”

“Don’t compare me to him.”

“Then don’t act like him. Just this once.” Dimitri’s voice softens, just slightly, an old wound surfacing that neither of us usually names out loud. “He kept us in the dark our whole childhood, thinking it kept us safe. It didn’t keep us safe, Viktor. It just meant we found out everything the hard way, usually at the worst possible moment. I’m not watching you do that to her too.”