Page 109 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

Sasha.

When my eyes open, the room is pale with winter morning, the city muted beyond the windows. I reach for her, my first instinct to pull her in and hear her say it again.

But my hand finds cold sheets. The covers are thrown back, the pillow still faintly marked where her head rested.

My muscles tense, threat assessments lining themselves up before reason catches.

She didn’t leave the apartment. Yuri would’ve called before the elevator reached the lobby. She is somewhere inside these walls, which makes the immediate, irrational irritation moving through me useless.

It doesn’t make it less real.

I sit up, jaw tight, and notice that the clothes we scattered across the floor last night have been folded neatly over the chair by the window.

After all that heat and need and skin, she managed to restore order before I opened my eyes. I drag a hand over my face, then pull on jeans and a clean T-shirt. She has likely gone to the study to work on the Healy project, because apparently my wife handles emotional upheaval by reorganizing floor plans and pretending last night did not rearrange anything.

But when I step into the hallway, a hint of butter hits me.

Warm. Rich.

Then something sharper beneath it. A thin, alarming scent of food almost burning.

I head toward the kitchen, shaking my head as a laugh threatens to escape. David Kalinin taught his daughter to sit in a room full of dangerous men with a straight spine and a blank face. He taught her how to negotiate, how to endure, how to hide the parts of herself he might use. Apparently, he never taught her how to make breakfast without creating a credible threat to the property.

Halfway down the hall, I hear a woman’s calm, cheerful voice explaining batter consistency. Then Tamara, low and furious. “That is absolutely not what yours looked like.”

I stop at the kitchen entrance. My wife stands at the island wearing my dress shirt from last night, her hair loose and sleep-mussed around her shoulders, sleeves rolled badly to her elbows. There is batter on one cheek, flour dusting her forearm, and a pale streak across the front of the shirt where she has apparently wiped her hand without looking.

The laptop is open on the counter beside her. Ina Garten is paused mid-demonstration over a bowl of perfect batter, looking calm and competent and offensively relaxed.

On the stove, one pan smokes faintly. A plate beside it holds three folded things that may or may not be crêpes. Tamara glares at the fourth attempt as if she can intimidate it into behaving.

I lean one shoulder against the doorway. “Should I call someone?”

She startles, whipping around with the spatula in one hand. “Jesus.”

“No. Just me.”

She takes me in, color rising along her cheekbones.

Good.

I’m apparently not the only one remembering.

“You were asleep,” she says.

“I was.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“That explains the silence. Not the fire.”

She looks back toward the pan. “There is no fire.”

“Yet.”

The corner of her mouth twitches before she suppresses it. She turns back to the stove with exaggerated dignity. “They’re crêpes. In case you’re wondering.”

I glance toward the plate, nodding. “I see.”