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I turn her toward me and tip her face up to mine. “It makes you sound resourceful. You were trying to get free. You don’t have to apologize to anyone for that.”

I kiss her forehead and smooth her hair back.

Cora blinks rapidly, and it’s an effort for her to hold in the tears.

“Thank you. And I just wanted you to know, there’s no need to buy quiches from now on,” she says, turning back to the oven. “I can make them from scratch. Pastry and everything.” She glances at me over her shoulder. “Does Demyan want to stay for dinner? I’d like to say thank you for today.”

I hesitate. I did want tonight to be about spoiling her, but she looks so relaxed and at home in my kitchen that an idea occurs to me. This is an opportunity to show her how serious I am about protecting my woman.

“There are a few more men than just Demyan on the property,” I say.

She turns around, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil in her hands. “Oh? How many more? I’m sure there’s enough food for everyone.”

I nod at the long glass dining table. “We’d better set the table for fourteen.”

The number makes her eyebrows shoot up, but she takes it in stride.

After asking me the locations of various things, she starts moving between the kitchen and the dining room with focused efficiency. I show her the good plates, and she exclaims over them being so beautiful but never used. I offer to chop salad, and she tells me what she needs without any self-consciousness about giving orders in my house.

I roll up my sleeves and get to work.

My house now apparently has a woman running it. I love it.

While she’s checking on the quiches in the oven, I go to the door and put my head out. Four of the boyeviki are stationed in the corridor. Demyan, Ruslan, and two others whose names I haven’t learned.

“Inside,” I say. “All of you. Tell the others.”

They look at each other.

“There’s food,” I add, which seems to confuse them more, but they do as they’re told.

A few minutes later, the men file into the dining room one by one and stop. All twelve of them, dressed in black suits with their various tattoos and scars, standing in a row and shuffling nervously like they’re waiting to be told which one of them has fucked up.

Cora looks up from the salad she’s tossing and smiles at them.

“I’m Cora. Cora Banks. Please sit down,” she says, nodding at the table. “Wherever you like. Dinner’s almost ready.”

Nobody moves.

I watch them glance at each other as though wondering if this is a test. They look at the table, and then at me.

Sit down, I say with my eyes.

They sit, and there’s a certain amount of chair-scraping and repositioning as twelve large men who are very good at violence try to arrange themselves around the dining table in their new boss’s house.

Cora brings the first quiche out, and then the second, and three of my men move simultaneously to get her chair.

“Nyet,” I snap, and they freeze instantly. I cross to the head of the table and pull the chair out myself. “Here, printsessa.”

She hasn’t noticed me glaring at the men as she arranges the quiches on a heatproof mat.

“Thank you,” she says, and sits.

I take the chair at the other end, rest both my hands in loose fists on either side of my plate, and watch every man with razor-sharp focus.

Around the table, twelve men look confused. This is what Cora wants, and we are going to eat together.

She passes the first slice of quiche to Ruslan on her left, who looks like he can break a man in half. She beams at him, and cuts another slice.