MARRYING THE PAKHAN

AN AGE GAP, BRATVA ROMANCE

LAYLAH SNOW

Copyright © 2026 by Laylah Snow

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

1

HARPER

The guest in front of me wants a room with a water view, and I don’t have the heart to tell him our water view is a parking garage with a puddle in it.

“Let me check what’s available,” I say instead, and type nothing into the system.

He’s wearing a shiny leather jacket, the kind my boss’s son wears when he swings by to hit up his dad for cash. The man taps his knuckles on the counter while he waits, like the seconds matter to him in a way they don’t matter to me.

I give him room 412, top floor, and tell him it faces the courtyard. That part’s true. I just don’t mention the courtyard is where housekeeping keeps the linen carts.

By the time he walks off toward the elevators, Renata’s already leaning against the desk beside me, arms crossed, watching him go.

“You gave him 412?”

“He wanted a view.”

“He’s getting laundry carts.”

“He’s getting a courtyard,” I say, and she laughs low enough that it doesn’t carry past the desk.

Renata’s worked the evening shift with me for two years now, long enough that we don’t have to explain the shorthand anymore.

She knows which regulars tip and which ones complain about the ice machine on the third floor being broken, which it has been since before either of us started. She also knows about Ginger and Mia, though she’s careful not to bring either one up unless I do first.

Tonight, I bring up neither. I’ve got a stack of registration cards to file and a headache building behind my left eye, and for the length of one shift, I’d like to just be a person standing behind a desk instead of the only thing standing between my niece and a house I can’t afford.

It doesn’t last.

“You look like you haven’t slept,” Renata says.

“I haven’t.”

“Ginger?”

“The Ivanovs,” I say it flatly, the way you’d read off a name that’s been circled on a calendar for weeks. “Court date’s in three weeks. My lawyer wants to meet before then. Again.”

Renata makes a face, the one she makes whenever I bring up my in-laws who aren’t really my in-laws anymore.

My sister’s the one who married their son, and he’s been gone even longer than she has, dead since Ginger was barely a year old, some accident nobody in the family likes to talk about in detail.

Now my sister’s gone too. Ginger’s grandparents are her only other family, if you don’t count me, and lately I get the feeling they’d rather you didn’t.

“They’re not going to win,” Renata says. “You’re her guardian. It’s in the will.”

“Wills get challenged all the time.”

“Just by people with money,” she says, and when I don’t answer that, because she’s right and there’s nothing to add to being right, she reaches over and squeezes my arm once, quick, before pulling back to answer the phone that starts ringing on her side of the desk.

I go back to the registration cards. I get through maybe six of them before she hangs up, and when I look over, she’s got that particular look on her face, the one that shows up right before she says a thing she thinks is hilarious and I think is a terrible idea.

“You know what you should do,” she says.

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“I know your face. I don’t like your face right now.”

She ignores that. “You should hire a husband.”

I stop filing. “A what?”

“A husband. For the custody thing.” She shrugs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You said it yourself, your lawyer keeps bringing up marital status. So, marry someone.”

“That’s not a real solution, Renata, that’s a sentence.”

“It’s a real factor. You said so.” She says it easy, like she’s not suggesting anything more complicated than picking up milk on the way home.

“I’m not hiring a husband, Renata.”

“You could. There’s a place.” She’s grinning now, fully committed to the bit. “That club on Ashford. The one with the gold sign. I went there for Danny’s bachelorette, remember? Half those guys would marry you for the right price, and they’re gorgeous, Harper, like, genuinely⁠—”

“I’m not marrying a stripper to keep custody of my niece.”

“I didn’t say strip club.”

“You said gold sign, gorgeous, and Ashford. I know exactly what you said.”

She laughs, and it’s loud enough this time that the guest waiting by the elevator glances over, and I press my lips together to keep from laughing too, because it is a little bit funny.

“I’m just saying,” Renata says, quieter now. “Options.”

“That’s not an option. That’s a felony waiting to happen.”

“Marriage isn’t a felony.”

“Marrying a stranger to win a custody case might be.”

She shrugs like she’s not so sure, and the desk phone rings again before either of us can push it further, only this time it’s not a guest.

It’s my lawyer’s office, and I know that before I even pick up, because they’re the only ones who call this line instead of my cell, on account of my cell going straight to voicemail these days out of self-preservation.

“Harper Wilcox,” I say.

“Harper, it’s Denise. Do you have a minute?”

Denise never opens with do you have a minute unless the answer needs to be yes regardless of what I actually have.

I turn my back to the desk, phone pressed to my ear, and watch Renata pretend not to listen while filing a registration card upside down.

“I have a minute.”

“The Ivanovs’ attorney filed an amended petition this afternoon. I just got off the phone with him.”

“Amended how?”

“They’re arguing financial instability now. Specifically yours.” A pause. “They pulled your bank statements somehow. I don’t know how yet—I’m looking into it, but they’ve got three months of overdraft fees, and they’re planning to use them.”

My stomach does the thing it’s been doing for weeks now, the slow drop that never quite finishes falling. “Those overdrafts happened because Ginger needed a coat and new shoes in the same month daycare raised their rates.”

“I know that. You know that. A judge doesn’t automatically know that, and they’re going to make it look like a pattern instead of a bad month.” Denise’s voice softens, just slightly. “I need anything you’ve got. Pay stubs, a letter from your manager, proof the coat and the shoes were one-time expenses. Anything that shows this was a month, not a lifestyle.”

“I can get you pay stubs tonight.”

“Good. And Harper—” She stops.

“What.”

“They’re not going to stop at overdrafts. I want you ready for that.”

I mumble a “yes” I don’t fully mean, and we hang up. I stand there with the phone still against my ear for a second after the call’s already ended, because if I put it down I have to go back to filing registration cards like a person whose life isn’t currently being cross-examined by strangers with more money than her.

“That bad?” Renata asks.

“They found my bank statements.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Denise doesn’t know either. Apparently, that’s a normal thing now, people you’ve never met finding your overdraft history and building a case out of it.” I laugh, but it doesn’t have anything funny underneath it, and Renata hears the difference immediately. She always does.

She doesn’t say they’re not going to win again. I think she’s starting to understand that saying it doesn’t make it more true; it just makes me feel like I have to nod along and pretend I believe her.

“You need a break,” she says instead. “Not tonight. Tonight, you need pay stubs and a letter from Greg. But soon. You look like you’re about to fall over, and not in the cute way.”

“There’s a cute way to fall over?”

“There’s a way where it looks intentional.” She bumps my shoulder with hers, easy, like this is a normal conversation and not one happening three weeks before a courtroom decides whether I get to keep raising my sister’s daughter. “I’m serious about the club thing, by the way.”

“You’re not.”

“A little bit serious.”

The elevator dings, and another guest steps out into the lobby. I smooth the tired off my face before I’ve even fully turned around, because that’s the job, showing up steady for strangers while everything underneath stays exactly as unsteady as it was five minutes ago.

Denise’s voice loops in my head, flat and even. They’re not going to stop at overdrafts, like she’d rehearsed how to say it without sounding as worried as she is.

Somewhere across town, Ginger’s asleep at the sitter’s by now, six-years-old and still waking up some nights asking where her mom went, like maybe this time the answer will be different from the last hundred times I’ve had to say it.

For exactly one stupid second, a club on Ashford with a gold sign flickers through my head, uninvited.

2

HARPER

Denise’s office smells like burnt coffee and the air freshener nobody’s replaced since spring. I’ve been in this chair enough times now that I know which leg is shorter without having to check.

“They filed for a home study,” she says, sliding a folder across the desk like it’s not a grenade with the pin already pulled. “And they want the hearing moved up. Judge Alvarez agreed to hear the motion Thursday.”

“Thursday,” I say, as if the word might mean something different if I repeat it. It doesn’t. “That’s in five days.”

“Four, actually. Today doesn’t count.” Denise says it without looking up from the folder.

“What’s a home study look like?”

“Someone from the court comes to your apartment. They look at where Ginger sleeps, whether there’s food in the fridge, whether the smoke detectors work.” She finally looks up. “They talk to her, sometimes. They talk to you. They also talk to whoever’s watching her when you’re not there.”

My stomach drops the way it did on the phone last week, except lower this time, further down, like it’s found a new floor to fall through. “Marisol.”

“Who’s Marisol?”

“The sitter. She picks Ginger up from school three days a week, keeps her until I get off shift.” I hear myself explaining it and I hate how it sounds out loud, how thin it sounds. One woman I met through a flyer at the library, holding my entire evening together. “She’s good with her. Ginger likes her.”

“That’s not the problem.” Denise closes the folder. “The problem is the petition argues Ginger spends more waking hours with a sitter than with you. The point is that your schedule doesn’t allow for consistent parental presence. Their words, not mine.”

“I work nights because that’s when the hotel has shifts open. I didn’t exactly get to pick.”

“I know that. You know that.” She rubs the bridge of her nose, and for a second she looks as tired as I feel, which does nothing to make me feel better. “But Thursday, a judge who’s never met you is going to hear ‘six-year-old raised by a stranger from a flyer’ before he hears anything else. I need something between now and then that makes that sentence sound less true.”

“Like what? I can’t quit my job in four days and still pay rent.”

“I’m not saying quit. I’m saying if there’s anything—family support, a partner, anyone who’d be a second stable adult in that home—now’s the time.” She watches my face while she says it, like she already knows there isn’t anyone and she’s asking anyway because it’s her job to ask.

“There isn’t.”

“Okay,” she says. “Then we go into Thursday with what we’ve got. Character letters. Marisol, your manager. I want testimony that this arrangement is working, not just happening.”

I nod like that’s a plan and not a prayer. She talks me through the rest of it, and I write down everything in the small notebook I’ve started carrying for exactly this.

If I don’t write it down, I’ll spend the drive home rewriting the whole conversation in my head. Badly.

By the time I leave her office, the sun’s dropped low enough that it’s coming straight through the windshield. I drive the fifteen minutes to pick up Ginger with my hand up against the glare like a visor, one word doing laps in my skull.

Thursday.

Mrs. Bennett, who watches three kids from the house down the block until Marisol takes over, already has Ginger’s backpack zipped and her shoes on when I get there.

Ginger’s sitting on the porch step with a drawing in her lap. When she sees my car, she doesn’t run to it the way she used to. She stands up slowly, holding the paper flat, as if it might tear if she moves too fast.

“Hi, baby.” I crouch down when she gets close.

“I drew Mom.” She holds the paper out flat so I can see it properly. There’s my sister in crayon, orange hair, too many fingers on each hand, standing next to a stick-figure Ginger under a sun with a face on it. “Mrs. Bennett said I could bring it home.”

“It’s beautiful.” My throat tightens, and I swallow past it, because this is not the moment to fall apart on a stranger’s porch. “Can we put it on the fridge?”

“Next to the other one?”

“Right next to the other one.”

She nods like that settles something important, and climbs into the back seat without me having to ask twice, buckling herself in.

Mrs. Bennett tells me Ginger ate all her snack and asked twice when I was picking her up. She says it like it’s nothing. It lands heavy in my chest anyway.

We stop for gas on the way home, and Ginger asks from the back seat, apropos of absolutely nothing, whether her grandparents are nice.

I nearly drop the gas cap. “Why do you ask that?”

“Mrs. Bennett said they called the school to ask questions.”

I file that away for Denise, later, when I’m not standing at a gas pump with my hands shaking slightly.

“They love you a lot,” I force myself to say, which is true, and also the only part of the sentence I trust myself to speak out loud right now. “That’s why they’re asking.”

Ginger considers this with the seriousness of someone twice her age. “Okay,” she says, and goes back to looking out the window. I get back in the car and drive the rest of the way with my jaw locked so tight it aches by the time we’re home.

I make dinner. I do the bath. I read two chapters of the book with the dragon on the cover, doing the voices Ginger likes even though my heart’s not remotely in it tonight.

By the time she’s asleep, it’s nearly nine. I’m sitting at my kitchen table with Denise’s folder open in front of me and a legal pad covered in my own handwriting that gets worse the further down the page it goes.

Six waking hours a week with a stable adult. Marital status: single. Household income: insufficient.

I read that last line four times.

Renata’s voice comes back to me uninvited.

You should hire a husband. Judges like married people.

I laugh out loud alone in my kitchen. However, it comes out sounding less like a laugh and more like something breaking.

The sound eventually fades, because I’m doing actual math on a napkin. The kind where marriage as a legal fact solves the exact sentence sitting on my legal pad.

Household income: insufficient stops mattering if there’s a second income. Marital status: single stops mattering if it isn’t true anymore.

And there’s the trust, sitting untouched since my grandparents died, the one thing from that side of my life I’ve refused to go near out of pure stubbornness.

I’ve never needed it badly enough to swallow my pride and accept the terms attached to it. A marriage clause, of all things, because apparently even from the grave they didn’t trust me to manage money without a husband standing next to me.

I hated the condition enough to leave it alone for years.

Tonight, for the first time, the condition looks less like an insult and more like a key that’s been sitting in my kitchen drawer the entire time.

By the time I’ve written it out twice, the idea no longer sounds like Renata’s joke. It’s started sounding like the only line on that page I actually know how to fix, and the only door I have left that opens without anyone’s permission but my own.

I call Marisol. She picks up on the second ring, already half asleep from the sound of it.

“Hey, I know it’s last minute,” I say. “Any chance you can come sit tonight? Just a couple hours.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I just need to run out for a bit.”

She doesn’t ask any more questions. “Give me fifteen minutes.”

She’s true to her word. By the time she’s settled on the couch with her phone and a blanket, I’ve already got my coat on.

I check on Ginger one last time before I leave. She’s asleep, one arm thrown over the edge of the bed, completely unaware that her aunt is about to do something reckless a few miles away.

I tell myself I’m just going to look. I can get a sense of the place, and see if this is even a real option before I make a fool of myself.

The drive over doesn’t feel real. Streetlights blur past, the radio’s off, and somewhere around the third turn I stop pretending I’m undecided.

I pull into the lot on Ashford and see the sign. Gold letters lit up against brick, glowing steady over a line of people waiting to get in.

I sit in the car for four full minutes with the engine off, watching them go in, telling myself I can still turn around and tell Marisol it was nothing.

But… I don’t turn around.

Inside, the noise hits me before anything else does. Bass heavy enough to feel in my teeth. It takes my eyes a second to adjust from the parking lot lights to whatever color this is, dark purple, maybe, or blue trying to be purple.

There’s a stage running the length of the far wall, three poles, dancers working all of them, men and women both. They move like they’ve done this so many nights that the moves stopped being a performance a long time ago and became muscle memory.

A woman in silver struts the runway. Two men in barely-there black work the pole nearest the bar, and one of them locks eyes with a table of women who scream like it’s a concert.

I stand near the entrance longer than I mean to, scanning. Now that I’m here, I have no idea how you’re supposed to do this. I mean, how do you walk up to a stranger and ask him to marry you for money without either of you laughing in the other’s face?

I haven’t quite worked that out before I see him.

The guy is near the far end of the bar, one hand braced flat against the wood, head down. His chest rises fast, uneven, and there’s a sheen of sweat along his collarbone where his shirt hangs open, buttons undone almost to his waist.

He tips a water bottle back and drains half of it in one go, throat working. When he finally straightens, his eyes drag slowly across the room, like he’s still catching up to himself.

I didn’t see him up on stage. There have to be twenty men working this floor tonight between the poles and the runway, and I only walked in a few minutes ago. But he’s breathing like he just finished, and the water and the sweat do the rest of the math for me.

He’s older than the others I’ve noticed. Silver hair, damp at the temples. Lines at the corners of his eyes that the twenty-year-olds on the runway don’t have yet. If anything, that makes him look better, not worse. Like he’s actually lived in the body he’s standing in instead of just showing it off.

He’s broader, too, through the chest and shoulders, built like whatever he does up there takes real strength, not just a routine.

Good, I think. Him.

He reads like a man who’d take the money, sign whatever I put in front of him, and not ask a single question I don’t want to answer. Old enough that no judge blinks at the gap between us. Steady enough that I could picture him standing next to me in a courtroom without either of us falling apart.

Him. This one’s perfect.

3

VIKTOR

My knuckles ache in a way that tells me they’ll ache much worse tomorrow, and I flex my hand once against my thigh as I pull the office door shut behind me.

Yuri won’t be skimming from the till again. He also won’t be walking especially well for a week, and everyone else on staff, doing the same math he was, will get the message without me saying a word.

I don’t enjoy it. I never have, whatever people assume about men in my position. But if I let it slide, every other employee will start stealing too, once they realize nobody’s checking.

The hallway behind the bar smells like bleach and last night’s spilled vodka, and by the time I push through into the noise of the main floor, my shirt’s stuck to my back, and my breath still hasn’t fully caught up with me.

I grab a water bottle from behind the bar without asking because nobody charges the owner.

I crack it open and drink half of it standing there, head down, letting the bass work its way back into something I can tune out, rather than something pressing on my skull.

When I finally straighten up, the room’s the same as it always is on a Thursday. Loud, full, and there’s nothing that needs my attention in the next five minutes.

That’s when Dimitri finds me, tablet in hand, the particular look on his face that means numbers, not trouble.

“You want this now or after you’ve stopped sweating through your shirt?”

“After I’ve stopped sweating.”

Dimitri huffs and slides the tablet into his back pocket. “Fine. Wouldn’t want to ruin the numbers with you dripping on my screen.” He looks me over once, smirking as he does. “You look like you just wrestled a bear back there.”

“Something like that.”

“Comforting, coming from my older brother, the one who’s supposed to be setting a good example.” He says it easy.

I almost smile. This is the version of my night that makes sense, my brother needling me about my shirt, nothing that requires anyone’s knuckles.

Then I look past his shoulder and stop listening entirely.

There’s a woman standing near the edge of the floor who doesn’t belong in this building.

Not because she isn’t beautiful; she is, dark hair pulled back like she left in a hurry, a coat that’s doing a poor job of pretending she’s dressed for a place like this. She doesn’t belong because she’s looking directly at me.

“Viktor.” Dimitri follows my line of sight, and his voice drops. “You know her?”

“No.”

She’s already walking over.

Dimitri steps back half a pace, an old instinct that’s kept him alive as long as it’s kept me alive, and I let him go without a word, because whatever this is, it isn’t a conversation you have in front of an audience I don’t think

“Hi,” she says, stopping a few feet away, close enough that I can see her hands are shaking slightly even though her voice isn’t. “Sorry, I know you’re working. I don’t want to get you in trouble with whoever’s in charge.”

What is she talking about?

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asks. “Somewhere a little quieter?”

Every instinct I own says this is either a setup or the strangest night of my year, and possibly both.

I glance at Dimitri, who gives me a look that says he’d very much like an explanation later, and then I nod toward the hallway that leads back past the offices, away from the speakers.

She follows without hesitation, which either means she’s braver than she looks or that she has no idea which building she’s in.

Either way, I’m intrigued now.

The hallway’s quieter, just the muffled thump of the bass through the wall and the hum of the ice machine. She stops by the wall, arms crossed loosely, working up to whatever she came here to say, and I use the pause to actually look at her.

She’s younger than I first thought, maybe late twenties, with an exhausted, wired energy, like someone who hasn’t slept properly in weeks.

Her eyes are a warm brown, tired at the edges, and there’s a tension in her shoulders that hasn’t let up since she walked in.

I notice her mouth before I mean to. I notice the line of her throat when she swallows, working up her nerve.

None of this is helping me figure out what she wants.

“I’m Harper Wilcox,” she says finally, holding out her hand as if this were a job interview.

“Viktor.” I take her hand. Her grip is firmer than I expect, and warmer.

“Okay. Viktor.” She exhales like she’s talked herself into something. “I have kind of a strange offer, and I need you to hear the whole thing before you say no.”

“I’m listening.”

“I need a husband. Not forever. Just for a few months, maybe six at most.” She says it fast, like ripping off a bandage is easier than peeling it slowly. “I’m fighting a custody case for my niece. Her grandparents are arguing I’m unstable, unmarried, not enough. If I’m married, that argument mostly falls apart.”

I stare at her. Somewhere behind me, through the wall, a song changes and the crowd cheers for absolutely no reason I can identify.

“You’re proposing to me.”

“I’m proposing a contract.” Color rises in her face, but she doesn’t look away from me. “Money, obviously. I’ve got a trust from my grandparents I can’t touch until I’m married, so once we sign, that’s real money, not a promise. We do it at the courthouse, quick, nothing dramatic, and once the case is settled, we file for divorce, and you never have to think about me again.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you look older than everyone else working the floor tonight, which honestly is a plus, and I know you didn’t laugh in my face in the first ten seconds, which most men would have.” A ghost of a smile crosses her mouth, gone fast. “I’m not asking you to fall in love with me. I’m asking you to sign a piece of paper and stand next to me in front of a judge a few times.”

I should tell her who I am. That I don’t dance for anyone, that the men on that stage work for me, that agreeing to anything with a stranger who walked in off the street could get men in my business killed.

I don’t say any of that.

What I say is, “What’s in it for me, beyond the money?”

“Nothing,” she says, blunt enough that it startles a short laugh out of me. “I’m not going to pretend this is anything but what it is. You’d be doing me a favor I can’t repay any other way.”

I look at her for a long moment, longer than I need to, and she holds still and lets me, which tells me more about her than anything she’s said so far.

There’s no reason to say yes. I don’t need her money. I don’t need the complication of a stranger’s name tied to mine on a legal document, not in my life, not with the people who’d notice.

But there’s a flat honesty in her, the way she laid the whole thing out without dressing it up as anything softer than a transaction, that I haven’t run into in years. Everyone who wants something from me wraps it in flattery first. She didn’t bother.

“All right,” I say.

Harper blinks. “All right?”

“I’ll marry you.”

“Just like that?”

“You said it yourself. It’s a contract.” I hold out my hand again, and after a beat, she takes it. “We’ll work out the terms. Bring a lawyer if you want one.”

“I have one.”

“Good. Bring her anyway.”

Her hand is still in mine, and neither of us lets go right away.

“Give me your number,” I say.

She hesitates for half a second, as if handing over a number were somehow a bigger step than the marriage proposal, then recites it while I type it into my phone. I call it once, just so hers lights up in her hand.

“Now you have mine too,” I say. “Don’t waste it.”

“Thank you,” she says, and for the first time since she walked up to me, her voice actually shakes. “You have no idea what this means.”

I have several ideas about what this means, most of them inconvenient, none of which I say.

“Go home, Harper,” I tell her instead. “Get some sleep. We’ll sort out the rest tomorrow.”

She nods, backing toward the hallway exit, and I watch her go longer than I should, watching the door swing shut behind her long after she’s actually gone.

Dimitri appears at my shoulder approximately four seconds later, arms crossed, wearing the expression of a man with questions and intent to ask every single one of them.

“Are you going to tell me what that was?”

“I’m getting married.”

Dimitri doesn’t laugh, which is how I know he thinks I’m serious before I’ve even finished the sentence. “To a woman you met eight minutes ago.”

“Seven, probably.”

“Viktor.”

“I’ll explain tomorrow.” I hand him the empty water bottle, because I need my hands to do something other than remember the shape of hers. “Tonight, I just agreed to marry a stranger who thinks I’m one of the dancers.”

“You’re serious,” he says.

I am.

4

VIKTOR

Dimitri’s waiting by the office door when I come back through, arms crossed, tablet now forgotten somewhere behind him.

“Before you say anything else tonight,” he says, “I need you to actually explain the wife situation.”

“I will. Tomorrow.” I rub the back of my neck, still catching up to my own decision. “Tonight, I need something from you.”

“More than a wedding?”

“Find out who she is.” I keep my voice low, business voice, the one that has nothing to do with the last ten minutes. “Full background. Work, finances, family, this custody case she mentioned. Everything you can get by tomorrow. She said her name was Harper Wilcox.”

Dimitri studies me for a second longer than is comfortable. “You’re marrying a woman you don’t know anything about.”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

“Fair enough. Give me a day.”

He’s true to his word.

I’m at the club early the next evening, going through invoices at my desk, when he lets himself into the office without knocking, a folder in one hand and a look on his face that tells me he already knows I’m not going to like the timing of any of this.

“That was fast,” I say.

“You said tomorrow.” He drops the folder on the desk in front of me and takes the chair across from it without being asked, which means this conversation isn’t over as quickly as he’d like me to think. “Harper Wilcox. Twenty-eight. Front desk at the Ashcombe downtown, been there three years. No record, no debt beyond a car loan, rent’s current. Parents deceased. One sister, also deceased, which is apparently where the custody case comes in.”

I open the folder. The first page is exactly what he described: flat and clinical, a report that could apply to half the women in this city.

“Sister’s daughter,” Dimitri continues. “Six years old. The girl’s paternal grandparents, an older couple named Ivanov, filed for custody a few months back. Harper’s fighting it. Nothing dramatic in the filings, just a standard dispute. Money, stability, the usual arguments people make against a single guardian.”

“Ivanov.” I turn the name over once, out loud, and nothing about it catches. Common enough surname, and nothing in the report ties it to anything I’d recognize. “You’re sure there’s nothing else there?”

“Grieving grandparents trying to keep their granddaughter. That’s the whole story, as far as I can find.” He shrugs. “I didn’t dig past the court filings. You said full background on her, not a file on people she’s suing.”

“Fine.” I flip through the rest of it while he watches, waiting for a reaction he isn’t getting. Bank statements, a copy of her lease, a printout of the guardianship paperwork with her signature at the bottom.

“You want me to keep pulling on it? The grandparents, I mean.” Dimitri leans back. “Given who we are, I’d rather over check than under check.”

“Not yet. This is enough for now.”

“That’s new. You usually want everything twice over before you sign your name to anything.”

“This isn’t a business deal.”

“No,” he says, standing, “it’s stranger than that, and you still haven’t told me why.”

I don’t answer, and he doesn’t push.

He leaves the folder on the desk and heads back out to the floor, and I hear the door click shut behind him, and then it’s just me and a stranger’s entire life sitting flat on my desk in a manila folder.

There’s nothing dramatic about them either. A few pulled from what must be a social media account that went quiet years ago, one from an old work event at the hotel, staff lined up in matching uniforms, and Harper somewhere near the end of the row, laughing at something outside the frame.

She looks different, lit up like that. Lighter. Nothing like the woman who walked up to me last night with her hands shaking and her voice completely steady.

There’s a picture near the bottom, just her at a coffee shop table, head tilted, mid-laugh, hair falling loose instead of pulled back the way it was in the hallway. Another one shows her crouched next to a small girl on a swing set, one hand braced on the chain, both of them mid motion, blurred slightly at the edges.

I find myself looking at the line of her jaw in the first one longer than I mean to. The curve of her mouth caught mid-laugh.

The way her whole face changes when nothing in it is working to convince anyone of anything.

It’s a strange thing, wanting to know more about someone whose entire value to me was supposed to be how little she’d actually change my life. A signature. A photograph for the courthouse steps.

Nothing that should require this much of my attention, this many minutes spent on paper that was only ever meant to answer one simple question, whether she was safe to marry.

She is. That question’s been answered for an hour now.

I think about the hallway again. The quiet. The way she said her own name, waited for me to answer, extended her hand like the whole thing might fall apart if I refused to shake it.

I think about the shape of her standing there, arms crossed loosely, working up her nerve before she’d even opened her mouth, and the way her voice went steady the second she started talking business, like nerves were a luxury she couldn’t afford once the stakes were real. None of that should be doing what it’s currently doing to me.

I close the folder, get up, and walk to the window that looks out over the parking lot. It does not help. I still cannot get her out of my head. The shake of her hand. The line of her throat when she swallowed hard enough to steady herself.

I have spent fifteen years training myself not to want things I have not earned the right to want.

What the fuck is wrong with you? I think. She came to you for help, not to be jerked off to like some pervert in your own office.

I clench my jaw and head downstairs instead. The club is already packed.

Heavy bass vibrates through the floor as colored lights sweep across the main stage.

On the pole, a tall brunette with long wavy hair and glitter-covered skin spins slowly upside down, her legs spread wide in a perfect split. She’s completely naked except for a tiny rhinestone thong that barely covers anything.

Every time she slides down the pole, the lights catch the shine between her thighs, clearly showing the outline of her pussy and the small strip of fabric pulled tight against her clit.

Men sit around the stage, some leaning forward with drinks in their hands, others throwing bills onto the platform. A few have their eyes glued to her body, while others talk loudly over the music.

I walk past them and sit in the back booth reserved for me. From here I can still see the stage clearly. I motion for one of the waitresses to send over Sasha, one of the best performers.

She comes over a minute later, smiling, wearing almost nothing. “Boss. You want a private dance tonight?”

I nod. “Private room. Now.”

We make our way to one of the VIP rooms. I sit on the couch while Sasha starts moving in front of me, slow and professional, grinding her hips, running her hands over her body. I watch her. I try to let it work. She’s beautiful. Skilled. Normally that would be enough.

But it’s suddenly not.

Every time she touches me or leans in close, something feels wrong. Her perfume is too sweet. Her movements feel practiced and empty. I imagine Harper’s steady voice instead of the heavy bass. I imagine Harper’s nervous but determined eyes instead of Sasha’s smoky makeup. My cock stays hard, but the feeling is hollow.

Sasha drops to her knees between my legs and reaches for my belt. “Want me to take care of you, boss?”

I grab her wrist before she can open it. “No.”

She looks surprised. I never turn this down. I pull out my wallet, hand her a thick stack of bills, and tell her, “We’re done. Keep it.”

I leave the VIP room without looking back. The walk upstairs to my office feels longer than it should. I lock the door behind me the second I am inside.

This is ridiculous. You’re better than this.

But the ache in my cock still doesn’t listen.

I sit down in my chair, lean back, and spread my legs. I open the folder again and keep the coffee shop photo right in front of me under the lamp.

My hand moves to my belt. I open it slowly, pull down the zipper, and push my pants and boxers low enough. I wrap my fingers around my cock.

I’m still hard, thick, and aching from nothing more than her picture and a handful of memories.

What the hell are you doing? I think. You had Sasha downstairs on her knees, ready to suck you off, and you turned her away. For this? For a woman you barely know?

The shame burns for a second, but it does nothing to soften my cock. If anything, the guilt makes me harder. I curse quietly and tighten my grip.

I start with slow strokes while I stare at her mouth in the photo. That curved smile. I remember the calm strength in her voice when she proposed to a stranger.

My grip tightens. The strokes grow longer, firmer. In my mind, I see her stepping closer in that hallway, close enough that I could smell her skin. I imagine her dropping to her knees right here between my spread legs, looking up at me with those same determined eyes.

My breathing stays controlled but deeper.

I stroke faster now, my fist moving smoothly over the full length of my cock.

I picture her lips parting, warm and soft, taking me into her mouth. The wet heat. The way her tongue would press against the underside while she works me deeper.

I imagine one hand in her hair, guiding her, while she looks up at me with that steady gaze.

Heat builds low in my stomach. My thighs tense. I lean forward slightly, elbow on the desk, eyes locked on the photo of her laughing face. In my head, she hollows her cheeks and sucks harder, taking almost all of me.

The fantasy feels so real that my hand speeds up, rougher now, chasing the growing pressure.

My whole body tightens. The muscles in my arm and shoulder burn. I keep staring at her picture as the pleasure spikes sharp and sudden. Thick ropes of cum spill over my fist and onto the tissues I grabbed at the last second. The release hits hard, but I stay completely silent, jaw clenched, breath held until the last wave passes.

I sit there afterward with my eyes closed, chest rising and falling. My hand is still wrapped around myself, sticky and warm. The bass from the club continues to thump faintly through the walls, unchanged.

Afterward, the office is quiet except for the muffled thump of the bass through the wall, same as always, like the last twenty minutes happened in some separate room from the rest of my life.

I close the folder properly this time, slide it into the desk drawer instead of leaving it out where anyone could see it, and sit there for a minute doing absolutely nothing, which isn’t something I do often.

Fuck.

5

HARPER

My phone buzzes on the nightstand before my alarm does.

Morning, future wife. Sleep okay?

I stare at it longer than the message deserves, coffee not even started yet, and I still can’t decide if I want to laugh or throw the phone across the room.

We’re not married yet. You don’t have to keep this up in text messages nobody else can see.

His response comes back within a few minutes.

Force of habit already. Also, I liked how it sounded.

I read that one twice. My face goes warm in a way I blame entirely on not having had coffee yet, and I set the phone face down on the counter like that’ll stop it from happening again.

It buzzes again anyway.

Court’s going to want this believable. Might as well start early.

He’s not wrong. That’s the annoying part.

I’m still typing out a reply that isn’t quite as flustered as I actually feel when my phone rings for real, Denise’s name on the screen, and I answer before I’ve finished deciding what my face is doing.

“You’re engaged,” Denise says, no hello, which is how I know she’s already read the text I sent her sometime after midnight, when I couldn’t sleep and needed to tell someone before I lost my nerve.

“I’m engaged.”

“To a man you met two days ago.”

“Yesterday, technically. Well, the day before yesterday I met him. Yesterday he said yes.”

“Harper.” She says my name the way she says it when she’s about to be right about something I don’t want her to be right about. “I need you to walk me through this slowly, because on paper this looks either brilliant or like the worst decision of your life, and I genuinely can’t tell which yet.”

I walk her through it. The club, the offer, his name, the fact that I still don’t know his last name until she asks, and I have to admit I don’t, and there’s a pause on the line that tells me exactly how that sounds out loud.

“You’re marrying a man, and you don’t know his last name.”

“Markov. Viktor Markov. I know it now.”

“Okay.” She exhales, and I hear paper shuffling on her end, the sound of her already building a strategy instead of a lecture, which is one of the reasons I hired her in the first place. “Here’s what matters. The hearing’s in three weeks. Whenever you do this, it needs to happen soon enough that the marriage has time to look established, not thrown together the week of court. I need you two doing normal things a couple does before then. Seen together. Photos, if you can manage it naturally. A joint bank account wouldn’t hurt, even a small one, once you’re actually married.”

“He’s not going to want to merge finances with a stranger.”

“Then talk him into dinner somewhere public, at minimum, before the wedding. Judges don’t examine bank accounts as often as they examine whether two people act like they know each other.” A pause. “Do you actually know anything about him?”

“Not really.”

“Then learn something before Thursday, because if his own lawyer asks you his birthday and you go blank, that’s worse for us than never having met him at all. And you two need an actual date set. What’s his address, for the record? Where’s he going to be living, and where’s Ginger going to be sleeping when the caseworker asks.”

“We haven’t gotten that far.”

“Get that far pronto. Today, ideally.” Denise’s voice softens, just slightly, the version she allows herself when she remembers I’m not just a case file. “I’m not trying to scare you. I think this could genuinely help, once it’s actually done. I just need it to hold up under questions, not just under a first glance.”

“I understand.”

“Good. And Harper, one more thing.” She pauses long enough that I brace for something worse. “Congratulations, I think. Strange circumstances, but for what it’s worth, this was smart.”

I promise her I’ll figure out the rest, and we hang up. I stand in my kitchen holding a phone that suddenly feels heavier than it did five minutes ago.

Ginger’s not up yet. I’ve got maybe twenty minutes before I need to wake her for school, and I spend most of them staring at my coffee going cold, trying to figure out how you’re supposed to explain any of this to a six-year-old without using the word husband and watching her flinch.

I don’t manage it that morning. I decide it’s better to tell her after school, when there’s no rush, when I can actually sit with her instead of half listening while I hunt for her shoes.

That evening, after dinner, I sit her down on the couch with the lamp on instead of the overhead light, because somehow rooms feel less like bad news under a lamp.

“I want to tell you something,” I say. “About the court thing, with Grandma and Grandpa Ivanov.”

Ginger goes still in the specific way she goes still now whenever a sentence starts with, I want to tell you something. She’s gotten too good at bracing for bad news for a kid her age.

“Is it bad?”

“No. It’s actually good, I think. I’m getting married.”

She blinks at me. “Like a wedding?”

“Kind of. Not the big kind with a dress and cake. A small one, at the courthouse, soon, so the judge sees that you and I have someone else in our corner too.”

“Who?”

“His name’s Viktor. You haven’t met him yet, but you will soon.”

Ginger picks at a thread on the couch cushion, quiet in the way that used to mean nothing and now means everything. “Is he going to live with us?”

“Eventually, yeah.”

“Is he going to be like Dad?”

The question lands somewhere under my ribs, sharp enough that I have to sit with it a second before I answer, because I don’t actually know how to answer it honestly and gently at the same time.

“No, baby. Nobody’s trying to replace your dad or your mom. Viktor’s just someone who’s going to help me keep you here with me, where you belong.”

She nods slowly, still picking at the thread, and doesn’t ask anything else, which somehow worries me more than if she’d cried or argued or asked a dozen more questions I don’t have good answers for.

“You can still ask me stuff,” I tell her. “Any time. I won’t be upset.”

“Okay,” she says, and leans into my side instead, and I hold her there until the thread finally comes loose in her fingers and she seems to forget about it entirely, distracted by whatever’s on the television now. I let myself feel relieved and don’t examine it too closely.

My phone buzzes again once she’s in bed.

Viktor: Dinner tomorrow. Somewhere with cameras and other people who’ll remember seeing us. Your lawyer’s right, we need to look real.

Me: How do you know what my lawyer said?

Viktor: I don’t. Educated guess. Also, I’m apparently your future husband, I’m allowed instincts about your legal strategy.

I laugh out loud, alone in my kitchen, which is becoming a habit with this man.

Me: Fine. Dinner. Nothing weird.

Him: Define weird.

Me: You know exactly what I mean, Viktor.

Him: I’ll pick you up at seven. Wear something you’d actually wear, not something you think a judge would approve of. This needs to look real, not rehearsed.

The restaurant he picks the next night has actual tablecloths and a menu that doesn’t list prices next to the entrees, and I spend the first ten minutes sitting straight-backed across from him like I’m interviewing for a job I’m not sure I want.

“You can relax,” Viktor says, watching me over the top of his glass. “Nobody’s grading this.”

“I’m aware.”

“You’re sitting like you’re aware. I need you to look like you forgot.”

I let my shoulders drop, just slightly, and he almost smiles, causing my stomach to tighten in a way I choose to blame on the wine instead of him.

“Tell me something true,” he says. “Not for the judge. For me.”

“Like what?”

“Anything. Where you grew up. Your sister. Whatever you feel like giving me.”

So I do, in pieces, more than I mean to. I tell him about Mia, about the two of us splitting a bedroom until I was fourteen, and about the year she taught me to drive in an empty parking lot because our mother refused. He listens like he’s actually listening, not just waiting for his turn, and somewhere between the appetizer and the entrée I forget I’m supposed to be performing anything at all.

“She sounds like she was a good sister,” he says, when I finally stop talking long enough to notice I’ve been talking for ten straight minutes.

“She was the better one, honestly. Braver. Louder. I was always the one hanging back.”

“Doesn’t match what I saw two nights ago.” He says it plainly, no weight behind it, and somehow that makes it land harder than if he’d meant it as a line. “You walked into my club and proposed marriage to a stranger. That’s not someone who hangs back.”

“That was desperation, not bravery.”

“Sometimes those look identical from the outside.”

I don’t have a good answer for that, so I take a sip of wine instead and let the silence sit for a second, comfortable in a way I didn’t expect from a dinner that was supposed to be a performance.

“What about you?” I ask eventually. “Fair’s fair.”

“I grew up around men who didn’t talk about their feelings and a mother who talked about everyone else’s instead.” His jaw tightens, just barely, there and gone before I can name it. “That’s the polite version.”

“And the honest version?”

“Ask me again after we’ve known each other longer than four days.”

It’s not really an answer, but the way he says it makes me let it go instead of pushing, and the rest of dinner passes easier than I expect, actual conversation instead of two strangers rehearsing lines for a courtroom neither of us wants to be in.

He asks about Ginger, real questions: what she likes, what makes her laugh, and I catch myself watching his face while I answer, trying to work out whether he’s asking because Denise told me to make this look real or because he actually wants to know.

I don’t reach a conclusion by the time the check comes.

By the time he drops me off at home, the porch light’s the only thing on, and he walks me to the door instead of just idling at the curb, which I notice but don’t mention.

“Thank you,” I say, keys already in hand. “For tonight. For all of it.”

“You don’t have to thank me every time.”

“I know. I’m going to anyway.”

He’s closer than I realize, close enough that I have to tilt my head up slightly, and neither of us moves for a second that stretches out longer than it should.

Then he kisses me.

It’s not gentle or polite, nothing like I’d have guessed from a man who spent an entire dinner watching me like he was cataloging every word I said.

His hand finds the side of my jaw, his other arm curving around my waist, pulling me in instead of leaving space between us, and I forget for several full seconds that this was ever supposed to be a business arrangement.

I kiss him back before I decide to, which is somehow worse than if I’d meant to.

When I finally pull back, my breath’s uneven and my hands are braced against his chest, so they need to stay there to keep me upright, and I can’t read what’s happening on his face, only that it isn’t nothing.

He doesn’t say anything right away. Neither do I. The porch light hums overhead, and somewhere down the street a car door slams, ordinary sounds from an ordinary night that don’t match what just happened between us at all.

“Goodnight, Viktor,” I manage, and I’m inside with the door shut and locked before he can answer, back pressed against the wood, heart going too fast for a kiss that was supposed to mean absolutely nothing.

I stand there long enough to hear his car pull away, and even then I don’t move, still catching my breath over something Denise would call excellent optics and I don’t have a name for at all.

6

VIKTOR

I still taste her on my mouth when I wake up, which is an inconvenient thing to notice before I’ve even had coffee.

I push it aside and get to the club early, before the doors open, because Dimitri texted me at seven asking for twenty minutes—and Dimitri doesn’t ask for twenty minutes unless something’s actually wrong.

He’s waiting in the office with two coffees and a face like he hasn’t slept much either, though for entirely different reasons than mine.

“Kazan’s shorting us again,” he says, no greeting, sliding a tablet across the desk. “Third delivery this month. Invoice says forty cases of the good vodka, we counted thirty-four.”

“Same six missing every time?”

“Give or take. And he raised the per-case price eight percent without telling anyone, buried it in the paperwork like we wouldn’t notice.”

I scroll through the numbers while I drink the coffee, and none of it surprises me, exactly. Kazan’s been our distributor for six years, reliable enough that I stopped watching him as closely as I should have somewhere around year three. That’s precisely the mistake that gets exploited eventually.

“He’s testing us,” I say. “Seeing how long it takes before someone notices.”

“Someone noticed. Took me two deliveries, which is embarrassing on our end too.”

I can’t disagree with that. “What do you want to do about it?”

“My instinct’s to replace him.” Dimitri leans back, arms crossed. “But switching suppliers this deep into a relationship draws attention we don’t need right now, with everything else going on.”

“So we don’t replace him. We remind him who he’s dealing with.” I set the tablet down. “Call him in ffor a meeting tomorrow. Bring the invoices. I’ll handle the conversation.”

“You want me there?”

“I want him uncomfortable, and you’re better at uncomfortable than I am.”

“He’s got a shipment coming through the port Friday too. Bigger than usual, more product moving through fewer hands than I’d like.” Dimitri scrolls to another screen. “If he’s cutting corners on vodka cases, I want eyes on that shipment specifically. Making sure nothing else gets creative.”

“Put Sergei on it. He’s good with the port crew, and Kazan doesn’t know his face yet.”

“Already planned on it.” Dimitri almost smiles at that, the first easy thing between us all morning, and for a second the office feels like it always does, business first, everything else waiting its turn.

“There’s something else,” I say, and his face shifts immediately, because he knows my voice well enough by now to hear the difference.

“The wedding.”

“The wedding.” I set my coffee down. “It’s happening Thursday morning. Courthouse downtown, ten o’clock. I need you there.”

“As what?”

“Witness.”

Dimitri’s quiet for a second, turning that over the way he turns over every piece of information I hand him, weighing it before he responds.

“You’re really doing this.”

“I already told you I was.”

“You told me you agreed to marry a stranger in a club. I assumed there’d be more time before it turned into an actual date on an actual calendar.” He sets his own coffee down too, like this conversation needs both hands free. “Viktor, think about what you’re bringing into this. A woman who has no idea who you actually are. A six-year-old. People who already watch every move you make, waiting for exactly a window like this one.”

“Nobody’s watching a courthouse wedding.”

“Somebody’s always watching. That’s the job.” He doesn’t raise his voice, he never does, but there’s a weight in it that makes me actually listen instead of just waiting for him to finish. “You marry her, she’s tied to you on paper forever, legally, publicly. If anyone wants to come at you through the people closest to you, you just handed them a name and an address.”

“I’ve thought about that.”

“Have you thought about the kid too? Because a child changes everything about how exposed you are, and I don’t think you’ve fully sat with that yet.”

He’s not wrong, and I don’t have a clean answer for him, so I don’t try to manufacture one.

“I’ll increase security around the house before they move in. Nobody gets near either of them.”

“That’s not the same as not putting them in danger to begin with.” He studies me for a long moment, and I watch him actually consider walking away from this conversation entirely rather than saying whatever he’s about to say next. “You know how this business works better than anyone. Enemies don’t come at the man directly if they can help it. They come at what he can’t stand to lose. Right now that’s nothing. The second you say vows in front of a judge, that changes permanently.”

“I’m aware of how this business works, Dimitri. I’ve run it for fifteen years.”

“And I’ve been your brother a lot longer than that, which is the only reason I’m still standing here saying this instead of just letting you find out the hard way.” He drags a hand down his face. “I’m not telling you not to do it. I gave up trying to talk you out of things a long time ago. I’m telling you to go in with your eyes open, because right now I don’t think you are.”

“I’m going in with my eyes open.”

“Are you?” He leans forward. “Can I ask you something, and you actually answer honestly instead of giving me the version you’d give anyone else?”

“Go ahead.”

“Is this still just a favor to you? Because two days ago it was a contract with an end date, and now you’re telling me about dinners and picking her up at seven, and you’ve got a look on your face I haven’t seen on you in about a decade.”

I don’t answer right away, and that silence probably tells him more than anything I could actually say.

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s not a no.”

“It’s not a yes either.”

“Viktor.” He says my name the way he says it maybe twice a year, when he’s done letting me get away with deflecting. “I’ve watched you your whole life, longer than either of us has been in this business. I have never once seen you agree to something this fast, this reckless, for a stranger, unless some part of you already wanted the reason to say yes.”

I think about the porch light, her hands against my chest, the way she said my name right before she went inside like she needed the door between us before she could trust herself not to invite me in.

“Maybe,” I say, which is as close to the truth as I’m willing to get out loud right now.

Dimitri exhales, long and slow, and for a second I think he’s going to push harder. Instead, he just nods, like he’s filed the answer away somewhere he can pull it back out later.

“Fine. I’ll be there Thursday. I’ll stand next to you and sign whatever they put in front of me.” He picks his coffee back up. “But I’m doubling security on the house regardless of what you decide to tell her about any of this. And Viktor, if this goes sideways because you didn’t want to look too closely at your own reasons, I get to say I told you so.”

“Understood.”

“Good.” He heads for the door, then stops with his hand on the frame, looking back at me with something that isn’t quite a smile. “For what it’s worth, I hope I’m wrong about the reckless part.”

“So do I.”

“And for what it’s worth on the other side,” he adds, “I haven’t seen you talk about anyone the way you talked about her just now. Not once, our whole lives. Whatever else this is, don’t waste it pretending it’s simpler than it is.”

He leaves before I can answer that, which is probably deliberate on his part, a habit of his when he wants the last word to actually land instead of getting argued back down.

After he’s gone, I sit there with a cooling coffee and a supplier meeting still ahead of me tomorrow, Kazan’s invoices still open on the tablet like they’re waiting for me to actually care about them again.

I don’t, not for another minute. I think about Thursday instead, about a courthouse I’ve driven past a hundred times without ever once thinking I’d walk into it as anything other than a witness for someone else’s trouble.

I think about what Dimitri said, about the look on my face he hasn’t seen in a decade, and I don’t bother arguing with him in my head the way I would with anyone else.

He’s rarely wrong about me. It’s part of why I keep him close.

Eventually I pull the tablet back toward me and start drafting the message to Kazan, setting the meeting for tomorrow afternoon, keeping the wording flat and businesslike, giving him nothing to read into ahead of time. It’s easier to focus on a man skimming cases of vodka than on the fact that somewhere underneath all of it, quieter than I’d like to admit, I’m looking forward to Thursday more than any part of me expected to.

And because of that, I don’t sit with the silence he leaves behind. I pull out my phone instead and call Harper before I can talk myself out of it.

She picks up on the second ring. “That’s fast. I thought you’d still be at the club.”

“I am. I wanted to ask you something before I lost my nerve.” I glance at the closed office door, half expecting Dimitri to walk back through it. “I’d like to meet Ginger. Properly, I mean, not just in passing before the wedding.”

“Oh.” A pause, and I can hear her recalibrating on the other end. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a good idea, actually. She’s been asking who you are.”

“Today, if you’re free. I don’t want to keep putting it off.”

“Today works. There’s a park near her school, the one with the good swings, she calls it. We could meet you there after I pick her up.”

“I’ll be there.”

We settle on a time, and I hang up before I can second-guess the impulse, the same impulse that’s been sitting in my chest since last night on her porch, her hands against my shirt, her voice telling me goodnight like she needed the door between us to actually mean it.

The park is smaller than I expect, a patch of green wedged between two residential streets, swing set and a slide faded from years of sun. Harper’s already there when I arrive, Ginger a few feet away, inspecting something in the grass with total concentration.

“Hey,” Harper says, her voice pitched deliberately even, the sound of a woman gauging how a six-year-old is about to react to a stranger. “Ginger, baby, come here a second. I want you to meet someone.”

Ginger looks up, assessing me with the same unflinching directness her mother has, and walks over without any visible nerves, which either means she’s braver than most kids her age or hasn’t yet learned there’s a reason to be cautious.

“This is Viktor,” Harper says. “You know, the man I told you I was going to marry.”

Ginger studies me a moment longer, head tilted, and whatever she’s looking for, she apparently finds it, because she shrugs and asks, “Do you push swings?”

“I’ve been told I’m reasonably good at it.”

“Okay.” That, apparently, settles the matter entirely, and she takes off toward the swing set at a full run, already shouting something about wanting the higher one.

“Give her five minutes and she’ll forget you’re basically a stranger,” Harper says, watching her go. “She warms up fast once she’s decided someone’s safe.”

“Good instincts, then.”

We sit on a bench close enough to watch Ginger climb onto a swing and immediately demand a push from the air itself, apparently, since nobody’s actually pushing her yet.

“I need to tell you something,” I say, before I can talk myself into waiting even one more day. “About the club.”

Harper goes slightly still beside me. “Okay.”

“I don’t dance there. I never have.” I keep my eyes on Ginger, giving Harper room to react without my full attention pinning her in place. “I own the club, Harper. I have for years. The men on that stage work for me. I’m not sure why I let you believe otherwise that first night, except that you looked so certain, and I found I didn’t want to correct you yet.”

She’s quiet long enough that I finally look over, bracing for something between fury and betrayal.

Instead, relief breaks across her face so plainly it’s almost funny.

“Oh, thank God.” She laughs, a little breathless. “I’ve spent weeks trying to figure out how to feel about being married to a stripper. I didn’t want to say anything because it felt rude, but Viktor, I was building an entire secret plan for how to explain that to Ginger’s teachers eventually.”

“That’s the reaction I was hoping for. Relief, not anger.”

“I’m still processing the anger part. Give it a minute.” But she’s still smiling, so I let myself believe her. “So if you’re not a dancer, what exactly are you? Because owning a club that pays that well for stage work isn’t exactly a small operation.”

“My family had money, going back a generation or two. I built the club myself, expanded from there into a few other business interests over the years.” I keep it vague, true in its outline without filling in the parts that would frighten her before she’s ready to hear them. “It’s a longer conversation than a park bench really allows. I promise you’ll get the fuller version eventually.”

“That’s fair.” She studies me a moment, weighing the vagueness, and apparently decides to let it go for now. “Thank you for telling me the dancer part, at least. That one was genuinely stressing me out.”

“You could have just asked.”

“I didn’t want to seem rude about your job. I was raised better than that.”

I laugh, real and unguarded, and for a moment the entire weight of the morning, Kazan, Dimitri’s warnings, the wedding looming three days out, all of it goes quiet under the simple fact of sitting on a park bench with a woman who’s relieved to learn I’m not a stripper and Ginger shrieking with joy on a swing a few feet away.

“Higher!” Ginger yells, and I get up to push her, because apparently that’s the job now, and I find I don’t mind it at all.

7

HARPER

I wake up thinking about the fact that my future husband isn’t a stripper, which is possibly the strangest sentence I’ve ever thought before my alarm’s even gone off.

I lie there a minute longer, turning it over. Viktor Markov, club owner, not club employee, a man whose family apparently had money going back a generation, who built something real out of that inheritance instead of just living off it. It changes the shape of everything I thought I understood about the man I’m marrying in two days.

I could spend the whole morning on that thought if I let myself. I don’t let myself.

Today’s a long day: Denise at eleven, work after, and there isn’t room in any of it for sitting in bed reprocessing a man’s entire financial history. That’s a problem for another morning, one where I don’t have three separate things demanding my attention before nine.

I get up, get dressed, and by the time I’m out the door I’ve mostly managed to file Viktor’s apparent wealth into the same drawer where I keep everything else about him I don’t fully understand yet, filed but not forgotten, waiting for a calmer day to actually examine.

Denise’s office smells the same as always: burnt coffee, the air freshener nobody’s replaced since spring, and she looks up from her desk with the particular focus she reserves for anything that isn’t a straightforward custody update.

“You said this was important,” she says. “Sit.”

I sit. “I have an actual date now. Thursday.”

Denise sets her pen down slowly, processing it with the same care she applies to everything. “To Viktor Markov.”

“To Viktor Markov.”

“You’re sure about this.”

“I’m sure about this,” I say it steadier than I actually feel, though the steadiness surprises me a little, how much I mean it despite everything I still don’t fully know about him. “I need your help making it official. The right way, not just a courthouse formality that falls apart the second anyone asks a real question.”

“Okay.” She pulls out a legal pad, all business now, the version of Denise I trust most. “Walk me through what you two have actually discussed.”

I tell her the plan as far as it exists. The wedding Thursday. Ginger and I moving into Viktor’s house afterward. A year, we’d agreed, roughly, though nothing’s been written down yet, just a shared understanding that this needs long enough to actually help the custody case without either of us being stuck in it forever.

“A year’s reasonable,” Denise says. “Long enough to look genuine to a judge, short enough that neither of you is trapped if it stops working. I’d want it in writing regardless. Verbal agreements between people who are also sleeping together tend to get complicated fast.”

“We’re not.” I stop myself, because we did kiss, and Denise raises an eyebrow like she already knew that before I opened my mouth.

“I’m your lawyer, Harper, not your mother. I don’t need details. I need terms.” She starts writing. “One year minimum, renewable by mutual agreement, dissolution requires thirty days’ written notice from either party, custody arrangement remains Harper’s regardless of marital status changes. Anything about finances I should know?”

“He said he’d cover the household. I wasn’t going to ask for anything beyond that.”

“You should ask for something beyond that. Not because you don’t trust him, because contracts exist for exactly the situations where trust turns out to be complicated later.” She keeps writing. “I’ll draft something reasonable.”

I let her handle it, because this is exactly why I hired her in the first place, and by the time we’re done, there’s an actual document taking shape, terms neither Viktor nor I had thought all the way through on our own.

“I’ll have the final draft ready by tomorrow. You can both sign before the ceremony.” Denise sets her pen down, studying me for a moment longer than the paperwork requires. “Can I say something off the record?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve watched a lot of clients do desperate things for custody cases. Fake addresses, staged photos, one memorable incident involving a borrowed dog to look more stable.” She almost smiles. “This is the first one that’s actually made me hope it works out for reasons that have nothing to do with the case.”

“You think we’re going to make it.”

“I think you two look like something real wearing a contract as a disguise. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before.” She stands, signaling the meeting’s actual end. “But for what it’s worth, Harper, I hope this one lasts. Longer than a year. Longer than the case even needed it to. If he’s a good man.”

I don’t have a good response to that, so I just thank her and let myself feel for the first time all morning, something other than logistics.

By the time I get home that evening, Ginger’s at the kitchen table finishing homework, and I sit down across from her, the way I did the first time I told her about any of this custody stuff, months ago now.

“Hey, baby. I need to tell you something.”

She looks up, watchful in the specific way she still gets sometimes when a sentence starts like that. “Is it bad?”

“No. Good, actually.” I reach across and squeeze her hand. “Remember Viktor, from the park?”

“The swing pusher.”

“The swing pusher.” I smile despite myself. “We’re getting married tomorrow.”

Her eyes go wide. “Tomorrow, tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow.”

“Can I come?”

“Not this time. It’s a really small wedding, just some grown-up paperwork stuff. But afterward, we’re going to start getting ready to move into his house, all three of us together.”

Ginger considers this with the seriousness she brings to everything lately, working through the actual shape of what I’ve told her rather than just reacting to the surface of it. “Will I still see Mrs. Bennett?”

“Every day you want to, I promise.”

“Okay.” She nods, apparently satisfied, and goes back to her homework like the conversation’s fully resolved, and I sit there watching her, marveling again at how much steadier she’s gotten these last few months, how much less each new change seems to cost her now than it used to.

Tomorrow, I think, watching her erase something and start over with the patient concentration only a six-year-old brings to long division. Tomorrow I become someone’s wife for real, on paper and everywhere else that matters, and somehow, sitting here in my own kitchen, it doesn’t feel like the leap it should.

Wedding Day

I’ve tried on four outfits by seven in the morning, which is absurd for a wedding with no guests, no cake, and no actual romance attached to it, and I still can’t decide if the navy dress looks like I’m trying too hard or not hard enough.

I go with the navy dress.

I stand in front of the mirror longer than I need to, smoothing a wrinkle that isn’t actually there, and I catch myself thinking about what Mia would say if she could see me right now.

Something dry, probably. Something about how I’ve never once done anything the easy way in my entire life, and here I’m proving her right one more time from wherever she’s watching, if she’s watching at all.

Ginger’s already at school by the time I’m doing my hair for the second time, dropped off twenty minutes early with a story about a dentist appointment that felt easier than the truth, and some part of me hates how easily the lie came out. She knows the real reason now, at least.

Today just isn’t the day I want to stand in a school drop-off line explaining the details.

My hands won’t stop shaking while I do my mascara, which is ridiculous, because again, this isn’t even a real wedding. It’s paperwork with a judge attached.

I tell myself that twice in the mirror and believe it exactly as much as I did the first time.

I text Denise on my way out the door, one line, doing this in an hour, and her reply comes back almost instantly, see you there, since she’s coming in person this time, not just checking in from her office.

The courthouse downtown has fluorescent lighting bright enough to make everyone look slightly ill, and I’m early enough that I get a bench near the window, phone in my lap, watching people shuffle through metal detectors with the particular blankness of anyone doing government paperwork before ten in the morning.

Viktor arrives twelve minutes later, and I see him before he sees me, which gives me exactly enough time to notice he’s wearing an actual suit, dark gray, nothing like the open shirt from the club or the jeans he wore pushing Ginger on a swing two days ago.

He clocks me across the lobby, and the tension in his shoulders drops, just slightly, and for a second neither of us says anything about the fact that the last time we actually talked, really talked, he was telling me the truth about the club while Ginger shrieked with joy on a swing a few feet away.

“You came,” he says instead, like there was ever a real chance I wouldn’t.

“So did you.”

“I did say I would.”

Dimitri’s a step behind him, and beside Dimitri, an older man I don’t immediately recognize, silver-haired, a leather folder tucked under one arm, dressed like someone who bills by the hour.

“Harper,” Dimitri says, nodding at me, then gestures to the older man. “This is my associate handling some of the paperwork today.”

“Actually,” the man says, extending a hand, “I believe we’ve spoken on the phone. Warren Hastings. Your grandparents’ estate attorney.”

It takes me a second to place the name, and then it lands all at once: the calls I made last week, the forms I signed and mailed back, the quiet arrangement I made to have the trust finalized the moment I was legally married, witnessed properly so there’d never be a question about the timing.

“You came in person,” I say, a little stunned. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Your grandparents were specific about the marriage clause being witnessed properly, not just filed remotely. I take my instructions from the trust seriously, even years later.” He glances toward the ceremony room. “I understand today qualifies.”

“It does.”

Denise arrives a moment later, brisk and efficient in a blazer I’ve never seen her wear, carrying a folder of her own, the contract tucked inside it.

“Everyone’s here,” she says, glancing around at the small, strange collection of people gathered for what’s supposed to be the least significant version of a wedding imaginable. “Should we go in?”

“Ready?” Viktor asks me.

“Not even a little.”

“Good. Neither am I.”

That, somehow, helps more than if he’d said something reassuring.

The ceremony room is smaller than I expect, beige walls, a flag in the corner, a clerk who’s clearly done this so many times the words barely register as words to her anymore. She calls our names off a clipboard, has us stand in front of her desk instead of an altar, and starts reading before either of us has fully settled into place.

“Do you, Viktor Markov, take Harper Wilcox to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do.” He says it fast, flat, exactly the way I’d expect a man to say it if he meant nothing by it, except I know better now, know the flatness is armor more than indifference.

“Do you, Harper Wilcox, take Viktor Markov to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do.” Mine comes out steadier than I feel, which I count as a small victory given the state of my hands twenty minutes ago.

“By the power vested in me by the state, I now pronounce you married. You may sign here, here, and here.”

We sign, Dimitri signing beneath us with the efficient scrawl of someone who’s filled out a thousand forms in his life, Denise signing as our second witness on the contract itself, everything happening in a small, orderly sequence that somehow still manages to feel enormous underneath its own paperwork.

“Congratulations,” the clerk says, already reaching for the next folder on her desk, already halfway to forgetting our names.

Warren Hastings waits until we’ve stepped back out into the hallway before he opens his own folder.

“Mrs. Markov.” He says it like he’s testing whether I’ll flinch at the new name, and I don’t, not really, not as much as I expected to. “As of this morning’s ceremony, the marriage clause in your grandparents’ trust is satisfied. I have the release documents here, if you’re prepared to sign.”

My throat goes tight in a way I don’t fully expect. “Now?”

“Now, if you’d like it done. Or we can schedule something more formal for another day.”

“No.” I glance at Viktor, who nods, steady, present, not pushing me either direction. “Now’s fine.”

Hastings spreads the papers across a small table near the window, and I sign where he indicates, hands slightly unsteady in a way that has nothing to do with the marriage this time and everything to do with a grandmother and grandfather I haven’t spoken to in years, releasing something they set aside for me before either of them died, a door I chose to leave locked until exactly this moment.

“That’s everything,” Hastings says, gathering the papers. “The funds will transfer within the week. Congratulations, on both counts.”

He shakes my hand, then Viktor’s, and excuses himself with the efficient, unbothered air of a man who’s finalized a hundred trusts and feels nothing extra about this one. I stand there in the hallway holding a folder that represents money I haven’t touched in years and a marriage that’s four minutes old.

Dimitri excuses himself to take a call that conveniently starts ringing the second Hastings leaves, and Denise follows shortly after, offering me one last look, warm and a little knowing, before she goes.

Viktor and I stand there in the hallway, government fluorescents overhead, both of us slightly unsure what happens now that the thing we came here to do is done, twice over.

“That’s it,” I say. “We’re married. And apparently, I’m suddenly not broke.”

“We’re married.” He says it slower than the clerk did, testing the shape of it, ignoring the second half entirely, like the money means nothing to him one way or another, which, I’m realizing now, it probably doesn’t.

“Feels anticlimactic.”

“It’s supposed to.” He studies me for a second, his expression going quieter than at the club, quieter than at the park, like he’s seeing me clearly for the first time standing in a courthouse hallway on a Thursday morning. “Doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything at all, and he doesn’t push. He just keeps looking at me a beat longer than the moment strictly requires, long enough that I feel it in my chest instead of just noticing it with my eyes.

“I should get to work,” I say finally, because someone has to say something, and my voice is the only one available.

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

He does, hand resting lightly at the small of my back the entire way, not possessive, just there, and when we reach my car, he doesn’t try to kiss me, doesn’t push for anything the day hasn’t already offered. He just watches me get in, waits until I’ve started the engine, and lifts two fingers off the doorframe, half a wave, half a promise this isn’t over.

I watch him in my rearview mirror the whole way out of the lot, and the look on his face follows me longer than it has any right to, all the way to work, sitting in my chest through the entire drive, a decision I made and a feeling I haven’t fully caught up to yet, both at once.

By the time I clock in, I’ve replayed the courthouse hallway probably a dozen times, the way he looked at me, the way he said, doesn’t mean it has to stay that way, like it was a promise instead of just a line.

I don’t know what to do with any of it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about a marriage that was only ever meant to be a piece of paper, and a trust fund I’d spent years pretending I didn’t need. And yet…

I’m married. The word still doesn’t feel like it belongs to me.

Somewhere underneath the disbelief, quieter than I want to admit, it doesn’t feel entirely wrong either.

8

HARPER

My apartment looks smaller when empty than it ever did when it was full, boxes stacked by the door, the outline of a couch that lived against that wall for three years leaving a paler patch on the paint.

Ginger’s drawings are still on the fridge when I go to grab the last box from the kitchen. I peel them off one at a time, careful with the tape, and my throat does the tight thing it’s been doing on and off for days now.

I fold them flat and slide them into a folder instead of a box, somewhere I won’t accidentally crush them under something heavier.

Ginger sits on the bare floor of her old room while I finish, arms wrapped around her knees, watching the movers Viktor sent carry out the last of our things.

“We’re really going,” she says.

“We are.” I crouch down next to her. “You can bring anything you want in the car with us. Doesn’t have to go in a box.”

She thinks about it, then goes and gets the stuffed rabbit off her stripped bed, the one Mia gave her the Christmas before she died, and holds it the entire drive without saying much else.

“Last load,” Viktor says from the doorway, two boxes stacked in his arms like they weigh nothing. He’s traded the suit for jeans and a plain shirt, sleeves pushed up, and it’s strange seeing him like this, in my kitchen, doing something as ordinary as carrying boxes down two flights of stairs.

“You didn’t have to come do this yourself.”

“I have people who could have. I wanted to.”

His house sits behind a gate that opens on its own when we pull up, with a long driveway, more windows than any house needs, and a quiet so complete it feels engineered rather than accidental.

There’s a man near the garage who nods at Viktor and doesn’t ask a single question about the boxes or the six-year-old climbing out of the back seat, which strikes me as slightly odd before I decide it’s just how rich people’s staff behave, invisible and unbothered by anything.

Another man I haven’t seen before is doing something at the far end of the driveway that looks less like landscaping and more like checking the tree line.

“This is it,” Viktor says, watching my face for a reaction as we step inside a few minutes later.

I do my best to take it all in. “It’s… a lot of house.”

“It’ll feel smaller once you’re both actually living in it.”

I doubt that, standing in a foyer with ceilings twice as tall as any room I’ve ever slept in, but I don’t say so.

Ginger doesn’t say much of anything. She’s been quiet the whole drive over, quieter than usual even for her, and she stays close to my leg while Viktor shows us the rooms, her hand fisted in the hem of my shirt like she’s worried letting go might mean losing me somewhere in the house.

She still has the rabbit tucked under one arm, and every so often her fingers find its ear and worry the fabric there, an old habit I remember from right after Mia died, one I hoped we’d left behind for good.

Her new room is bigger than our old living room, a bed already made up in soft yellow sheets someone clearly picked with a six-year-old in mind, and she stands in the doorway looking at it like it belongs to somebody else.

“Do you like it?” I ask.

She shrugs, small, noncommittal, the same shrug she’s given every question for three days now.

“You can pick different sheets if you want. These don’t have to be permanent.”

“It’s fine,” she says, which is what she’s said about everything since Tuesday.

That night, after most of the boxes are unpacked and the yellow sheets are still untouched because Ginger insisted on sleeping in her clothes on top of the covers, I find her sitting on the floor of her new room instead of the bed, back against the wall, knees pulled up.

“Hey,” I say, sitting down next to her. “You okay down here?”

“I don’t know where anything is.”

“That’s okay. It’s new. Nobody knows where anything is on the first night.”

“What if I need you and I can’t find your room?”

My heart breaks a little. “My room’s right down the hall. Second door. I’ll show you again before bed, as many times as you need.”

She nods, but she doesn’t move off the floor, and I sit with her there instead of pushing.

Viktor appears in the doorway a few minutes later, a glass of water in each hand, and he doesn’t ask why we’re on the floor.

He just crouches down to Ginger’s level, sets one glass beside her, and stays there.

“First night in a new house is the strangest one,” he says. “After that it gets easier. I promise.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve done it. More than once.” He says it simply.

“Did you get scared?”

“Every time.” He doesn’t make it sound braver than it was. “Being scared in a new place doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with you. It just means you haven’t learned the layout yet.”

Ginger considers that for a long moment, longer than she’s considered anything all week, and something in her shoulders loosens, just slightly. “Okay,” she says, and reaches for the water he brought her. She drinks half of it in one go like she’s been thirsty the whole time and hadn’t noticed until now.

Viktor doesn’t push for more than that. He stands, tells her goodnight, and leaves the door open exactly the width he met it.

I stay a while longer after he’s gone. Eventually Ginger climbs up onto the bed on her own, no argument, and lies down on top of the yellow sheets without complaint this time.

“Mrs. Bennett will drive far to get here now,” she says out of nowhere, staring at the ceiling. “Is she still going to pick me up?”

“We’ll figure that part out. I promise you’re not losing anyone else, Ginger. Not Marisol, not Mrs. Bennett, not anyone.”

“Okay,” she says again, and this time it sounds a little more like she believes it.

I turn off the big overhead light and leave the small lamp on instead, the way she likes it, and sit on the edge of the bed until her breathing evens out.

Downstairs, Viktor’s in the kitchen when I come down, two mugs of tea already made like he somehow knew I’d need one.

“She talked to you,” I say, taking the mug he offers. “More than she’s talked to anyone in days.”

“She’s testing whether I’ll listen.” He leans against the counter, watching me over the rim of his own mug. “Kids that age can always tell the difference between someone answering them and someone humoring them.”

“You’re good with her.”

“I’m trying.” His jaw tightens, just slightly, there and gone fast. “I don’t have much practice. But I’d like to get better at it, if she’ll let me.”

“You didn’t have to bring her water yourself either. That’s what I keep noticing tonight. You didn’t have to carry boxes, you didn’t have to crouch down on her level, you didn’t have to sit with her instead of just telling her to get into bed.”

“I know.” He looks at me steadily over the mug. “But I wanted to do those things, too.”

9

VIKTOR

“You said I could pick,” Ginger says, arms crossed, standing her ground in my kitchen like she’s negotiating a treaty. “I pick pizza. The kind with the stuffed crust.”

“That’s what you picked yesterday.”

“I like it.”

“You’re allowed to like more than one thing, you know. There’s an entire menu of things you haven’t tried yet.”

“I know what I like.” She says it with total conviction.

Harper appears in the kitchen doorway right as Ginger says it, hair still damp from a shower, wearing a robe she clearly grabbed without thinking too hard about it. I have to look somewhere else for a second before I trust myself to speak normally.

“That’s such a direct echo of the woman who just walked in,” I say, “that I have to fight not to smile outright.”

Harper laughs, crossing to the counter, not bothering to hide it, and I find myself giving in without much of a fight, because arguing pizza with a six-year-old feels like the easiest decision I’ve made all week.

“Stuffed crust it is.”

Ginger nods once, satisfied, like she expected nothing less, and goes back to the drawing she’s been working on at the table, tongue between her teeth in concentration.

Four days in this house and she’s already figured out exactly how far she can push me, which is somehow more reassuring than if she’d stayed cautious with me forever.

“You’re supposed to be the intimidating one,” Harper says, low enough that Ginger doesn’t catch it over her own humming. “The scary club owner. Instead, you just lost a negotiation to a first grader over crust.”

“I have a reputation to maintain elsewhere. This kitchen isn’t it.”

Harper moves past me to get the plates herself, close enough that I catch the smell of whatever soap she used. I busy myself with the pizza box instead of doing anything about the fact that my whole body’s suddenly very aware of exactly how little distance is between us in this kitchen.

“Thank you,” she says. “For giving in on the pizza thing. You didn’t have to.”

“It’s pizza. I think I can survive it twice in one week.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She leans against the doorframe, and the robe shifts slightly, and I keep my eyes exactly where they belong through pure effort of will. “You’ve been doing that a lot. Giving in on the small stuff. It matters more than you probably realize.”

“I’m aware it matters.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to, and it makes her go quiet for a second, studying me. I look away first, busying myself with plates I don’t actually need to arrange.

It would be easy to close the distance between us right now, kitchen, low light, both of us tired enough to stop pretending the last few weeks haven’t rearranged what this was supposed to be.

I don’t. Not with her daughter twelve feet away drawing something that looks like it might be a cat, not with the memory of a courthouse hallway still sitting unresolved between us.

But it doesn’t get easier, wanting her like this, under my own roof, in a robe she has no idea is doing to me exactly what those photographs did the first night I saw her face.

Dinner passes easier than I expect, Ginger narrating her drawing in exhaustive detail. A cat, it turns out, riding what she insists is a dragon and not a horse, an important distinction she repeats twice.

Harper asks questions I can tell are genuine and not just performed patience, and for a stretch of forty minutes I forget entirely that any of this started as a transaction.

At one point Ginger asks me if I have a favorite animal, and I tell her wolves, mostly because it’s true and partly because I want to see what she does with it.

“Wolves are pack animals,” she informs me, with the total authority of someone who read this fact recently and has been waiting for a reason to share it. “They don’t like being alone.”

“No,” I say. “They don’t.”

Harper catches my eye across the table for a second before looking away.

By the time Ginger’s ready for bed, she asks for me specifically, which still catches me off guard every time it happens.

“Two chapters,” she says, holding up the book with the dragon on it, an old negotiating tactic she’s clearly used successfully before. “Not one.”

“We’ll see how tired you get.”

“That’s not a no.”

“No,” I admit. “It’s not.”

I sit on the edge of her bed and read, doing the voices badly, worse than Harper does them by her own admission, and Ginger corrects my dragon voice twice before agreeing it’s close enough to be acceptable.

“That’s not how he sounds,” she informs me, halfway through the first chapter.

“How’s he supposed to sound?”

“Bigger. And kind of sad, because nobody likes him even though he’s nice.”

I adjust accordingly, dropping my voice lower, and she nods, satisfied, and settles back against her pillow like she’s just successfully directed a very important production.

By the third chapter her eyes are heavier, blinking longer each time, and she doesn’t seem bothered at all that I’m not Harper.

She’s asleep before the chapter ends, one hand still resting on the page like she’s trying to hold the story in place even unconscious.

I sit there a minute longer than I need to, watching her breathe.

I’ve spent fifteen years building a life that runs on distance, on making sure nothing matters enough to be used against me.

But I’ve let a child into the one place I always kept empty on purpose.

It should worry me more than it does.

Dimitri’s waiting downstairs when I come back down, a beer already open on the counter, and the look on his face that means business, not personal business.

“Kazan,” he says, before I even ask.

“How’d he take it?”

“About like you’d expect. Denied everything for the first ten minutes, then folded the second I put the actual invoice numbers in front of him.” Dimitri takes a pull from the bottle.

“He’s paying back the difference over the next two deliveries. No more creative math after that, or we find a new distributor and make sure every other supplier in the city hears exactly why.”

“Good. Any pushback from his people, or was it just him?”

“Just him. His crew didn’t even know he was skimming, from what I could tell. Man’s got a gambling problem he’s apparently been trying to solve one short case of vodka at a time.” Dimitri shakes his head. “Almost feel bad for him. Almost.”

“He’ll survive it.”

“He’ll survive it broke and embarrassed, which is probably the point.” Dimitri sets the bottle down, and his voice shifts, careful in a way I recognize immediately. “He also mentioned something else. Might be nothing.”

“Go on.”

“Said he’s had a couple of new buyers sniffing around asking about our numbers particularly. Not fishing for a deal. Fishing for information.”

“Whose crew?”

“He didn’t know, or he’s smart enough not to say. Could be nothing, could be somebody doing homework before making a move somewhere down the line.”

“Keep an ear out. Anything more specific, I want to know immediately.”

“Sure thing.” He studies me for a second, a question sitting behind his eyes that he doesn’t ask outright. “How’s the kid settling in?”

“Better than I expected.”

“And Harper?”

“Also better than I expected.”

Dimitri doesn’t push further. He just nods and finishes his beer. After he leaves, I stand in the quiet kitchen a while longer.

Thinking about buyers asking questions they have no business asking, and about a girl asleep upstairs who trusted me enough tonight to fall asleep mid-sentence, and about her aunt somewhere down the hall in a robe that’s going to be the reason I don’t sleep well tonight either.

Two very different kinds of danger, sitting in the same house, and only one of them I actually know how to fight.

The other one I’ve been losing since the night she walked into my club and mistook me for someone I’ve never once been.

10

HARPER

I’ve worn the same gray suit to every meeting with Denise for weeks, and this morning I stand in front of the mirror for ten straight minutes convinced it suddenly looks wrong on me, like the fabric itself knows what today is.

Viktor straightens my collar in the hallway before we leave. It’s unnecessary. My collar’s fine, but I let him do it anyway because his hands are steady and mine haven’t stopped shaking since I woke up.

“You’re going to be fine,” he says.

“You don’t know that.”

“No, but you didn’t fall apart in front of me at the club, and you had a lot more to lose that night than you think you do today.”

It’s not exactly reassurance, but it steadies me. We drive to the courthouse with his hand resting over mine on the console the entire way, saying nothing else.

The courtroom is smaller than I expected, wood paneling instead of the marble I pictured, a judge who looks perpetually unimpressed by everyone in front of her. Denise sits beside me at our table, calm in the specific way that means she’s run through every version of today in her head already.

“Mr. Markov,” she says, leaning across me to shake Viktor’s hand properly, the first real conversation they’ve had since the wedding, where there’d barely been time for more than a nod between them. “Good to see you again under slightly less rushed circumstances.”

“Ms. Reyes. Thank you for everything you’ve put into this.”

“It’s my job. A job I happen to think we’re going to win, if that’s worth anything before we start.” She glances at her notes one more time, then at me. “You ready?”

“No. But let’s do it anyway.”

Across the aisle, the Ivanovs sit with their lawyer, and my chest tightens in a way that has nothing to do with strangers and everything to do with exactly how well I used to know these two people.

Mia’s wedding, all those years ago, the two of them dancing badly and happily to a song none of us could name afterward. Sunday dinners at their house before everything fell apart, the grandmother’s hands, that same particular grandmother, teaching me to make pierogi in a kitchen that smelled like dill for hours afterward. They were family before they were plaintiffs, before grief turned them into people I had to defend myself against instead of people I used to call by their first names.

Seeing them now, across a courtroom aisle instead of across a dinner table, is a particular flavor of grief, one I hadn’t fully braced for until this exact moment.

They look older than I remember, worn down in a way that six months of legal warfare will do to anyone, however righteous they believe their cause is. An elderly couple who look like they should be tending a garden somewhere instead of fighting me for custody of the granddaughter we both love.

The grandmother has the same kind eyes I remember from a decade of holidays, though they don’t match anything her lawyer’s about to say, and she keeps glancing toward me with an expression I can’t quite place, not hostile exactly, closer to grief that’s found nowhere else to go.

The grandfather sits perfectly still, hands folded, watching the room with an attention that doesn’t match the warm, easy man I remember from Mia’s wedding at all. There’s a stillness to him now that reminds me, oddly, of Viktor, the same economy of movement, like neither man wastes energy on anything that isn’t necessary.

He’s harder to read than the warm, easy man I remember, and it unsettles me in a way I can’t fully name, though I tell myself it’s just the strangeness of grief and a courtroom doing what grief and courtrooms always do to people who used to love each other.

Their lawyer opens with the home study report, reading through the parts that paint me as barely holding things together, the sitter schedule, the overdrafts from months ago, my work hours listed like evidence in a trial that isn’t actually about crime.

“The court should note,” she says, “that Ms. Wilcox, now Mrs. Markov, was relying on paid childcare for the majority of her niece’s waking hours as recently as five weeks ago. My clients simply want the court to consider whether that pattern reflects the stability a six-year-old deserves.”

Denise counters each point calmly, character letters read into the record one after another: Marisol’s, Mrs. Bennett’s, my manager’s, each one building a picture the paperwork alone doesn’t show.

She walks the judge through the marriage itself next: the dates, the joint account we opened last week, and the photographs from dinner that Denise insisted we take specifically for this. Evidence that we’ve built something that looks, on paper and in practice, like a stable home.

“The petitioner’s circumstances have changed substantially since the initial filing,” Denise says. “Ms. Wilcox is now married, in a stable household, with a support system that includes her husband and the extended household staff who assist with childcare when needed. The instability my colleague describes no longer exists, if it ever did.”

It goes back and forth for nearly an hour, and I hold Viktor’s hand under the table the entire time, grateful for something solid to hold onto while strangers debate whether I’m fit to raise my own niece.

Then their lawyer shifts tactics.

“Your honor, we’d also like to address the court’s concerns regarding the petitioner’s current associations.” She glances at her notes. “Mrs. Markov’s husband has, shall we say, a colorful business history. My clients have deep concerns about the environment their granddaughter would be raised in, married to a man like Viktor Markov.”

“Objection.” Denise is on her feet instantly. “Character attacks with no bearing on the custody question at hand.”

“Goes directly to environment and stability, your honor.”

“I’ll allow a brief line of questioning.” The judge doesn’t look thrilled about it, but she nods anyway.

The lawyer turns and, for the first time, addresses her own client directly, some procedural formality about confirming testimony. “Mr. Ivanov, is it your understanding that Mr. Markov’s business dealings raise concerns for your granddaughter’s welfare?”

“Yes.” The grandfather’s voice is quiet, controlled, barely above what’s needed to reach the microphone. “Deep concerns.”

I don’t understand it. The exact words don’t mean much to me beyond the obvious insult buried in them. But beside me, Viktor goes completely still.

Not as tense as he was in the car. This is colder, immediate, his hand going rigid inside mine, his jaw setting in a way I’ve never seen on him before, not at the club, not anywhere.

I glance sideways at him. He’s staring at the grandfather with an intensity that has nothing to do with a lawyer’s cheap character attack, his eyes fixed on the old man’s face like he’s checking it against a memory.

That makes no sense. He’s never met these people before today.

His hand tightens around mine, hard enough that I nearly wince.

“Are you okay?” I whisper, low enough that only he can hear it.

“Fine.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Harper.” My name comes out clipped, not unkind, but final, a door closing on the question before I can push it further.

I want to press him on it, want to ask what exactly about an old man’s quiet voice put that look on his face. But the judge is already moving the proceedings along, and Denise is already rising to redirect.

I turn my attention back to the front of the room, though some part of me stays fixed on the stillness in Viktor’s hand, refusing to fully let go of mine even now.

The hearing grinds on. Denise makes her closing points, sharp and confident, the marriage entered cleanly into the record, the stability argument landing exactly the way we hoped it would.

The Ivanovs’ lawyer makes her final push, painting me one more time as unstable, unfit, married into danger I supposedly can’t understand.

The judge announces she’ll take the matter under brief recess before ruling, fifteen minutes, and the room stands. Viktor’s hand finally loosens around mine, though his face doesn’t loosen with it.

We step out into the hallway together, and Denise catches up to us a moment later, already talking. “That went about as well as it could have. I’ll have the written ruling motion filed by tomorrow, but off the record, I’d be shocked if the judge doesn’t rule in our favor. I want to go over a few details with you both before you leave, if you have a minute.”

“Of course,” I say, though half my attention is still on Viktor, who’s gone quiet beside me in a way that has nothing to do with Denise.

Denise walks us through what happens next, the timeline for the ruling, and what to expect if the Ivanovs try to appeal, and I only half absorb the practical things because I’m watching Viktor nod along at all the right moments while looking like he’s somewhere else entirely.

She excuses herself once she’s covered everything, off to catch her next client, and the second she’s out of earshot I turn to him.

“Viktor.” I keep my voice low, pulling him a few steps away from the crowd spilling out of the courtroom. “What was that in there? You went completely rigid.”

“It was nothing.” He says it easily, already reaching for his phone like the conversation’s over. “Old business rivalry getting dragged up somewhere it doesn’t belong. Lawyers do that, dig up anything that sounds bad, whether or not it’s actually relevant.”

“You didn’t look like a man annoyed by a cheap tactic. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

“I looked like a man who doesn’t enjoy hearing his name used as a weapon in a courtroom. That’s all this is.” He slides an arm around my shoulders, casual, steering us both toward the exit.

11

VIKTOR

The judge’s ruling barely registers as words.

“Custody is granted to the petitioner.” She says it flat, the way she’s probably said it a thousand times before, filing paperwork with her voice more than delivering news. “The court finds the current household stable and the marriage, while recent, sufficient grounds to deny the respondents’ petition. The court will additionally grant the respondents supervised visitation, four hours biweekly, given the child’s existing relationship with her paternal grandparents. Details to be arranged through counsel.”

Somewhere behind me, Denise exhales, long and slow, the exhale of someone whose weeks of work just paid off.

Harper’s hand finds mine under the table again, gripping hard enough that I know she’s relieved, that this is the outcome we came here for. I squeeze back on instinct, on muscle memory.

The part of me that should be celebrating with her is still sitting three rows back, staring at an old man who isn’t supposed to exist anymore.

Pavel Ivanov.

Ivanov meant nothing to me a month ago. Common name. I never had a name for the man from the warehouse, only his face.

That’s why I didn’t catch it sooner.

I knew him as a face across a warehouse floor eleven years ago, lit by headlights during a standoff that nearly ended both our organizations in one night.

Twelve of my men against fifteen of his, guns drawn on both sides, close enough to a bloodbath that I still remember the specific silence right before someone decided against pulling a trigger. Neither side ever agreed on who backed down first.

Both sides walked away, which at the time felt like the only victory worth having.

Less than a year later, his face disappeared from every corner of this business, presumed dead by everyone who mattered, myself included.

Nobody grieved him. Nobody looked for a body either. Men in our line of work vanish for a hundred reasons, and a rival simply not showing up anymore was treated as good fortune, not a mystery worth solving.

I never learned his legal name back then. Men like him didn’t hand out names, only reputations, only the fear that spread ahead of them into every room they walked into.

I knew him as a threat with a face, nothing more, and a threat that eventually stops being tracked.

Until today, when that face sat three rows away from me.

Harper’s still watching me when the judge dismisses the room, concern written plainly across her face. I owe her something better than the deflection I gave her earlier, but not yet.

Not until I understand exactly what I’m dealing with myself.

“I need to find Dimitri,” I tell her.

She studies me a moment longer, and whatever she sees apparently convinces her not to push, at least for now.

She lets Denise pull her aside to discuss next steps while I go looking for my brother in the crowded hallway outside.

Across the room, Pavel Ivanov rises from his chair slowly, one hand on his wife’s shoulder for balance, and for one brief second his eyes find mine across the distance.

Nothing in his face changes, no sign that he remembers the man who once stood across a warehouse floor from him with a gun in his hand. Either he doesn’t recognize me the way I recognize him, or he’s better at hiding it than I am.

I don’t wait around to find out which.

I find him near the elevators, checking his phone, and the second he sees my face, he straightens fully, phone forgotten.

“What happened in there?”

“Pavel Ivanov happened.”

Dimitri’s expression doesn’t change immediately, still processing the name against nothing, exactly the reaction I expected.

“The grandfather,” I say. “Ginger’s grandfather. He’s Pavel Ivanov.”

“That name means nothing to me.”

“It shouldn’t. He went by something entirely different and you were barely in this business when it mattered.” I keep my voice low, aware of the crowd still filtering past us. “Eleven years ago, before you were running your own crews, there was a standoff at the old distribution warehouse on the east side.”

“A man nearly ended us that night. We nearly ended him. Neither happened, and within the year he vanished entirely. Everyone assumed dead.”

Understanding dawns across Dimitri’s face slowly, then all at once. “The file said Ivanov.”

“The file said Ivanov. This is on me. I never gave you a name to attach to the face I actually remembered, so you had nothing to flag it against. I didn’t recognize it myself until I saw him sitting three rows away today.”

“I ran a full background check on Harper. I should have run one on the people suing her too.”

“You should have. That’s exactly the piece you missed.” I keep my voice even, but I don’t soften it either. “A common surname and a grieving-grandparents story isn’t a reason to stop digging. You had a name and a custody case that turned aggressive fast. That combination should have earned more than a surface pass.”

Dimitri drags a hand back through his hair, jaw tight. “I know. I got comfortable. I won’t again.”

I nod, but say nothing.

“I still should have thought of it myself,” he adds. “Grandparents suing for custody, coming after Harper hard enough to hire outside counsel, digging into business history specifically. That should have raised something on its own, regardless of the name.”

“Hindsight makes fools of both of us tonight. Don’t waste time on blame, waste it on finding out what he’s actually been doing for eleven years.”

“This changes everything. If he’s alive, if he’s been alive this whole time, sitting quietly under a different life, waiting.”

“I don’t know what he’s been doing. I don’t know why now, why Ginger, why any of it.” I rub a hand down my face, exhaustion catching up with me all at once. “But he sat three rows away from Harper today, close enough to watch her, and I don’t believe for a second that’s a coincidence. Men like him don’t end up in the same courtroom as the woman I married by accident.”

“You think he knew who she married.”

“I think he found out the second my name landed on a court document, and I think everything about this custody case since then has been about more than a granddaughter.”

Dimitri’s quiet for a moment.

“I’ll pull everything we have,” he says. “Everyone connected to him back then, everyone who might know what he’s done with the last eleven years. Quietly.”

“Quietly,” I agree. “And double the men on the house tonight.”

He heads off to start making calls, and I stand there a moment longer, watching the crowd thin out around us.

An entire building full of people who have no idea a dead man just resurrected himself three feet from a woman I never meant to actually marry.

That night, once Harper and Ginger are both asleep, I walk the perimeter of the property myself instead of leaving it entirely to the men I’ve already stationed there.

Checking sightlines, gaps in the tree line, anything a man like Pavel would exploit if he decided patience wasn’t worth it anymore.

The house is quiet behind me, every window dark except the small lamp Harper leaves on in the hallway now.

I stand at the edge of the tree line and look back at it, at the one lit window, and think about how easily all of this could be undone by a man I thought I’d already survived once.

Dimitri texts me twice before midnight, updates on men he’s already reaching out to, old contacts who might know where Pavel’s spent the last decade. I answer each one and keep walking, unwilling to go back inside until I’ve checked every angle myself, twice.

12

HARPER

I catch myself saying it on a Tuesday, standing at the front desk with Renata beside me, half listening to a guest complain about the ice machine on the third floor, still broken after all this time.

“I still need to call home before Ginger’s bedtime,” I say, and it’s out of my mouth before I notice what I’ve called it.

Home. Not Viktor’s house. Not the place I’m staying. Home, easy, unremarkable, like I’ve been saying it for years instead of a few weeks.

Renata doesn’t catch it, still filing a complaint form, but I catch it, and I stand there for a second longer than the moment requires.

The court case ended weeks ago now. Nobody’s mentioned an end date since.

“You’re doing the thing again,” Renata says, glancing up.

“What thing?”

“The staring off into space thing. You’ve been doing it a lot lately.”

“I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that.” She falls silent for a moment. “You never actually told me the real plan,” she says a minute later, once the guest has wandered off toward the elevators. “The contract. Isn’t there a clock running on it somewhere?”

“A year, minimum. Either of us can end it after that with thirty days’ notice. We’re nowhere close yet.”

“So there’s no rush.”

“No rush.”

Renata studies me the way she does when she’s deciding whether to push or let something drop, and for once she lets it drop.

There’s no rush, technically. The contract gave us a full year before either of us had to think about an ending at all, and we’re not even halfway through it.

My shift ends at six, and I pick Ginger up from Mrs. Bennett’s on the way home, and she talks the entire drive about a project at school, some diorama involving a shoebox and more glitter than I’m going to enjoy cleaning off the car seat.

“Viktor said he’d help me with the trees part,” she says. “He’s better at cutting straight lines than you are.”

“That’s true. I’ll give him that one.”

“Can we do it tonight? After dinner?”

“If he’s home in time, sure.”

She nods, satisfied, already planning the details out loud, colors for the trees, whether the diorama needs a river, and I watch her in the rearview mirror and feel my chest go tight in a way that has nothing to do with glitter or shoeboxes.

Four months ago, she wouldn’t ask if Viktor was home in time for anything. Four months ago, she barely spoke his name at all.

Now she assumes him into every plan without a second thought, the way you assume a permanent fixture of your life will still be there tomorrow.

It hits me clearly, driving home with glitter already migrating into the car’s air vents, that ending this now would cost her more than it would cost me.

I’m not sure when that math flipped, but it’s flipped completely, and I’m not the only variable in this equation anymore.

There’s a version of me from four months ago who would have called this reckless.

That version of me didn’t know yet how much steadier Ginger would sleep with two people checking on her instead of one, or how much lighter the whole house would feel once someone else started carrying part of the weight I’d been carrying alone since Mia died.

I don’t regret any of it. I thought I’d feel trapped by now, tied to a stranger longer.

Instead, I mostly just feel tired in a way that has an actual bottom to it, rather than the kind that used to stretch on forever with no floor in sight.

Viktor’s home when we get there, sleeves rolled up, and Ginger launches into the diorama plan the second she’s through the door, dragging him toward the kitchen table before he’s even set his keys down.

“Trees first,” she informs him. “You said trees first.”

“I did say that.” He catches my eye over her head, a warmth passing between us that I choose not to examine too closely tonight.

“Green for the pine trees, but the ones by the river have to be different, because Ms. Alvarez said not all trees are the same green.” Ginger dumps a pile of construction paper onto the table. “You have to cut them pointy at the top.”

“Pointy at the top. Understood.” Viktor picks up the scissors like he’s accepting a formal assignment, and Ginger nods, satisfied, settling into the chair beside him with the total focus of someone twice her age.

I watch them work from the doorway for a while, Viktor cutting careful lines into green construction paper while Ginger narrates every decision as if a documentary crew was following her around.

He asks her questions that actually require her opinion, not the kind adults ask kids just to fill the silence, and she answers every one of them as if the conversation matters, because to her, right now, it does.

“Do you think the river should be blue or more like a green blue?” she asks him, holding up two shades like the decision carries real weight.

“Depends on the season you’re going for. Summer river, more blue. Spring river, closer to your green blue.”

“It’s summer. Obviously.” She says it with the particular exasperation only a six-year-old can manage, like the answer should have been self-evident, and picks the blue without further debate.

I should say something tonight. About timelines, about what happens next, about whether either of us has actually thought past this point at all.

I don’t.

I tell myself it’s because Ginger’s still awake, because there’s never a good moment with a six-year-old underfoot, and that’s true enough, but it isn’t the whole truth.

The whole truth is closer to what I watched happen in that kitchen just now: a girl who’s finally stopped flinching at change, and I’m not willing to be the one who hands her another one.

Later, after Ginger’s asleep and the diorama sits half-finished on the kitchen table, glitter glue drying in uneven patches, Viktor finds me on the back porch with a glass of wine I’ve barely touched.

“She talked my ear off tonight,” he says, sitting beside me, close enough that our shoulders nearly touch.

“She likes you. In case that wasn’t obvious from the shoebox summit.”

“I like her too.” He says it simply, no hesitation, and the plainness of it lands harder than if he’d dressed it up. “More than I expected to, if I’m honest.”

“Me too. About all of it, I mean.”

He’s quiet for a moment, turning his own glass in his hands without drinking from it, and the silence stretches long enough that I start counting the seconds without meaning to.

13

HARPER

Ginger’s pushing peas around her plate in the pattern she uses when she’s building up to something, arranging them into a line before scattering them again.

I’ve learned to recognize it as thinking out loud without words yet, a habit that started right after Mia died and never fully went away.

“There’s a thing at school,” she says finally, not looking up. “In three weeks. Parents come, and you bring a project, and there’s a table with your name on it.”

“Sounds important,” Viktor says.

“It is. Ms. Alvarez said it’s a big deal.” She finally looks up, straight at him, not at me. “Are you gonna come to my school thing?”

The table goes quiet for a second. I keep my eyes on my own plate, giving them the space to have this.

“When exactly is it?”

“The nineteenth. It’s a Thursday. Mrs. Bennett said Thursdays are usually good for you.”

Viktor almost smiles at that, the fact that she’s clearly done her homework on his schedule before asking. “The nineteenth works. I’ll be there.”

“Promise?”

“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Ginger. If I say I’ll be there, I’ll be there.”

She studies him for a long moment, the same suspicious scrutiny she gave him the first week in this house.

Four months ago, she wouldn’t have asked. Four months ago, she’d have assumed the answer was no, because that’s what the last two years taught her: that adults leave, that promises about future dates aren’t reliable currency.

Now she’s asking Viktor to commit to a Thursday three weeks out like it’s a foregone conclusion he’ll say yes.

He did say yes, immediately, without hedging.

I don’t know when I stopped bracing for this to end. I only notice it now, watching her go back to her dinner completely unbothered, that the bracing has quietly stopped.

“What’s the project going to be about?” Viktor asks her, and she launches into a full debate with herself out loud, animals versus something about space, weighing the merits of each with total seriousness while he listens like the decision genuinely matters.

“Animals are easier to draw,” she reasons, mostly to herself. “But space has more colors. Ms. Alvarez likes colors.”

“You could do both. A space animal.”

Ginger stops mid-bite, considering this with the gravity of someone who’s just been handed the answer to a much larger question. “That’s actually really good.”

“I have my moments.”

After dinner, he helps her with homework at the kitchen table while I clean up.

I catch myself watching them more than I’m watching the dishes, the way he leans in to check her math, the way she leans into him without seeming to notice she’s doing it.

It’s comfortable in a way that used to take her weeks to reach with anyone new, and it took him a fraction of that time, patience doing what nothing else could.

He doesn’t rush her through the long division the way I would, tired and half distracted most nights. He lets her get it wrong twice before she gets it right, lets her feel the satisfaction of arriving there herself instead of just handing her the answer.

I wonder, not for the first time, what he’d have been like as a father if his life had gone differently, and then I catch myself wondering it and put the thought away before it can go anywhere I’m not ready to follow it.

My own guard’s been slipping too. I notice it in small ways, the way I don’t flinch anymore when he touches my back walking past me in the kitchen.

The way I’ve stopped mentally rehearsing an exit speech I used to keep ready in case any of this fell apart, the one where I’d explain calmly to Ginger why we were leaving, why this too hadn’t lasted.

I haven’t needed that speech in weeks. I didn’t notice I’d stopped keeping it ready until just now, standing at the sink with my hands in dishwater, watching a man who was never supposed to matter this much help my niece with long division like it’s the most important thing he’ll do all week.

I think about the version of myself who walked into that club four months ago, certain this whole thing would end the exact moment the court case did, certain I’d hand back the keys and go find us a smaller apartment somewhere and never think about Viktor Markov again beyond the occasional strange story I’d tell at parties someday.

That version of me had no idea what she was actually walking into. I’m not sure I’d trade what came after for anything, even the parts that scare me, even the parts I still don’t fully understand, like whatever happened in that courtroom that Viktor still won’t fully explain.

Somewhere in the last few weeks, I stopped treating this like a temporary arrangement and started treating it like my actual life, and I’m not sure exactly when that happened, only that it did.

Ginger goes down easier than usual that night, worn out from a full day and the weight of a homework packet she took very seriously.

By the time I come back downstairs, Viktor’s on the back porch again, same spot as always, a bottle of wine open on the small table between two glasses.

“You knew I’d come down here,” I say, taking the seat beside him.

“I hoped you would.”

He pours me a glass, and we sit for a while without talking, a quiet that used to feel awkward between us and now just feels like ours.

“Thank you,” I say eventually. “For tonight. For meaning it, about the school thing.”

“I did mean it.”

“I know. That’s what surprised me.” I turn my glass slowly, watching the wine catch the porch light. “I keep waiting for you to be a man who says the right thing and doesn’t follow through. You keep not being that man.”

“Disappointing, I know.”

“Very disappointing.” I’m smiling when I say it, and he’s watching my mouth do it.

The space between us closes by inches, quiet and immediate, the way it always seems to when we run out of safe things to talk about.

“Harper.”

“Yeah?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.

My breath catches somewhere in my throat.

He’s close now, closer than the conversation requires, close enough that I can see exactly how careful he’s being not to close the last few inches without me meeting him there first.

I don’t move away.

I don’t move toward him either, not yet, caught somewhere in the space between wanting to and knowing exactly what it means if I do.

Both of us stay frozen there on the porch, wine going warm in our glasses, his hand still resting at the side of my jaw like he’s waiting for permission neither of us has said out loud.

Neither of us closes the distance. It would take one inch, less, and neither of us takes it, some last thread of restraint holding on longer than either of us seems to want it to.

Viktor pulls back first, like he’s making himself do it rather than actually wanting to.

“Goodnight, Harper,” he says, voice rougher than it was a minute ago.

“Goodnight,” I manage.

Neither of us moves for another few seconds.

Eventually I go inside. He stays out on the porch a while longer, and I don’t look back to see how long, because I’m not sure I trust myself with whatever I’d do if I did.

14

HARPER

I can’t sleep, so I get up around two, telling myself it’s just to check on Ginger, though I’ve checked on her every night for weeks without needing an excuse for it.

She’s fine, tangled in her blankets, one arm flung over the edge of the bed the way she sleeps most nights now. I straighten the comforter over her and step back out into the hallway.

Viktor’s there, leaning against the wall a few feet from his own door, a bottle of vodka in one hand, no glass.

“Are you drinking?” I keep my voice low. “It’s two in the morning.”

“It is.” He doesn’t sound remotely apologetic about it. “Couldn’t sleep either, I take it.”

“No.”

“Join me.”

I hesitate, glancing back toward Ginger’s door out of habit. “I have to be up for her in a few hours.”

“There’s help around for exactly that, if you sleep in. You’re allowed to, occasionally.” He says it simply, like this is obvious, and maybe it is, and I’ve just never let myself believe I’m allowed the occasional late morning.

I follow him instead of arguing further, and he detours through the kitchen for a second glass before leading me out through the back doors toward the pool.

The water’s lit from underneath, pale blue against the dark, and we sit at the edge with our feet in, drinks in hand, the vodka sharper than I expect on an empty stomach.

“Tell me something true,” he says, echoing the line from our first real dinner, months ago now. “Not for anyone else. Just for me.”

“You already used that line on me once.”

“It worked the first time.”

I laugh, and the sound carries out over the water. I tell him about my mother, about the year after our father left when Mia basically raised me herself, fourteen years old and suddenly responsible for a little sister neither of our parents had room for anymore.

“She never once complained about it,” I say. “Not that I heard, anyway. I used to think that meant it didn’t cost her anything. I know better now.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Raising Ginger. Realizing how much you can carry and still show up smiling for the person you’re carrying it for.” I trace a finger along the surface of the water, watching the ripples catch the light. “I used to resent her a little, honestly. For leaving when she did. Now I mostly just wish I’d told her how much I understood, before it was too late to say it.”

“She knew,” Viktor says. “People always know more than we give them credit for.”

“You sound very sure of that.”

“I’ve had to believe it, about a few people I lost the chance to say things to.”

Viktor’s quiet for a moment, turning his glass in his hand. “My father ran things before me. Badly, mostly. I spent my whole childhood watching him make decisions out of fear disguised as strength, and I promised myself I’d never run anything that way.”

“Have you kept that promise?”

“Some days better than others.” He looks at me, unguarded in a way I haven’t seen from him before, not at the club, not at the courthouse, not once. “I believe fear makes bad leaders and worse fathers. I’ve spent fifteen years trying to prove that to men who’d disagree with me violently if I said it out loud.”

“That’s not a small thing to believe.”

“No. It’s cost me more than I’d like to admit.” He sets his glass down on the tile beside him. “I didn’t expect to end up testing that belief on a six-year-old who isn’t even mine by blood. But here we are.”

“She adores you.”

“I adore her too.” He says it plainly, no hesitation, the same way he said it on the porch days ago, and hearing it a second time lands even harder than the first. “And I adore her mother more than I know what to do with most days.”

I don’t look away from him even though every instinct I have says I should.

“Harper.” His voice drops, rougher now. “I can’t keep pretending this is just an arrangement. I’ve tried. I’m done trying.”

Then he kisses me, and it’s nothing like the doorstep, slower, deliberate, both of us fully choosing it this time instead of getting swept into it by adrenaline and a stranger’s daring. My hands find his shirt, his hand slides into my hair, and neither of us pulls back for a long time.

When we finally do, he doesn’t say anything else. He just stands, pulls me up with him, and laces our fingers together, leading me back through the dark house toward his room instead of mine.

I don’t hesitate this time. I follow him all the way to his door, and when he pushes it open and pulls me inside, I go without a single thought about what happens after tonight.

The door closes behind us, and his hands are on me again. One at the small of my back, the other sliding up into my hair. He doesn’t rush the kiss. He just takes it, slow and deep, like he’s been waiting for permission he finally decided not to ask for. I taste the vodka on his tongue and something warmer underneath it.

My back hits the wall. I make a small sound against his mouth, and he answers it with a lower one, almost a growl, and then his hands are under my shirt, palms flat against my skin, pushing the fabric up.

“Off,” he says, voice rough.

I lift my arms. He pulls the shirt over my head and drops it somewhere behind him. The cool air hits my bare stomach, and I shiver, but it’s not from the cold. His eyes drop, tracking the line of my chest, the rise of my chest with every breath. He looks at me like he’s memorizing.

“You’re staring,” I whisper.

“I know.” His thumb brushes the edge of the lace. “I’ve been wanting to.”

I reach for the buttons of his shirt. My fingers are less steady than I want them to be. One button, then another. He doesn’t help. He just watches my hands work, jaw tight, like holding still is costing him something.

When the last button comes free, I push the shirt off his shoulders, and it falls. The heat of his skin under my palms is almost shocking.

I trace the line of a scar low on his ribs without meaning to. He catches my wrist, not hard, just enough to stop me.

“Harper.”

“What?”

“If we keep going, I’m not stopping.”

I look up at him. His eyes are darker in the low light, pupils blown. There’s no performance left in his face. No careful distance. Just want, and the decision already made.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

Something in him breaks open at that. He kisses me again, harder this time, and walks me backward until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed.

We go down together. His weight settles over me, careful even now, and I feel the full length of him pressed against my hip through the thin fabric of his pants. The solid heat of it makes my breath catch.

His mouth moves to my neck, then lower, to the hollow of my throat. I tilt my head back, and my fingers slide into his hair. He leans down, and his mouth is on my breast, hot and open, tongue circling, and a soft, helpless sound leaves me before I can stop it.

“Fuck,” he murmurs against my skin. “You feel⁠—”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He just keeps going, mouth and hands working in slow tandem, learning what makes my hips shift under him. I can feel how hard he is, the controlled restraint in the way he’s still holding most of his weight off me.

I want that restraint gone.

I reach between us and palm him through his pants. He goes still for half a second, forehead dropping against my collarbone, a low, broken sound vibrating in his chest.

“Harper—”

“I know.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “I want this. I want you.”

He lifts his head. Looks at me like he’s checking one last time that I’m still here, still choosing it. Whatever he sees must be enough, because the last of the careful distance leaves his face.

He sits back just long enough to strip the rest of his clothes, then mine. When he’s fully over me again, there’s nothing left between us. Skin to skin.

The heat of him settles heavy and real against my thigh. I can feel the thick, hard length of him and the way his breathing has gone uneven.

His hand slides down between my legs. Fingers stroke through the slick heat there, and my hips lift into the touch without my permission. “Shit,” he says quietly. “You’re already so⁠—”

“I know.” I pull his mouth back to mine. “Don’t make me wait.”

He doesn’t. He pushes into me in one long, controlled stroke.

The stretch is sharp at first, then deep, then everything. My breath leaves me in a broken exhale against his neck.

He holds still, buried to the hilt, forehead pressed to mine, giving me time even though every muscle in his back is tight under my hands.

“Okay?” he asks, voice low and strained.

I nod, then manage actual words. “Yes. God—yes.”

He starts to move. Slow at first, almost careful, pulling nearly all the way out before sliding back in. Each thrust drags against something that makes my thighs tighten around his hips.

I dig my fingers into his shoulders. He feels it and goes deeper, the rhythm steadying into something heavier.

“Look at me,” he says.

I do. His eyes are dark, locked on mine, and the intensity of it is almost more intimate than the way he’s moving inside me. There’s no distance left. No arrangement. Just this.

“Viktor—”

“I know.” He kisses me once, then drops his mouth to my ear. “I’ve got you.”

The pace builds. His hand slides under my knee, opening me further, and the next thrust hits so deep a soft, helpless sound spills out of me.

He answers it with a low groan, the kind that vibrates through his chest into mine. Sweat starts to slick between us. The bed creaks softly under the force of him.

I can feel myself getting closer already—too fast, too much—but I don’t try to slow it down. My nails scrape lightly down his back. His breathing turns ragged.

“Harper,” he says, almost a warning.

“Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t. He drives into me harder, the control finally slipping. Every thrust is deeper, rougher, and I meet him for each one, hips lifting, chasing the pressure coiling tight and low in my stomach. His hand finds mine and pins it to the mattress above my head, fingers laced tight.

The orgasm hits without warning, sharp and full-body, my back arching hard off the bed as I come around him with a broken cry against his mouth. He follows almost immediately, burying himself deep with a rough, guttural sound, hips stuttering as he spills into me. His weight settles heavy for a second, then he catches himself on his forearms, so he doesn’t crush me.

We stay like that, still joined, both of us breathing hard. His forehead rests against mine. I can feel his heartbeat racing against my chest.

After a long moment, he eases out of me carefully and rolls onto his back, pulling me with him so my head lands on his chest. His arm wraps around my shoulders. One hand starts tracing slow, absent patterns along my skin.

The moonlight cuts a pale line across the sheets.

I listen to his heartbeat slow beneath my ear.

“Well,” I say eventually, breaking the quiet. “That wasn’t pretending.”

He laughs, low and real, and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “No. It wasn’t.”

“I should probably feel more complicated about this than I do.”

“You’re allowed to just feel good about it, Harper. Not everything has to come with a complicated feeling attached.”

“That’s very unlike you. Since when do you allow yourself simple?”

“Since about twenty minutes ago.” His hand traces slow, absent patterns along my shoulder, and I feel him smile against my hair rather than see it. “I’m willing to make an exception tonight.”

Neither of us says anything else for a long while, and I don’t need him to. Whatever this was before tonight, it isn’t that anymore, and for the first time since I walked into his club with a ridiculous proposal, I’m not afraid of what that actually means.

15

VIKTOR

I wake before she does, which isn’t unusual, except this time I don’t get up.

Harper’s curled toward me, one hand resting flat against my chest, hair loose across the pillow in a way I’ve only seen in the photographs Dimitri handed me months ago. The real thing is better than the photograph. It usually is.

Sunlight’s just starting to cut through the curtains, early enough that the house is still quiet, no sounds yet from Ginger’s room down the hall.

I should be doing a dozen things right now. Checking messages, running through whatever Dimitri’s turned up overnight, starting the day the way I start every day, moving before I’ve had time to think too hard about anything.

Instead I lie here, watching her breathe, and let myself do absolutely nothing for the first time in longer than I can remember.

It unsettles me, how easy this is. For fifteen years, I’ve built a life on not letting anything get close enough to matter this much, on treating comfort like a weakness waiting to be exploited by someone smarter than me.

And here I am, perfectly still, unwilling to move an inch and risk waking her before I have to, doing the exact thing I’ve spent a career training myself never to do around another person.

This isn’t the arrangement. The arrangement had an end date, terms, a clean exit built into the paperwork from day one. Nothing about lying in bed at dawn studying the specific way she breathes was ever part of that.

Harper stirs, blinking awake, and for a second she looks disoriented, somewhere between sleep and place, before her eyes focus on me and the tension in her face eases. “Morning,” she says, voice rough with sleep.

“Morning.”

“This is strange.”

“Which part?”

“Waking up here. Like this.” She props herself up on one elbow, studying me with an openness I’m not sure she’d allow herself in daylight if she’d had more than thirty seconds to think about it. “I keep waiting for it to feel like I did something wrong.”

“You didn’t.”

“I know. It still surprises me that I believe that.” She traces a lazy line along my forearm, not quite purposeful, more like she’s testing whether she’s allowed to. “Is this weird for you too, or are you just better at hiding it?”

“I’ve had fifteen years of practice at hiding things. This isn’t one of them.”

“That’s not an answer either.”

“Fine. No, it isn’t weird.” I catch her hand, still tracing patterns, and hold it still against my chest instead. “Technically, Harper, we’re already married. Whatever this is, it isn’t an affair, it isn’t a mistake, it isn’t something either of us needs to feel strange about.”

“That’s a very practical way to look at waking up in your bed.”

“I contain multitudes.”

She laughs, real and warm, and the sound warms my chest in a way I don’t have a clear explanation for, the same warmth that’s been building since a courthouse hallway months ago.

“For what it’s worth,” I add, “I’ve never actually done this before. Woken up next to someone and wanted them to stay instead of wanting them gone.”

Her expression sobers, quieter, more serious than the teasing a moment ago. “That’s nothing to admit.”

“No. It isn’t.”

She settles back against my chest instead of pulling away, and we lie there a while longer, not talking, just existing in a version of morning I’ve never once allowed myself before her.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, breaking it.

I consider ignoring it. I don’t, because fifteen years of habit doesn’t disappear over one good morning, and Dimitri doesn’t text before eight unless it matters.

Got a lead on Pavel. Need you at the club when you can.

Harper watches my face change. “That doesn’t look like a happy text.”

“It’s not bad news. Just business.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it’s usually true.” I sit up, already thinking through the morning ahead. “I need to shower and get into the club this morning.”

“Everything okay?”

I hesitate, weighing how much to give her, still not ready to hand her the full weight of Pavel Ivanov before I understand what we’re actually dealing with. “We’re making progress on something I’ve been tracking. I’ll tell you more once there’s something worth telling.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“No. It’s not.” I lean down and kiss her once, unhurried, before pulling back. “But it’s honest, and I promise you’ll have the whole thing the second I do.”

She studies me a moment longer, and whatever she decides, she doesn’t push, the same restraint she showed at the courthouse weeks ago, trusting me with the gap even when it clearly costs her something to do it.

“Go,” she says finally. “I’ll get Ginger up for school.”

I shower fast, dress in a fresh shirt from the closet, and at the door I turn back to find her still in bed, sheet pulled up, watching me with a look caught somewhere between amusement and a tenderness I’m not used to being on the receiving end of.

“For the record,” I say, “I meant what I said. I don’t want you gone.”

“Good,” she says. “Because I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”

She says it easily, like it costs her nothing, though I know better by now, know how much it costs her to say something like that out loud to anyone after everything she’s already lost. I file the sentence away, the way I file everything that matters.

I leave with that sitting warm in my chest the entire drive to the club, an unfamiliar feeling I don’t examine too closely, not yet, not until I’ve dealt with the considerably less warm feeling waiting for me in Dimitri’s office.

He’s already there when I arrive, tablet out, expression tighter than it was last night.

“What have you got?”

“A name. Someone who used to run logistics for Pavel back before he disappeared. Still alive, still local, doing legitimate work now under a name that isn’t his own either.” Dimitri slides the tablet across the desk. “If anyone knows what he’s been doing the last eleven years, it’s this man.”

“How’d you find him?”

“Old contact of mine remembered a face at a funeral last spring. Didn’t think much of it at the time, mentioned it in passing when I started asking around. Took some digging to confirm it, but it’s him.” Dimitri taps the screen. “He’s been keeping his head down. No criminal activity we can find, nothing that would draw attention. Just a quiet life under a borrowed name.”

“That fits. Pavel wouldn’t have trusted anyone who couldn’t disappear as cleanly as he did.”

“Can we get to him?”

“Carefully, and quietly. He’s spent over a decade making sure nobody finds him either. I don’t want to spook him into disappearing again before we get anything useful.”

“What’s our approach?”

“Money first. If that doesn’t work, we remind him what happens to men who protect people like Pavel when the wrong side comes asking.” Dimitri’s voice stays level, but there’s an edge underneath it I recognize from years of watching him handle exactly this pressure. “I’d rather not need the second part.”

I look at the photograph on the screen, an older man, unremarkable, a face built to disappear into a crowd on purpose.

“Set it up,” I say. “However long it takes. I need to know what Pavel wants before he decides to take it.”

“And if he already knows what he wants, and he’s just been waiting for the right moment?”

I don’t have an answer for that one.

16

HARPER

Renata catches me smiling at nothing again, which has apparently become a pattern worth commenting on.

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately,” she says, sliding a stack of registration cards across the desk toward me. “The smiling at nothing thing.”

“I’m not smiling at nothing.”

“Then what were you smiling at? Because it sure looked like nothing to me.”

I don’t have a good answer that doesn’t involve explaining an entire relationship shift I’m still getting used to myself, so I just shrug and go back to filing, and Renata lets it go for about thirty seconds before circling back anyway.

“You seem different,” she says. “Lighter. Since when?”

“Since things settled down, I guess.”

“Things settled down four months ago. This is more recent than that.” She studies me with the particular focus she usually reserves for spotting a guest trying to sneak an extra person into a single room. “Did something happen?”

“A few somethings, maybe.”

“Harper.”

“I’m not telling you anything at a hotel front desk, Renata. Some things stay private.”

She grins, delighted rather than offended, and doesn’t push further, though I catch her watching me for the rest of the shift with the satisfied expression of someone who’s already guessed correctly and is simply waiting for confirmation.

“For what it’s worth,” she says later, restocking the pen cup like it’s the most casual thing in the world, “I’m glad. Whatever it is. You deserve one thing in your life that isn’t a fight.”

“It’s not a fight. It’s just a different fight than it used to be.”

“That’s practically a confession.”

“It’s practically nothing, and I’m going back to my registration cards now.”

She laughs and lets me go, and I spend the rest of the shift with a small, stubborn smile I don’t bother trying to hide anymore, even when a guest asks if everything’s all right, concerned by a front desk employee who seems entirely too pleased about a broken ice machine on the third floor that still, four months later, nobody’s fixed.

My phone buzzes around four, a text from Denise, a reminder about the visitation schedule starting next week, the Ivanovs’ four supervised hours every other Saturday, arranged through a court-appointed monitor at a family center downtown.

I stare at the text longer than it requires. It’s routine, expected, part of the ruling from months ago that I mostly managed to put out of my mind once the case itself was settled.

Still, seeing it in writing, a real date attached to it now, sits differently than the abstract idea of visitation did back in that courtroom. I hadn’t thought much about the actual mechanics of it, Ginger sitting across a table from her grandparents in some fluorescent-lit family center, a stranger with a clipboard watching to make sure nothing goes wrong.

I text back a simple “got it, thank you,” and add a second message before I can talk myself out of it. “Does Ginger need to know ahead of time, or is it better to just tell her the day of?”

Denise responds a few minutes later. Usually better to give kids a heads up, so it doesn’t feel sudden. Up to you on timing, but I’d say sometime this week.

I put the phone away and try not to spiral about something that isn’t actually a crisis, just an appointment on a calendar, the same appointment that’s been sitting there since the ruling, waiting patiently for its date to finally arrive.

By six, my feet ache and my voice is going hoarse from a full shift of small talk, but even that feels lighter than it used to, the ordinary exhaustion of a normal day instead of the particular exhaustion of a life that used to feel like it was one bad week away from falling apart entirely.

By the time I get home, Ginger’s already had dinner with Viktor, some experiment involving a new pasta recipe that apparently went reasonably well based on the state of the kitchen.

I decide to tell her about Saturday before bed, gently, the way Denise suggested, while she’s still in the kitchen finishing a glass of milk. It goes easier than I braced for.

“Grandma and Grandpa are going to visit with you on Saturday,” I tell her, keeping my voice light. “At a special place, just for a couple hours. I’ll drop you off and pick you up.”

“Will you be there, too?”

“Not in the room, but close by the whole time. Someone will be watching to make sure everything’s okay.”

She considers this with the same seriousness she brings to most things lately. “Do I have to go?”

“You do, this time. But it’s just a visit. Nothing’s changing about where you live, or who takes care of you.”

“Okay.” She says it simply, no protest, no tears, just a fact she’s filing away alongside everything else that’s happened to her this year. “Can Viktor come with me to the drop off part?”

“If he’s free, sure.”

“Okay,” she says again, and hops down from her chair, and I marvel, not for the first time, at how much more resilient she’s become than I ever expected a six-year-old to be forced into being.

She’s in her pajamas within minutes, doing the specific stalling routine she’s perfected over the last few months before bed, and by the time I’ve cleared the dinner plates, she’s already found the dragon book.

“Book time,” she announces, marching past me toward Viktor’s study and handing it to him without a word, without asking, without even glancing my way first.

He looks up from whatever he was reading, mild surprise in his expression before he sets it aside entirely.

“Two chapters,” she informs him, the same negotiating tactic she’s used for weeks now, though there’s no actual negotiation left in it anymore, just a formality she keeps out of habit.

“We’ll see how tired you get.”

“That’s not a no.”

“No,” he agrees. “It’s not.”

I watch them head up the stairs together, Ginger already narrating some complaint about her math homework, Viktor listening with the same patient attention he’s given her every night for weeks now.

It hits me clearly, standing alone in the kitchen, how completely this has stopped being a performance for anyone’s benefit.

She doesn’t test him anymore. She doesn’t watch his face for signs he might disappear the way she used to watch mine after Mia died, bracing for the moment adults inevitably let her down.

She just assumes he’ll be there, the same way she assumes the sun will come up, and somewhere in the last few weeks, without either of us marking the exact date it happened, Viktor stopped being a stranger in this house.

He stopped being a stranger to me too, if I’m being honest with myself standing here alone with dinner dishes still in the sink.

I think about the man who agreed to marry me eight minutes after meeting me, intrigued more than obligated, and the man currently upstairs doing dragon voices for a child who isn’t his by blood.

I’m not sure those two men are entirely the same person anymore, or maybe they always were, and I just hadn’t given him enough time yet to show me.

There’s a version of tonight where I sit alone at this counter and worry about Saturday, about the family center and the clipboard and the two old people who spent months trying to take Ginger away from me. Instead, I find myself thinking about pasta recipes and dragon voices and a six-year-old who stopped bracing for goodbye months ago without either of us fully noticing when it happened.

I finish the dishes and head upstairs myself, catching the tail end of the fourth chapter through Ginger’s cracked door, Viktor’s voice pitched low and dramatic for whatever villain the dragon’s currently facing down.

I stand in the hallway a moment longer than I need to, just listening, before I let myself go find him properly once she’s finally, actually asleep.

Four months ago, I would have spent tonight bracing for Saturday instead of standing in a hallway listening to a man I married for paperwork read bedtime stories like he’s been doing it his whole life. I’m not sure when exactly the bracing stopped, only that somewhere along the way, it did, and I’m not in a hurry to get it back.

17

HARPER

Saturday starts the way most of our Saturdays do now, Viktor making coffee before either of us is fully awake, Ginger negotiating for pancakes instead of the cereal I’d normally hand her.

“You said Saturdays were pancake days,” she reminds him, climbing onto a stool at the counter with the total confidence of someone citing established law.

“Did I say that, or did you decide that’s what I said?”

“Same thing.”

He makes the pancakes anyway, and I watch the two of them from the doorway, still half asleep, marveling at how completely this has become a routine neither of us set out to build on purpose.

Nobody mentions today’s difference until she’s dressed and I’m double-checking she’s got her favorite stuffed rabbit tucked into her backpack, something small to hold onto if the next two hours get overwhelming.

“You ready?” I ask her.

“I guess.” She shrugs, the same noncommittal shrug she’s given most things about today since I told her. “Will Viktor really come to the drop-off?”

“I said I would,” Viktor says from the doorway, keys already in hand. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

Ginger nods like that settles it, and climbs into the back seat without further comment, and the three of us drive to the family center in a quiet that isn’t quite comfortable and isn’t quite tense either, a mood I don’t have a name for yet.

I notice Viktor’s hands on the wheel first, gripping tighter than the drive requires. Then his jaw, set in the same way it was the day of the hearing, the day I still don’t fully understand.

“You okay?” I ask quietly, once Ginger’s distracted with something out the window.

“Fine.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it keeps being true, mostly.” He glances at me, the tightness at his jaw easing slightly even though the strain underneath doesn’t fully go anywhere. “I don’t love the idea of her in a room with them. That’s all this is.”

It’s not all this is.

I’ve learned enough about this man to know when he’s giving me the edited version of something. Still, I also know pushing rarely gets me the rest of it any faster, so I let it go and watch the family center come into view instead, a squat beige building that looks more like a dentist’s office than anything else.

The monitor meets us at the door, pleasant and businesslike, and walks Ginger through what to expect in a tone clearly practiced on dozens of kids before her. Ginger holds my hand until the very last second, then lets go and walks in on her own, her rabbit clutched under one arm, small and steady in a way that makes my chest ache with pride and worry in equal measure.

Viktor doesn’t move from the doorway until she’s fully out of sight.

“Two hours,” I say, mostly to fill the silence. “We could get lunch. Or run errands. Whatever keeps us from just standing in a parking lot the entire time.”

“Errands,” he agrees, already turning back toward the car, like motion is the only thing keeping him from thinking too hard about what’s happening inside that building.

We end up at the grocery store, of all places, filling a cart with things Ginger likes and things Viktor’s decided the kitchen needs, a domestic errand that feels almost absurdly normal given where we just left her.

“You’re better at this than I expected,” I tell him, watching him compare two brands of pasta sauce with genuine consideration.

“Better at what, grocery shopping?”

“Being a person who does regular things. Normal husband things.”

“I contain multitudes, Harper. We’ve discussed this.”

“You mentioned. I’m still collecting evidence for my file.”

“Add grocery shopping to it, then. Right next to helping with dioramas and losing pizza negotiations to a six-year-old.”

I laugh, and for a moment the tension from the car actually eases off his shoulders, and we finish the shopping trip talking about nothing important, an easy back and forth that used to take real effort between us and now happens.

He insists on carrying all six bags himself at the register, waving off the teenager’s offer of help while bagging our groceries. I tease him about it the entire walk to the car, and for those few minutes, I forget entirely what’s happening two miles away inside a beige building with a stranger’s clipboard keeping watch.

By the time we pick Ginger up, she’s quiet again, though not the same withdrawn quiet from those first weeks in Viktor’s house. This feels more like processing than retreating.

She climbs into the back seat and buckles herself in with the same focused seriousness she brought to everything in those early days, and for a moment I brace myself for something worse than what she actually gives me.

“How was it?” I ask once we’re in the car.

“Fine. Grandma cried a little. Grandpa mostly just watched me color.”

“Watched you color?”

“He didn’t say much. He just watched, like he was trying to remember what I look like.” She says it matter-of-fact, the way kids report strange adult behavior without fully understanding its weight. “It was kind of weird.”

“Did they say anything else? Anything that upset you?”

“Not really. Grandma asked if I was happy. I said yes.” She shrugs, already moving past it, more interested in the radio than the conversation now that the actual event is behind her. “Can we get ice cream on the way home?”

“We’ll see.”

“That’s not a no.”

“No,” I say, echoing a phrase she’s clearly picked up from someone in this car. “It’s not.”

I glance at Viktor in the rearview mirror. His face has gone completely blank in a way I recognize now, the same stillness from the courthouse, and I file the detail away without understanding why it matters, the way I’ve apparently learned to file away half of what unsettles him.

That night, after Ginger’s down and the house has gone quiet, Viktor finds me in the kitchen, and neither of us says anything about the visitation, or the grocery store, or any of the small, ordinary moments that made up the day.

We just exist in the same space, the way we do most nights now, him reading something at the counter, me finishing paperwork from work, occasionally trading a comment about nothing that matters.

It’s not that we’re avoiding the subject exactly. It’s more that neither of us seems to need to say it out loud anymore, the way you stop narrating things once they’ve become simply true.

It hits me, watching him from across the kitchen, that I’ve stopped keeping track of where the arrangement ends and whatever this actually is begins. There isn’t a clean line between them anymore, hasn’t been for weeks, and I’m not sure either of us is in any hurry to go looking for where it used to be.

A year ago I couldn’t have imagined a version of my life that included a man like Viktor Markov standing at my kitchen counter on a Saturday night, reading something with his sleeves pushed up, entirely unremarkable in a way that used to feel impossible for anyone in my life to be.

“Bed?” he asks eventually, setting his book aside.

“In a minute.”

He kisses the top of my head on his way past, easy, unremarkable, a gesture that would have felt impossible four months ago and now barely registers as anything except ordinary.

I sit there a while longer, thinking about the way Pavel watched Ginger color, and about Viktor’s face in the rearview mirror, giving nothing away.

Whatever he’s not telling me, I’m not going to push tonight. I trust him.

Which still surprises me some days.

18

VIKTOR

Dimitri catches me on my way out of the club, phone already in hand.

“Nothing solid yet on the logistics man,” he says. “He’s cautious. Won’t meet in person, won’t talk on any line he doesn’t control himself. I’ve got someone building trust with him slowly. Could take another few weeks.”

“Keep at it. Quietly.”

“Always.” He studies me for a second longer than the update requires. “You’ve been better lately. Less on edge.”

“Things have been good.”

“I noticed.” He says it without judgment, just an observation, and lets me go without pushing further, which I’m grateful for, because I don’t have a clean way to explain to him what’s actually changed in the last few weeks, only that it has.

“For what it’s worth,” he adds, catching me at the door, “whatever it is, it looks good on you. You’re easier to be around lately. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”

“Careful, Dimitri. You’re starting to sound sentimental.”

“Don’t get used to it.” He waves me off, already turning back toward his office, and I leave with the strange, unfamiliar sensation of my own brother approving of something in my life that isn’t business.

I drive home thinking about logistics men and borrowed names and a threat still sitting unresolved somewhere out there, and by the time I walk through my own front door, all of it quiets, the way it always does now the second I hear her voice somewhere in the house.

I find them in the kitchen, Harper crouched down helping Ginger ice a lopsided cake that looks like it survived a minor structural collapse, flour dusted across both of them, Ginger narrating every swipe of the knife like it’s a surgical procedure.

“It’s supposed to be a dinosaur,” Ginger informs me, without looking up. “It looks more like a rock.”

“It looks like a very ambitious rock.”

“That’s what Harper said too.”

“Great minds,” Harper says, not looking up from smoothing frosting into something vaguely resembling a spike. “Come hold the piping bag, you have steadier hands than either of us.”

I do as I’m told, and for the next ten minutes the three of us work on a cake that has no realistic chance of resembling any dinosaur that ever existed, Ginger directing the operation with total confidence, Harper laughing every time the frosting slides in a direction nobody intended.

I lean against the counter and just watch them for a while once my piping duties are dismissed, the two of them completely absorbed in a project that means nothing and everything at once, and my chest goes warm and tight in a way I don’t try to name right away.

Harper catches me watching and smiles, easy, unguarded, flour on her cheek she hasn’t noticed yet, and I think, not for the first time, that I could stand in this doorway for the rest of my life and never once feel like I was missing anything.

Later, once Ginger’s asleep and the kitchen’s been cleaned of most of the evidence, Harper finds me on the back porch, same spot as always.

“You were quiet at dinner,” she says, sitting beside me.

“I was thinking.”

“About?”

I could give her the easy answer, deflect the way I’ve trained myself to for fifteen years. Instead, I look at her, and decide I’m done doing that with her specifically.

“About how much I don’t want to keep any part of myself separate from you anymore.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “I’ve spent my whole life keeping distance from everyone, treating closeness like a liability. I don’t want that with you. I haven’t wanted it in weeks, if I’m honest, and I’m done pretending otherwise.”

Harper goes still, studying my face like she’s checking whether I mean it as much as it sounds like I do. “That’s not a small thing to say.”

“No. It isn’t.” I reach for her hand, lace our fingers together. “I’m not asking you to say it back tonight. I just needed you to hear it.”

“I don’t need until tonight to say it back.” Her voice is quiet, certain. “I’ve been done pretending for a while now too.”

I kiss her before either of us can say anything else, slower than the porch kiss weeks ago, none of the restraint that held both of us back that first almost-time, and this time nothing interrupts it, no hesitation, nothing standing between what we both clearly want.

I stand, pulling her up with me, and this time there’s no question of whose room we’re heading toward.

I close the bedroom door behind us, and the lock turns with a soft click.

Harper stands a few feet away, watching me. There’s no nervousness in her face this time. Just waiting. I walk to her slowly, stop close enough that I can feel the heat coming off her body, and start with the buttons of her shirt.

One. Two. Three. My fingers don’t rush. I watch each inch of skin as it appears.

When the shirt is open, I push it off her shoulders. It falls. I unhook her bra next, slide the straps down her arms, and let that fall too. She doesn’t try to cover herself. She just lets me look.

“You’re quiet,” she says softly.

“I’m deciding something.”

“What?”

I meet her eyes. “How much I’m going to give you tonight.”

Her breath catches, but she doesn’t look away.

I step closer, brush my knuckles down the center of her chest, between her breasts, over her stomach, until I reach the waistband of her jeans.

I unbutton them, lower the zipper, and ease them down her hips along with her underwear. She steps out of them without being asked. Now, she’s completely bare in front of me, and I’m still fully dressed. The imbalance feels intentional.

I walk her backward until the backs of her knees hit the bed. She sits. I stay standing for a moment, just looking at her—the way the low light sits on her skin, the slight rise and fall of her chest, the trust in her eyes that still undoes me more than it should.

Then I start talking as I undress.

“I’ve spent fifteen years making sure no one got close enough to matter.” My shirt hits the floor. “It was the only way I knew how to keep people alive. Including myself.” I unbuckle my belt, push my pants and boxers down, kick them aside. “You’re the first person I’ve ever wanted to fail at that with.”

I kneel on the bed and move over her, bracing my weight on my forearms so I’m close but not yet pressing her down. My mouth is near her ear.

“I used to think wanting someone like this made me weak. That needing them made me dangerous to the people I was supposed to protect.” My hand slides up her side, slow, claiming nothing yet. “With you it doesn’t feel like weakness. It just feels true.”

I lift my head enough to look at her face. Her eyes are darker now, lips parted. She reaches up and rests her palm against my cheek. The simple touch nearly undoes the rest of my restraint.

“I don’t know how to be careful with you anymore,” I tell her. “And I don’t want to learn.”

I kiss her then—nothing held back. My hand finds her breast, thumb brushing over her nipple until she makes a soft sound into my mouth.

I swallow it and keep going, kissing down her throat, across her collarbone, taking my time with each place that makes her breathe change.

When I finally settle between her legs, I don’t push inside yet. I just rest there, the hard length of me against her, feeling how wet she already is. I stay still and keep talking, voice lower now.

“You walked into my club and asked me to marry you like it was the only door left open. I said yes because something in me already knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay away from you.” My forehead rests against hers. “I’ve been yours longer than I’ve admitted out loud. I’m done pretending otherwise.”

I push into her slowly, watching her face the entire time.

The heat of her takes me inch by inch until I’m fully seated, buried deep, and neither of us moves. Her breath shudders out against my mouth. I stay exactly there, letting her feel the full weight of me inside her while I keep my eyes on hers.

“This is what I meant,” I say, voice rough. “No distance. Not with you.”

I start to move—long, measured strokes that drag almost all the way out before I sink back in. Every thrust is intentional. I can feel her walls tighten around me each time I bottom out, can feel the way her thighs press against my hips when I go particularly deep.

“Viktor—”

“I know.” I kiss the corner of her mouth, then her cheek, then the soft place just below her ear. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. Not once. Not even close.”

My rhythm stays steady for a while, almost reverent, until the need starts clawing higher. I feel it in the base of my spine, in the way my arms start to shake slightly where I’m braced above her. I don’t fight it this time. I let the control slip on purpose.

The thrusts get deeper, harder. Still not frantic—just heavier, more honest. Her nails dig into my back. A broken sound leaves her throat, and I swallow it with another kiss.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to keep,” I tell her, the words coming out low and raw against her lips as I drive into her. “The only one I didn’t calculate my way around. You walked in and every plan I had stopped mattering.”

Her back arches. I feel her start to tighten around me, close already. I slide one hand under her knee and push it higher, changing the angle so every stroke hits deeper. Her eyes stay open, locked on mine, and that unbroken eye contact is what finally undoes me more than anything physical.

“Come with me,” I say.

She does—body locking tight around me, a soft, shattered cry against my mouth as she comes. The feel of her pulsing around my cock pulls me under right after her. I bury myself to the hilt and let go with a low, guttural sound, spilling deep inside her while my forehead drops against hers.

I stay there, still joined, breathing hard. My heart is slamming against my ribs. Hers is racing just as fast beneath me.

After a long moment, I ease out carefully and shift onto my side, pulling her with me so her head rests on my chest. My arm settles around her shoulders. One of her hands curls loosely against my ribs.

I don’t speak. Neither does she. The things I already said sit between us heavier than any silence I’ve ever kept.

I watch the slow rise and fall of her breathing as it starts to even out. My hand moves absently along her back, tracing the same path over and over. Outside this room there are still threats, still men who would use anything soft in my life as a weapon.

Tonight, none of that reaches the bed.

She falls asleep against me within minutes, trusting, completely unguarded. I stay awake longer, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of every word I gave her and finding that I don’t want a single one of them back.

19

VIKTOR

Dimitri finds me in the garage, going through invoices on my phone while I wait for the car to warm up, and the look on his face tells me this isn’t about invoices.

“There’s a car,” he says. “Gray sedan, parked on the street two houses down. Been there since yesterday afternoon.”

“Delivery, maybe. Contractor working on the Hendersons’ place.”

“I thought that too, first time I noticed it. It’s still there this morning. Same spot, same angle, nobody’s gotten in or out of it that I’ve seen.”

That’s the detail that actually lands. Contractors move their vehicles. Deliveries don’t sit idle for eighteen hours.

“How’d you even clock it?” I ask. “You don’t usually walk this street.”

“I don’t. Ran here yesterday instead of taking the treadmill, needed to clear my head after the whole thing with the port shipment. Noticed it on the way out, noticed it again on the way back an hour later. Same spot exactly.”

“Plate?”

“Ran it already. Registered to a shell company out of the city, dissolved on paper eight months ago, still technically operating according to two other filings I found. Dead end unless you know how to read it a certain way.”

“And you know how to read it that way.”

“I’ve had practice.” Dimitri leans against the car beside me, voice dropping even though we’re alone in the garage. “Could be nothing. Insurance investigator, private security doing due diligence for somebody’s divorce case, any number of boring reasons a car sits somewhere too long.”

“But you don’t think it’s boring.”

“No. I don’t.”

Neither do I, and we both know exactly why, though neither of us says his name out loud in the garage, like saying it might summon something neither of us is ready to handle before coffee.

“Get a photo of whoever’s inside, if you can, without spooking them,” I say. “Discreetly. I don’t want them to know we’ve noticed.”

“Already tried. Windows are tinted enough that I couldn’t get anything useful from the street. Whoever’s in there knows what they’re doing.”

That settles it more than anything else could. Amateurs don’t tint windows specifically to defeat casual observation from a residential street. Professionals do.

“Double the men on the property starting tonight,” I say. “Rotate them so it doesn’t look like anything’s changed to anyone watching from outside. And get someone on that gray sedan specifically, not obvious, just enough to know if it moves, when, and where.”

“On it.” Dimitri hesitates before heading back inside. “Any update from your end? On the other thing?”

“Not yet. I’m meeting the contact again this afternoon. He’s still cautious, but he’s talking more than he was last week.”

“What’d he give you so far?”

“Confirmation Pavel’s been operating locally for at least three years, longer than we first thought. A legitimate business as cover, the same pattern he used before he vanished. Nothing on his actual plans yet, but he’s close to trusting me enough to talk specifics. I can feel it.”

“Careful with that. Trust built that slowly can turn just as easily if he senses he’s being managed instead of befriended.”

“I know how this works, Dimitri.”

“I know you do. Doesn’t mean I won’t say it anyway.” He knocks twice on the roof of my car, an old habit from when we were teenagers.

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.

“He’s the new kid,” she informs me, buckling herself in with more enthusiasm than the task usually gets. “He sits next to me now. Ms. Alvarez moved the seats.”

“Is he nice?”

“He’s funny. He can wiggle his ears without touching them. Nobody else in our whole class can do that.”

“That’s a rare skill.”

“I know.” She says it with total conviction, like she’s personally vetted the entire school for ear-wiggling talent and found only one qualified candidate. “We’re going to sit together at lunch tomorrow too. He likes dragons. Not as much as me, but a normal amount.”

I smile, pulling out of the pickup line, half listening to a detailed account of Theo’s opinions on dragons versus dinosaurs, when I notice him.

A man standing at the far end of the pickup lane, not near any car, not greeting any child, just standing with his hands in his pockets, watching the flow of kids and parents with an attention that doesn’t match anyone waiting for a ride.

He’s not dressed for the school run: dark jacket, nothing casual about him, and he doesn’t check his phone the way everyone else waiting around does. He just watches.

I clock his face as best I can in the few seconds I have driving past, mid-thirties maybe, unremarkable except for how still he stands compared to everyone shuffling around him.

By the time I’ve turned out of the lot, I’ve mostly convinced myself it’s nothing. A parent running late, a driver waiting for someone who works at the school, a hundred boring explanations that don’t require the small knot forming in my stomach.

I decide to swing by the club on the way home, an excuse more than a necessity. Viktor left his charger at the house this morning, and I’ve got it in my bag, though if I’m honest with myself I mostly just want to see him before the day’s fully over.

Ginger’s been asking for Marisol all week, so I drop her there for a couple hours instead of taking her straight home, an easy excuse to give myself a little time before I have to decide whether the man at the fence is actually worth mentioning to anyone.

The club looks different in daylight, less mysterious, more like an actual business with actual employees doing inventory and restocking a bar that won’t open for hours yet. Crates of liquor line the hallway, a woman with a clipboard counting bottles against a manifest, calling out numbers to someone I can’t see.

One of the dancers, maybe, or a bartender, nods at me on his way past carrying a box of glassware, easy and familiar, like I’ve become a fixture here too, not just Viktor’s.

A woman near the entrance nods at me as she recognizes me, and I realize she probably does; more people here know my face than I know theirs.

Someone’s arguing quietly near the DJ booth about a sound system that isn’t working right, and a delivery truck idles out back, its driver waiting on a signature from someone I assume is a manager. It’s ordinary in a way I don’t usually get to see, this place stripped of its nighttime performance, just a business running through its daylight machinery like any other business does.

Dimitri’s in the office doorway when I walk in, on the phone, gesturing at someone across the room with the particular efficiency of a man running several things simultaneously. He catches my eye, holds up one finger, and I wait while he finishes something about a delivery schedule and a supplier whose name I don’t recognize.

“Harper.” He ends the call and actually smiles at me, something that still feels like an accomplishment given how guarded he was toward me those first weeks. “Viktor’s in the back. You didn’t have to come all this way for a charger.”

“I know. I wanted the excuse.”

“Fair enough.” He studies me for a second, his expression turning more assessing. “Everything okay? You look a little rattled.”

I almost tell him about the man at the school. Something stops me, some instinct that this is Viktor’s information first, and I just shake my head instead. “Long day. Ginger’s got a new best friend who can wiggle his ears. It’s been a whole ordeal.”

Dimitri laughs, real and easy, and points me toward the back office, and I find Viktor at his desk, sleeves rolled up, going through something on his laptop with the same focus Dimitri had on the phone.

He looks up when I knock on the doorframe, and the focus on his face eases into warmth the moment he sees me.

“You brought my charger.”

“I brought myself. The charger’s just my excuse.”

“I’ll take it.” He stands, comes around the desk, kisses me easily, like this is just an ordinary part of an ordinary day, and for a moment the man at the school fades into something that feels genuinely unimportant.

We talk for a few minutes about nothing, Ginger’s new friend, dinner plans, whether we need to stop for anything on the way home, and I almost don’t mention it at all.

I mention it anyway, once we’re back in my car and he’s leaning against the window telling me he’ll be home by seven.

“There was a man at Ginger’s school today,” I say, keeping my voice casual. “Pickup line. Just standing there, watching everyone. Didn’t seem to be with anyone.”

Viktor goes still in a way that has nothing to do with casual concern. “What did he look like?”

“Dark jacket. Mid-thirties, maybe. I didn’t get a great look… I was just driving past.”

“Did he approach anyone? Say anything?”

“No, he just watched. Why?” The sharpness in his voice is enough to make my own chest tighten. “Viktor, you’re scaring me a little.”

“I’m sorry.” He exhales, visibly working to soften his own reaction. “It’s probably nothing. Schools attract strange loiterers for all sorts of harmless reasons: delivery drivers on break, a relative running late, someone waiting on a ride share.”

“You don’t actually believe that, based on your face right now.”

“I don’t know what to believe yet. That’s the honest answer.” He rubs a hand over his jaw, and for a second his composure slips enough that I see real worry underneath it. “That’s why I need to look into it before I say anything more.”

“That’s not actually reassuring.”

“I know.” He rests a hand on the car door, jaw tight in the way I’ve learned means he’s holding something back. “I’ll have someone look into it. Just to be safe.”

“Look into it how? Viktor, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing you need to worry about tonight.” He kisses my forehead gently, a clear attempt to close the conversation rather than continue it. “I promise, the second there’s something real to tell you, I will.”

I want to push harder. I’ve wanted to push harder every single time he’s done this: the courthouse, the car outside the house I only half noticed last week, this. But I also know by now that pushing doesn’t get me anywhere faster, just gets me a longer wait for the same eventual non-answer.

“Okay,” I say instead, though it isn’t, not really. “Seven o’clock. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t be.”

I pick Ginger up from Marisol’s on the way home, and she climbs in already talking, something about a puzzle she and Marisol finished, all one hundred and fifty pieces, and how Marisol let her have popcorn for a snack even though it was almost dinner time.

“That’s a lot of pieces,” I say.

“It took forever. Can we do a smaller one tonight?”

“We’ll see.”

She keeps talking, and I let her, grateful for the noise.

21

VIKTOR

Dimitri sends the photo without a text first, which tells me everything before I even open it.

The man from Ginger’s school, caught on a long lens getting into a gray sedan two streets over from where our own watcher had eyes on it. Same plate. Same shell company registration that dissolved on paper eight months ago and never actually stopped operating.

I stare at the photograph longer than I need to, at a stranger’s face now confirmed as a real, active threat instead of a possibility I could still talk myself out of believing.

There’s a stillness to the way he stands in the photograph, patient, unbothered, a man who’s clearly done this before and expects to do it again without consequence. I recognize that stillness. I’ve built a career on men who move exactly like that.

I call Dimitri the second I’ve confirmed it myself.

“It’s him,” I say. “The same man.”

“Confirmed on our end too. I had someone cross-reference the plate against every vehicle registered to that shell company, going back as far as the filings let us look.” Dimitri’s voice has an edge to it I don’t hear often. “Viktor, you need to see what else came back.”

“Tell me.”

“Not over the phone. This needs the actual paperwork in front of you.”

“Then come to the house. I don’t want to wait for this.”

He arrives within the hour, and we take it to the study, door closed, Harper and Ginger both occupied elsewhere in the house, safely out of earshot of a conversation neither of them knows is happening.

“Walk me through everything,” I say.

Dimitri lays out a folder on the desk, more organized than I expected given how fast he must have pulled it together. Photographs of the storage unit exterior. A timeline stretching back further than two months once he cross-references utility hookups for the shell company’s listed address.

“The company’s been active for nearly two months, not the few weeks we assumed. Purchases going back that far. Surveillance equipment, long lens cameras, audio equipment, a storage unit rental near the east side we’re still working to locate exactly.”

Two months. I do the math without wanting to. That’s before the hearing. Before the marriage even happened.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I say, mostly to myself. “If this started two months ago, it started before Harper and I were anything to each other. Before there was any reason to connect Ginger’s custody case to me at all.”

“Unless it was never about the custody case specifically.” Dimitri lets that sit a moment. “What if Pavel’s been watching your operation generally for longer than we think, and the custody case just happened to hand him a reason to focus that attention somewhere useful? Best guess, this goes back at least four months. Maybe longer, if we’re only now finding the trail because whoever’s running this operation is good at covering it.” He taps the timeline. “Beyond four months ago, you hadn’t even met Harper yet.”

“So this was never about her.”

“It’s about her now. Whatever it started as, it’s not that anymore.” Dimitri’s jaw tightens. “They’ve moved from watching your house generally to watching a six-year-old specifically, at her school, close enough that she could have looked up and seen him watching her back.”

“I’m aware of what that means.”

“Are you? Because it looks to me like you’re treating this like a security problem you can manage quietly, the same way you’ve managed everything else in this business for fifteen years. This isn’t that anymore. This is a child.”

“I know what this is.”

“Then act like it. Tell Harper. She has a right to know someone’s watching her daughter, if only so she can actually help protect her instead of walking through her days assuming a strange man at pickup is nothing.”

“If I tell her, I have to tell her everything. Who Pavel really is. What this business actually costs, in ways she’s never had to think about before. What it means that her marriage put a target on her daughter’s back before either of us knew each other’s last names.”

“Maybe she deserves to make an informed choice about that, instead of you making it for her.”

I sit with that longer than I want to, because he’s not wrong, and I know he’s not wrong, and I still can’t make myself agree to it.

“Not yet,” I say finally. “I need more before I hand her something this heavy. A name behind the shell company. A location. Something concrete enough that telling her actually helps instead of just terrifying her without giving her anything to do with the fear.”

“That’s not protection, Viktor. That’s delay dressed up as strategy.”

“Maybe. I’m still choosing it.”

Dimitri studies me for a long moment, and I watch him decide not to push further, not because he agrees, but because he’s known me long enough to recognize when I’ve actually made a decision instead of just stalling.

“Fine. But I want it on record that I think you’re wrong about this.” He closes the folder. “And I’m doubling the detail on Ginger specifically, not just the house. Someone with eyes on her every second she’s not physically inside these walls.”

“Agreed.”

“School too. I want someone inside the building during pickup and drop-off, not just watching from the parking lot. If he’s bold enough to stand in that pickup line once, he might try it again, or try something closer.”

“Do it. Whatever it costs, whatever it takes to arrange with the school.”

“And if anything happens before you tell Harper, anything at all, that’s on you. Not me.”

“I know.”

He leaves it there, gathering the folder and heading for the door, and stops with his hand on the frame the way he always does when he has one more thing to say.

“For what it’s worth, I understand why you’re doing this. But I don’t think it’s going to work the way you think it will. Women like Harper don’t stay in the dark quietly forever. Eventually she’s going to ask the right question, at the wrong moment, and you won’t have a good answer ready.”

He leaves before I can respond, which is probably intentional, and I sit alone in the study with a folder’s worth of evidence that Pavel Ivanov has been circling my life for months longer than I ever realized, patient in a way that should terrify me more than it currently allows itself to.

I open the folder again once he’s gone, going through the photographs one more time on my own, looking for anything Dimitri might have missed in his rush to bring me the news.

There’s nothing new to find. Just the same storage unit, the same sedan, the same unremarkable man doing a very deliberate job of looking unremarkable.

I think about Harper somewhere in the house right now, probably reading to Ginger, or doing the dishes, or laughing at something on television, entirely unaware that a stranger has been photographing her daughter for weeks.

I think about the promise I made myself the day I recognized Pavel’s face in that courtroom, that I’d handle this quietly, contain it before it ever had to touch either of them directly.

That promise is getting harder to keep with every new piece of information Dimitri brings me. It was easier to make when the threat was still theoretical, a face from my past that might or might not still matter. It’s harder now, staring at proof he’s been watching my family for months.

22

HARPER

I’ve been tired for almost two weeks before I let myself actually notice it.

Not the ordinary tired of a full shift and a six-year-old’s bedtime routine, something heavier, the kind that has me falling asleep on the couch before nine some nights, waking up more exhausted than I went to bed.

I blame it on everything else. The visitation schedule. The man at the school Viktor still won’t fully explain. The strain of loving someone who keeps half of himself locked behind a door he won’t open for me yet, no matter how many times I’ve decided not to push.

There’s plenty to be exhausted about without needing a better explanation. That’s what I keep telling myself, at least, every time I catch myself dozing off during Ginger’s homework or forgetting halfway through a sentence what I was actually saying.

Then the smell of coffee starts turning my stomach, which has never happened to me in my entire life, and I stand in the kitchen one morning staring at a pot I usually can’t function without, nausea rising fast enough that I have to grip the counter.

“You okay?” Viktor asks, watching me from the doorway.

“Fine. Just tired.”

He studies me a beat longer than the answer requires, and for a second I think he’s going to push, the way I’ve been wanting him to push about whatever he’s hiding. He doesn’t. He just kisses my temple and heads out for the day, and I stand there another minute, waiting for the nausea to pass, counting backward in my head without meaning to.

Two weeks of exhaustion. The coffee thing, new as of yesterday. And somewhere in the counting, a slower, colder realization surfaces that I’ve been avoiding since it first tried to.

I haven’t had a period since before the wedding.

I tell myself it’s stress. It’s been an unbelievably stressful few months, and stress does things to a body, skips things, delays things, and I’ve read enough to know that’s not actually a rare occurrence for someone under this much pressure.

I tell myself that all morning, through Ginger’s drop off, through the drive to a pharmacy I don’t even work near, telling myself the whole way there that I’m just being thorough, not worried, just thorough.

The pharmacy aisle with the tests is smaller than I remember from the one time in college I stood in a similar aisle, terrified for entirely different reasons.

I grab a box without really looking at the brand, pay in cash for no reason I can articulate, even to myself, and drive home with it sitting in my bag like something that might detonate if I look at it the wrong way.

I catch myself checking the rearview mirror twice on the drive, half-convinced someone might see the bag and know, though there’s nobody in the car but me and nothing about a paper bag that could possibly reveal what’s inside it.

The house is quiet, Ginger at school for another four hours, Viktor at the club until evening, nobody around to witness whatever I’m about to find out about myself.

I read the instructions twice before I actually take the test, stalling, and then I do it fast, the way you rip off a bandage, because slow never made anything easier in my experience.

I sit on the edge of the bathtub afterward, timer running on my phone, staring at my own hands instead of the test on the counter, because I’m not ready to look yet, not for the full two minutes, not even for one.

When the timer finally goes off, I make myself pick it up before I can talk myself out of it.

Two lines.

I stare at it long enough that the bathroom light starts to feel too bright, too clinical, like I’m standing in a hospital instead of my own home. I read the box instructions again, like maybe I misunderstood something simple enough that a six-year-old could interpret it correctly the first time.

Nope. Two lines means pregnant.

I’m pregnant.

My legs go a little unsteady, and I sit back down on the edge of the tub, test still in my hand, my mind doing that thing where it refuses to produce a single coherent thought, just static, just the two lines repeating themselves over and over like they might change if I look away and look back.

A baby. An actual baby, growing right now, in the middle of everything else currently happening in my life, a marriage that started as a legal transaction and somehow became the realest thing I’ve ever built, a man who’s kept some part of himself locked away from me for weeks now, a threat I still don’t understand hovering somewhere at the edges of everything.

I don’t know how to feel. That’s the truest thing I can land on, sitting there with a positive test in my hand. Not happy, not devastated, just entirely, completely overwhelmed by the size of it, too big to process in one sitting.

I think about Viktor, about how he’s going to take this. He never asked for a family beyond Ginger, never signed up for anything beyond a temporary arrangement that solved a custody problem and somehow, slowly, turned into an actual marriage neither of us planned on wanting. A baby wasn’t part of any version of the plan, not mine, and certainly not his.

I try to picture his face when I tell him, and I can’t land on a single version that feels certain. Joy, maybe. Panic, maybe. Some complicated mixture of both that he won’t let me see clearly until he’s decided how he wants to feel about it, the same measured control he brings to everything else lately.

I think about what he’s already carrying right now, whatever’s behind that locked door, the security that’s quietly doubled around this house, the man at the school he still won’t explain.

Adding this on top of whatever’s already weighing on him feels almost cruel, dropping one more enormous thing onto a man who’s already stretched thinner than he’s willing to admit to me.

I decide, sitting on the edge of the tub with the test still warm from my hand, that I’m not telling him tonight.

Not because I want to keep it from him. Because I want one day, just one, to sit with this news myself before I have to manage his reaction to it too, whatever that reaction turns out to be.

I wrap the test in tissue and bury it at the bottom of the bathroom trash, underneath enough other things that nobody would think to look, and I splash water on my face until the woman in the mirror looks slightly less shell-shocked than she did five minutes ago.

By the time I pick Ginger up from school, I’ve mostly composed myself, enough that she doesn’t ask why I seem quieter than usual, enough that I can nod along to her detailed account of Theo’s opinions on today’s lunch options without my voice giving anything away.

That night, after dinner, after bedtime, Viktor finds me on the porch, same spot as always, and settles in beside me without a word, comfortable in the quiet we’ve built between us over these last months.

“You’ve been quiet tonight,” he says eventually.

“Long day.”

“You keep saying that lately.”

“Because it keeps being true.” I lean into his shoulder, and he lets me, arm coming around me automatically now, easy in a way that still catches me off guard sometimes, how naturally we’ve learned each other’s shapes. “I’m okay. Just tired.”

“You’d tell me if it were something else.”

“I would.” The lie comes easier than I expect it to, and I hate a little how easily it comes, given how much I’ve resented him for the same thing these last few weeks. “I’m fine, Viktor. Just tired.”

23

VIKTOR

The morning starts ordinary enough that I almost forget, for an hour or two, everything currently sitting unresolved in a folder in my study.

Dimitri texts around nine, nothing urgent, just confirmation that the school details are in place, someone inside the building during pickup and drop-off now, quiet enough that no one but us knows he’s there. Small progress. Not enough to justify telling Harper anything yet, but progress.

I spend the morning at the club going through numbers with an actual sense of normalcy, Wednesday’s door take, a supplier renewal Dimitri’s been pushing for weeks, the mundane business that used to fill my entire day before Pavel Ivanov resurrected himself in a courtroom and rearranged my priorities completely.

I get home earlier than usual, restless in a way I can’t quite explain, and find Harper on the living room couch, feet tucked under her, a book open on her lap that she doesn’t appear to actually be reading.

“You’re home early,” she says, looking up.

“Slow afternoon. I wanted to be here.”

I sit beside her, close enough that she leans into me automatically, the way she does most evenings now, easy and unthinking, a habit built without either of us deciding to build it. We sit there a while, talking about nothing, Ginger’s homework, whether we need anything from the store, ordinary domestic noise that’s become the backdrop of my entire life somehow.

Then, mid-sentence about something else entirely, she stops.

“I’m pregnant.”

She says it flat, fast, like ripping a bandage off before she can talk herself out of it, and for a full three seconds I don’t process the words as language at all, just sound, syllables that don’t yet mean anything.

“What?”

“I’m pregnant, Viktor. I found out yesterday.” Her hands twist together in her lap, the first sign of nerves she’s let show since she started talking. “I wanted to tell you sooner. I just needed a day to actually sit with it myself first.”

The words finally land, all at once, and my chest goes tight and warm in a way I don’t have immediate language for, too big and too fast to name cleanly.

A child. An actual child, mine, growing right now inside the woman sitting next to me on a couch I bought without ever imagining a family filling it beyond Ginger.

“Viktor.” Harper’s voice cuts through whatever’s happening in my head, uncertain now, watching my face for a reaction I haven’t given her yet. “Say something. Please.”

I realize I’ve been silent too long, staring at her like she’s just handed me something I don’t know how to hold.

I’ve faced down men with guns in warehouses without this much internal static. Fifteen years of training myself to react instantly to threat, to danger, to anything requiring a decision under pressure, and none of it prepared me for two sentences from the woman I married for entirely practical reasons months ago.

“I’m sorry. I’m processing.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “This wasn’t something either of us planned.”

“I know.”

“I never expected to want children. Not really. Not with the life I’ve built, the risks that come with it.” I take her hand, still twisting in her lap, and hold it still against my chest the way I always do when I need to ground myself in something real. “But I want this. I want it more than I have any right to, given how little warning I had to prepare for wanting it.”

Harper’s eyes go glassy, relief breaking across her face in a way that tells me exactly how much she’d braced for a different answer.

“You’re not scared?”

“Terrified,” I admit. “Fifteen years of running a business that puts targets on the people close to me, and now there’s going to be a child who’s mine by blood, not choice, not circumstance, just entirely, completely mine to protect.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. I’m answering the question underneath it too.” I press my palm flat against her stomach, still barely believing there’s anything there yet. However, I know there is, some tiny fierce fact of biology that’s already rearranged everything I thought I understood about my own priorities. “I want this baby, Harper. I want it the way I’ve never let myself want anything, completely, without any of the distance I usually keep between myself and things I might lose.”

She laughs, wet and surprised, and presses her forehead against my shoulder, and we sit there a long moment, my hand still resting against her stomach, both of us adjusting in real time to a version of our lives neither of us saw coming even a few months ago.

“I thought you might panic,” she says eventually. “Given everything else going on right now.”

“I did panic. For about three seconds.” I kiss the top of her head. “Then I got to the part where I actually thought about a child who’s ours, and the panic didn’t stand a chance against that.”

“What do we tell Ginger?”

“Whatever you think is right, whenever you think she’s ready to hear it. I’ll follow your lead on that.”

“She’s going to be thrilled. She’s been asking for a sibling for weeks, did you know that? I thought she meant a puppy the first time she brought it up.”

“A sibling and a puppy aren’t mutually exclusive requests. She might negotiate for both once she realizes she has leverage.”

“Don’t give her ideas.”

“Too late. I’m fairly sure she’s already three steps ahead of both of us on most things.”

I laugh, real and unguarded, and for a while we sit there, planning nothing specific, imagining everything, a version of the future that includes a nursery and a name and a whole life neither of us was building toward when this marriage started as a piece of paper solving a custody problem.

“Boy or girl, do you have a preference?” she asks eventually, half teasing.

“Healthy. That’s the only preference I actually have.”

“That’s the diplomatic answer.”

“It’s the honest one, too. Ask me again once there’s an actual answer to have a preference about.”

It isn’t until much later, after Harper’s asleep, curled against my side with one hand resting on her own stomach even in sleep, that the rest of it finds its way back into my head.

A child. My child, coming into a world where a man who’s spent months watching my family from parked cars and school pickup lines is still out there, patient, unaccounted for, closer to my daughter’s future sibling than either of them will ever know unless I finally do something about it.

The weight of what I stand to lose just doubled, quietly, completely, in the space of one ordinary evening on my own couch.

I think about the folder still sitting in my study, the photographs, the timeline, everything Dimitri’s spent weeks building while I’ve spent those same weeks convincing myself this could stay contained a while longer.

I lie awake a long while, Harper’s breathing steady against my chest, thinking about Pavel Ivanov and everything I still haven’t told her, and for the first time since that courtroom, the silence I’ve been protecting her with starts to feel less like protection and more like a debt I’m going to have to pay eventually, one way or another.

Not tonight. Tonight is hers, the child’s, and mine, untouched by anything else.

But soon. I can feel it coming, the way you feel weather change before the sky actually confirms it. Soon I’ll have to choose between the man who protects by staying silent and the man who protects by finally telling the truth, and I already suspect which version of me is going to lose that argument.

24

VIKTOR

I wake with a clarity I haven’t had in weeks, the kind that used to come easily before Pavel Ivanov reentered my life, the kind that comes from finally deciding on a course of action.

Harper’s still asleep beside me, one hand curled against her stomach even unconscious, and I lie there a moment longer than necessary, watching her, before I get up and start making calls.

Nothing about today needs to look frantic. Panic invites mistakes, and mistakes are exactly what a man like Pavel would be counting on if he ever managed to rattle me. Whatever I do from here forward gets done the way I’ve built this entire business, deliberate, controlled, three steps ahead of anyone watching.

I call the head of my security detail first, before coffee, before anything else.

“I want cameras on every access point to the property by the end of the week. Not obvious ones, integrated into the landscaping, the fixtures, nothing that reads as new to anyone watching from outside.”

“We can have a team here by this afternoon.”

“Good. I also want the safe room in the basement fully stocked and tested. Communications, medical supplies, enough for several days if it ever comes to that. I want my wife and daughter to know exactly where it is and exactly how to get there without needing instructions in the moment.”

“Understood. Anything else?”

“Rotate the routine. School pickup, grocery runs, anything predictable. I don’t want a pattern anyone can study and exploit.”

He confirms everything without asking why, which is one of the reasons I pay him what I do, and I hang up already moving to the next call, Dimitri, who picks up on the first ring like he’s been waiting for it.

“You’re up early,” he says.

“I’ve made some decisions.”

“About Harper?”

“About the house. I’m not telling her yet. But I’m done reacting to whatever Pavel does next. I want us building toward something instead.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I want everything you’ve gathered on him laid out properly, patterns, associates, anywhere he might actually be vulnerable instead of just watching us from a distance forever. If he wants a war, I’d rather fight it on ground I choose.”

Dimitri’s quiet a moment, and I can practically hear him recalibrating, the shift from defense to something closer to offense clearly not what he expected from me this early in the morning. “That’s a significant shift.”

“She’s pregnant, Dimitri. The stakes doubled overnight. I’m not spending the next several months just watching cars idle outside my house and hoping we catch a break before he decides to stop being patient.”

His reaction to the news is unreadable. “I’ll have everything organized by this afternoon. We can go through it together, figure out where the actual leverage is.”

“Good. Come by after Ginger’s at school. I don’t want this conversation happening anywhere near either of them.”

He agrees, and I end the call feeling steadier than I have in weeks, the particular calm that comes from finally choosing a direction instead of drifting reactive through someone else’s timeline.

The calm doesn’t last past breakfast.

Harper finds me in the kitchen an hour later, Ginger already off to school, security detail rotating through their new positions with quiet efficiency, exactly as I requested, nothing dramatic, nothing that would alarm anyone watching from outside.

“There are new cameras on the fence line,” she says, no preamble, arms crossed. “I counted four just walking to the mailbox. And there’s a man near the garage I don’t recognize, and another one who was apparently walking the property at six this morning while I was getting Ginger ready.”

“Security review. Standard, given everything else going on.”

“Viktor.” Her voice has an edge to it I haven’t heard from her before, sharper than the courthouse, sharper than the school pickup line conversation. “I’m done with standard. I’m done with vague. I’m pregnant, and this morning I wake up to my house looking like it’s preparing for something you still won’t name.”

“Harper.”

“No.” She holds up a hand, stopping me before I can deploy whatever careful deflection I was about to reach for. “You don’t get to do the thing where you say my name like that and expect it to end the conversation. Not today. Not with a baby involved now, not just Ginger, not just me.”

I look at her, and my chest, steady for weeks now, finally starts to crack under the weight of how much she deserves better than what I’ve been giving her.

“You’re right,” I say quietly. “You deserve more than I’ve given you.”

“Then give it to me.”

“I can’t. Not yet.” Her face falls, and I press on before she can pull away entirely. “There are people whose lives are at risk if I say certain things before I’m certain of them, Dimitri’s contacts included, people who trusted me with information they’d be killed for if it traced back to them. I need a few more days. That’s nothing, Harper, and I know it isn’t enough either.”

“You’re asking me to trust a locked door again.”

“I’m asking you to trust me while I finish making sure that door doesn’t open onto something worse than what’s already inside it.” I pull out a chair at the kitchen table, and after a long moment, she sits, still tense, arms still crossed. “What I can tell you is this. Someone from my past has been watching this house. The car. The man at Ginger’s school. Both connected to the same person. I believe he means to use Ginger, and potentially this baby, against me.”

Harper goes pale, one hand instinctively moving to her stomach. “Against you how?”

“I don’t fully know yet. That’s the truth, not an excuse. The moment I know more, you’ll know it too. All of it. Not a sanitized version, not a version designed to keep you calm. The truth, whatever shape it turns out to have.”

“Why didn’t you tell me even this much weeks ago?”

“Because I’ve spent fifteen years believing the people I love are safer the less they know about the threats against them. Because telling you meant admitting how much danger I might have put you and Ginger in the moment I married you.” I reach across the table, and she lets me take her hand, though she doesn’t fully relax into it. “I still believe waiting a few more days is right. I understand if you don’t agree with that.”

She’s quiet a long moment, processing, her hand still in mine, and I watch her work through the same math I’ve been working through alone for weeks, fear and anger and the particular exhaustion of realizing the ground under your life isn’t as solid as you thought it was.

“What happens now?” she asks finally.

“Now Dimitri and I finish what we started, quietly, and the moment there’s something solid to tell you, I tell you. No more waiting for certainty I don’t actually need to have first.”

“That’s not the same as telling me everything.”

“No. It isn’t. I know that’s not enough, and I know you have every right to be angry that it isn’t.” I squeeze her hand anyway, needing the contact even if she isn’t ready to fully return it. “I’m asking for a a little more time. Not forever.”

She studies me a long moment, and I can see her deciding whether a little more time is something she can actually give me, or whether she’s already decided it isn’t.

“A little more time,” she says finally, voice tight. “Then I want everything, Viktor. Not pieces. Not a version you’ve decided is safe for me to hear. Everything.”

“You’ll have it.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

She doesn’t look fully convinced, and I don’t blame her, given how many times I’ve said some version of this exact promise over the last several weeks without following through. But she doesn’t pull her hand away either, and for now, that has to be enough for both of us.

We sit there a while longer, hands still joined across the table, the new cameras outside doing their quiet work, the safe room downstairs waiting, unused, for a threat I’m hoping never actually reaches this house.

Later, once she’s gone to pick up Ginger, I sit alone in the kitchen a moment longer, thinking about how little that partial truth actually cost me to give her, and how much more it’s going to cost when the days I asked for run out.

The weight of what I stand to lose doubled the moment she told me about the baby.

Today it settled into something I can start actually working against, instead of something I’ve been quietly drowning under in silence, even if I’ve only given her a fraction of what she deserves to know.

Dimitri arrives that afternoon with a folder considerably thicker than the last one, and we sit together at the same table where I gave Harper the smallest possible version of the truth an hour earlier.

“You told her,” he says, not a question, reading it off my face the second he sits down.

“Some of it. Enough to earn me a few more days before she stops accepting partial answers.”

“How’d she take it?”

“Better than I deserved. Worse than I’d hoped.” I push the folder open between us. “Walk me through what you found.”

Dimitri lays it out. Photographs clipped to a timeline that now stretches back nearly five months, longer than either of us initially estimated.

A second address surfaces, a warehouse on the industrial side of the river, leased under yet another shell company with threads leading back to the same dissolved entity behind the sedan.

“This is where he’s actually operating from, I’d bet on it,” Dimitri says. “The storage unit’s just overflow. This is the real base.”

“Confirmed, or educated guess?”

“Educated guess, backed by utility usage that doesn’t match an empty warehouse. Someone’s running equipment in there regularly. Could be exactly what we’re looking for.”

“I want eyes on it. Discreetly. I don’t want anyone spooked before we understand what we’re looking at.”

“Already planned for tomorrow night.” Dimitri closes the folder partway, studying me. “You’re different today. Calmer than you’ve been in weeks, even with everything that’s happening.”

“I stopped waiting for something to happen to me. That changes how a man carries himself.”

“Good. You’ve needed that shift for a while now.” He stands, gathering the folder. “For what it’s worth, I think you made the right call telling her something, even if it wasn’t everything. She deserved that much, at minimum.”

“I know.”

He leaves, and for the first time since that courtroom, I feel like I’m finally building toward an ending instead of just waiting for one to happen to me.

I only hope the ending arrives before Harper’s patience for partial truths runs out first.

25

HARPER

I’m curled on the couch with my feet in Viktor’s lap when I notice he’s stopped reading entirely, book forgotten, open against his knee, just watching me instead.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing. You look tired.”

“I am tired. Growing an entire human is apparently exhausting work.”

He sets the book aside and runs his thumb along the arch of my foot, slow, absent, a touch that used to feel impossible for a man like him and now just feels like Tuesday.

Ginger’s already asleep upstairs, worn out from a full day of school and the diorama sequel she’s apparently already planning for next semester, and the house has that particular quiet it gets once she’s down, settled and still, just the two of us and whatever’s left of the evening.

“You’ve gotten good at that,” I say.

“At what?”

“Noticing things before I tell you. My feet. What I’m actually hungry for versus what I say I want. The exact moment I need to sit down before I know it myself.”

“I pay attention.” He says it simply, like it’s the most obvious explanation in the world, and maybe for him it is.

“Most people don’t pay attention like this.”

“Most people aren’t watching someone they love build an entire person out of nothing.” He presses his thumb into the arch of my foot again, and I feel it everywhere, not just where he’s touching. “It’s hard not to notice everything, given what’s actually happening.”

I go quiet at that, at the easy way he said love like it’s a fact he settled on a while ago and stopped questioning, and my chest goes warm and a little unsteady.

“You don’t have to look so surprised every time I say it,” he says, watching my face. “I mean it every time.”

“I know. It still catches me off guard.”

“Good. I’d worry if it stopped.”

He shifts, gentle in the way he’s gentle with everything lately, and pulls me closer until I’m tucked against his side instead of just resting my feet in his lap, one hand settling low over the small, barely-there curve of my stomach.

“Does it feel real to you yet?” I ask. “The baby, I mean. Twelve weeks still feels abstract to me some days.”

“It felt real the second you told me.” His hand stays where it is, warm through my shirt. “I think about it more than I probably should during a normal workday. Whether it’ll have your stubbornness or mine. Whether Ginger’s going to be a good big sister or an absolute menace about it.”

“Both, probably.”

“Both, definitely.” He shifts slightly, thoughtful now. “I keep catching myself doing the math. Due date, how old Ginger will be by then, whether we’ll need a bigger crib than the one I already looked at online without telling you.”

“You’ve been looking at cribs.”

“In secret, yes. I wanted to have an idea before we actually talked about it, so I wouldn’t just be standing there nodding along uselessly when you brought it up.”

“That’s oddly sweet, for a man who spent our first conversation trying to figure out why a stranger was proposing to him.”

“I contain multitudes. We’ve established this.”

He presses a kiss to my temple, unhurried, and I feel the shift happen slowly, nothing sudden about it, just his mouth trailing lower, along my jaw, my throat, patient in a way that’s different from how he usually is with me.

“You’re being gentle tonight,” I say, half teasing, tilting my head to give him better access.

“I’m always gentle with you.”

“Not always. Sometimes you’re not gentle at all, and I’ve never once complained about it.”

He laughs against my skin, low and warm. “Tonight’s different. I want different tonight.”

“Different how?”

“Slower.” He pulls back just enough to look at me properly, something unguarded in his face that has nothing to do with restraint and everything to do with how much he’s stopped protecting himself from feeling all of this at once. “I don’t want tonight to be about how much I want you, even though I do, always. I want it to be about how much I actually love you, and I want to take my time proving that instead of rushing past it.”

My throat goes tight, and I don’t trust myself to answer with words, so I answer by pulling him back down to me instead, slower this time, matching whatever pace he’s set without either of us having to say it out loud.

He stands, taking me with him, and this time there’s no urgency in the walk to our bedroom, no doorstep tension threatening to spill over before either of us is ready.

Just his hand in mine, unhurried steps, the quiet certainty of two people who’ve stopped needing to rush toward anything.

He undresses me like he’s committing it to memory, unhurried, reverent in a way I don’t have another word for, his hands mapping the changes in my body with the same attention he gives everything else about me now, the small curve of my stomach, the fuller weight of my breasts, changes I’ve barely adjusted to myself yet.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a line; it sounds like something he’s simply reporting, factual, undeniable to him.

“You don’t have to keep saying that.”

“I’m not saying it because I have to. I’m saying it because it’s true, and because I don’t think you actually believe it yet, and I intend to keep saying it until you do.”

I don’t have an answer for that, so I pull him closer instead, and he lets himself be pulled, unhurried, patient, like we have every minute in the world and no reason to spend any of them rushing.

He closes the bedroom door behind us, and the quiet settles differently than it used to.

I stand near the foot of the bed while he moves toward me. There’s no hurry in the way he reaches for the hem of my shirt. He lifts it slowly, waiting for me to raise my arms, then draws it up and over my head. The air feels cooler against my skin. He sets the shirt aside instead of letting it fall. Then his hands go to the clasp of my bra.

“Turn around,” he says softly.

I do. His fingers work the clasp open with care, and he slides the straps down my arms. When the bra is gone, he rests both palms on my bare shoulders for a moment, just holding them there. I feel the warmth of his hands and the slight roughness of his palms. He turns me back to face him.

His eyes move over me without rushing. They pause on my breasts, which have grown fuller these past weeks, then lower to the small curve of my stomach that is only just beginning to show. I feel a flicker of self-consciousness and almost cross my arms.

He notices. “Don’t,” he says. “I want to look.”

“It still feels strange,” I admit. “Like my body belongs to someone else half the time.”

“It belongs to you. And to the baby. And to me, in the ways you’ll let me have it.” He steps closer. His hands settle at my waist, thumbs brushing the soft skin just above the waistband of my leggings. “I like every change so far. I like knowing I get to watch the rest of them happen.”

He eases the leggings down my hips along with my underwear. I step out of them. Now I’m completely bare, and he’s still dressed. He does not seem in any rush to change that. He walks me the last few steps to the bed and guides me to sit on the edge. Then he kneels in front of me, so we’re closer to eye level.

His hands rest on my thighs. He looks up at my face first, then lets his gaze travel down again, slower this time. “You’re warmer,” he says, almost to himself. “Your skin. I noticed it last week too.”

“Is that a pregnancy thing?”

“I think so.” He leans in and presses a kiss just below my collarbone. “I like it.”

He stays kneeling and begins to touch me with the same unhurried attention. One hand slides up my side. The other cups the underside of my breast, testing its new weight. His thumb brushes over my nipple, and I draw a quiet breath. Everything feels more sensitive than it used to. He notices that, too, and keeps the touch light.

“Tell me if anything feels like too much,” he says.

“It’s not too much. It’s just… more.”

He nods and continues. His mouth follows the path his hands have taken, kissing along the upper curve of my breast, then lower, taking his time.

When he draws my nipple into his mouth, the sensation is sharper than I expect. A soft sound leaves me. He makes a low answering sound in his throat and stays there, unhurried, learning the new responses of my body.

After a while he eases me further back onto the bed, so I am lying down. He stretches out beside me, still mostly dressed, and continues the slow mapping with his hands and mouth.

He spends long minutes on my breasts, then moves lower. When his palm settles over the small curve of my stomach, he goes still for a moment.

“Hi,” he says quietly, speaking more to the baby than to me. The absurdity of it makes me smile even as my throat tightens.

“You’re talking to it already.”

“I’ve been talking to it in my head since we found out.” His hand stays warm and steady over the slight swell. “Feels different doing it out loud.”

He leans down and presses a slow kiss to the same place his hand had been. Then another. The tenderness of it is almost harder to take than anything more urgent would have been. I slide my fingers into his hair and hold on while he stays there, breathing against my skin, as if he has nowhere else he needs to be.

When he finally lifts his head, his eyes are darker. He looks at me for a long second.

“I could do this for hours,” he says. “Just this. Learning how you feel now.”

“I want you to.” My voice comes out softer than I expect. “I want you to take as long as you need.”

He nods once, then returns to the slow exploration of my body, hands and mouth moving with the same patient focus, drawing out every moment instead of pushing toward anything else.

He undresses without ceremony and returns to the bed. The mattress dips under his weight as he settles over me, careful with how he places his knees and elbows. I feel the heat of his bare skin against mine for the first time tonight. He does not rush to enter me. Instead, he stays braced above me, one hand sliding down between us so he can feel how ready I already am.

“Still okay?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He guides himself to me and pushes in slowly. The stretch is familiar and different at the same time. My body accepts him in a long, continuous slide until he is fully seated. He stays there, deep and still, forehead resting lightly against mine. I can feel the steady beat of his heart through his chest.

“You feel different,” he says quietly. “Softer. Warmer.”

“Is that bad?”

“No.” He kisses the corner of my mouth. “It’s perfect. I just want to stay here a minute and feel it.”

He does. We breathe together while he remains buried inside me, neither of us moving yet. His hand finds the small curve of my stomach again and rests there. The simple weight of his palm makes my throat tighten.

When he finally begins to move, it is in long strokes. He draws back almost all the way before sinking in again, each thrust unhurried and complete. I feel every inch of him. The pace stays steady and deliberate. There is no urgency in it, only attention.

“Look at me,” he says.

I open my eyes. His are already on my face, dark and focused. He keeps the same slow rhythm while he watches me, adjusting the angle slightly when a particular stroke makes my breath catch. His free hand stays splayed over my stomach the entire time.

“I love you,” he says, the words quiet but clear. “I love how you feel right now. I love that I get to be the one inside you while this is happening.”

I reach up and touch his face. My fingers trace the line of his jaw. He turns his head enough to kiss my palm without breaking the rhythm of his hips.

The slow build continues longer than I expect. Every time I think the need will force him to go faster, he simply deepens the next thrust instead, keeping the same controlled pace. The pleasure gathers in a low, steady wave rather than a sharp climb. I can feel myself getting closer in small increments, each one drawn out by the way he refuses to rush.

“Viktor.”

“I know.” His voice has gone rougher, but the movement of his body stays measured. “Stay with me. I want to feel you come like this.”

He shifts the angle again, pressing deeper, and the new pressure pulls a soft sound from my throat. He answers it with a low sound of his own and keeps going, still unhurried, still fully present. His hand never leaves my stomach. The combination of his steady thrusts and the protective weight of his palm is what finally pushes me over.

The orgasm moves through me in a long, rolling wave rather than a sudden break. My body tightens around him, and I hold on to his shoulders while it lasts. He follows a few strokes later, burying himself deep and staying there as he comes with a quiet, rough exhale against my neck.

He doesn’t pull out right away. We stay joined while our breathing slows. His hand remains over the small curve of my stomach, thumb brushing back and forth in a slow arc. I can feel the slight tremor in his arms where he is still holding most of his weight off me.

After a long time, he eases out carefully and shifts onto his side, drawing me with him so my back is against his chest. His arm settles around me, hand returning to the same place on my stomach as if it belongs there.

Neither of us speaks for a while. The room is quiet except for the sound of our breathing. I feel the steady rise and fall of his chest against my back and the warm weight of his hand over the place where our baby is growing.

Afterward, he stays wrapped around me longer than usual, one hand still resting over my stomach even as his breathing slows toward sleep, like he’s standing guard over something precious even unconscious.

“That was different,” I say eventually, tracing idle patterns against his chest.

“Good different?”

“The best different.” I tilt my head up to look at him. “I don’t think I knew it was possible to feel this close to someone. Even before tonight. Especially after.”

“I didn’t either.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head, unhurried, the same patience he brought to everything else tonight. “I spent fifteen years convinced closeness like this was a liability. A door I needed to keep locked if I wanted to survive in this business.”

“And now?”

“Now I can’t remember why I ever thought surviving was worth more than this.” His hand tightens slightly over my stomach, over the small, quiet fact of the life we’ve started building together. “Whatever it costs me to keep both of you safe, I’ll pay it. I need you to know that, even if I can’t always tell you exactly what that means yet.”

I don’t have a full understanding of what he’s actually promising, not with the specifics still locked behind whatever he’s still not telling me, but I believe the shape of it completely, lying here in the dark with his heartbeat slow and steady under my ear.

“I trust you,” I say, and mean it more than I have in weeks. “Even with the parts you’re not telling me yet.”

“You won’t have to wait much longer. I promise you that too.”

I want to ask him what he means, want to push past the vague shape of the promise into whatever specific thing is sitting behind it, but his breathing’s already evening out beside me, sleep pulling him under before I can find the right question to ask.

I settle for watching him instead, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the hand that hasn’t fully let go of my stomach even in sleep, and I let myself believe, just for tonight, that whatever he’s protecting me from will turn out to be smaller than it feels right now.

26

HARPER

Ginger’s mid-rinse in the bath when she stops scrubbing shampoo out of her own hair long enough to point directly at my stomach.

“Your tummy’s getting big.”

I glance down at myself, at the curve that’s gone from barely noticeable to genuinely visible over the last couple of weeks, and I should have expected this conversation sooner than sixteen weeks in, honestly.

“It is,” I say. “That’s the baby. Growing.”

Ginger’s whole face changes, curiosity overtaking the half-finished bath entirely. “The baby’s in there? Right now?”

“Right now.”

“How’d it get in there?”

I choke slightly on absolutely nothing. “That’s a conversation for when you’re older.”

“Older like next year?”

“Older like considerably more than next year.”

She accepts this with the particular grace of a kid who’s learned some questions get answers and some just get deflected, and moves straight on to the next one without missing a beat.

“Does it hurt? Having a whole baby in your tummy?”

“Not really. Sometimes my back aches a little. Mostly it’s just strange, feeling something move around in there that isn’t me.”

“It moves?”

“A little. You’ll be able to feel it soon, if you put your hand right here.”

She presses her wet palm flat against my stomach with total concentration, waiting, disappointed when nothing happens on command. “I don’t feel anything.”

“It’s still pretty small. Give it a few more weeks.”

“Okay.” She goes back to rinsing her hair, apparently satisfied for exactly ninety seconds before the next question surfaces. “Is it going to take my room?”

“No, honey. The baby’s getting its own room. Nobody’s taking yours.”

“Good. Because I just got my room how I like it.” She says this with the gravity of someone discussing a major real estate decision rather than a collection of stuffed animals and one lopsided dinosaur poster. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Can you find out?”

“We could. We decided to wait and be surprised.”

Ginger considers this decision with visible skepticism, clearly finding the whole concept of voluntary suspense baffling. “That seems hard.”

“It is a little hard.”

“I’d want to know right away.” She dunks her head briefly, resurfacing with water streaming down her face. “Can it hear us right now?”

“Actually, yes. Its ears are working by now, I think. It can probably hear your voice.”

Ginger’s eyes go enormous at that information, and she leans down toward my stomach with the total seriousness of a diplomat addressing a foreign dignitary. “Hi, baby. It’s me. Ginger. I’m going to be your big sister, and I already know how to push swings really high, so you’re going to like me a lot.”

“Very compelling introduction.”

“I practiced it a little.” She says this with no embarrassment at all, as if rehearsing speeches for an unborn sibling were a perfectly reasonable use of her time. “Does it know Viktor’s voice too? Or just yours?”

“Probably both, actually. He talks to it sometimes.”

“He does?”

“When he thinks I’m not paying attention. He’ll put his hand on my stomach and just talk, like it’s already listening.”

Ginger considers this information with visible delight, filing it away for later use, no doubt. “What does he say?”

“I don’t always hear all of it. Mostly that he can’t wait to meet them, and that they’re already loved, whoever they turn out to be.”

Her face does something soft and pleased at that, and she doesn’t ask another question for a full thirty seconds, which for Ginger might be a personal record.

I laugh, helpless, and pull her back up before she inhales bathwater mid-introduction, and she lets herself be pulled with the easy trust that’s taken months to build between us, unbothered by the interruption to her speech.

That night, once she’s in pajamas and stalling bedtime with the usual determination, she corners Viktor in the hallway with a fresh round of questions that apparently didn’t get fully resolved during bath time.

“Does the baby have a name yet?”

“Not yet,” Viktor says, crouching down to her level without being asked, the way he’s done since practically the first week. “We’re still deciding.”

“Can I pick it?”

“You can suggest names. We’ll consider all serious submissions.”

“What if I want to name it Dragon?”

“That would be considered, and then almost certainly declined, but you’re welcome to submit it formally.”

Ginger seems satisfied by the process itself more than the likely outcome and moves on without missing a beat. “Will the baby like me?”

Viktor’s expression softens at that, like the question landed somewhere more tender than the ones before it.

“The baby’s going to love you,” he says, steady, certain. “You’re going to be the first person it really knows outside me and your aunt Harper. Big sisters are important. Some of the most important people a baby ever has.”

“More important than parents?”

“Differently important. Parents keep you safe and fed and make you do homework. Big sisters teach you the actually interesting stuff. How to have fun. What’s worth being scared of and what isn’t.”

“Like the dark isn’t actually scary, but the crawl space under the porch definitely is.”

“Exactly like that.”

Ginger nods, clearly filing this new job description away with real seriousness, already recalibrating her sense of self around the upcoming promotion. “Will you still read to me every night? Even with the baby here?”

“Every night,” Viktor says, without hesitation, without needing a second to consider it. “That doesn’t change because someone new joins the family. If anything, you’ll probably end up reading to the baby yourself eventually, once it’s old enough to sit still for a story.”

“I’m a good reader.”

“You are. I’ve heard you practicing on your stuffed animals.”

Ginger looks briefly betrayed at being caught, then decides to let it go, and finally allows herself to be steered toward her actual bedroom instead of the hallway, chattering the entire way about names she’s already rejecting for being, in her words, boring.

I watch the whole exchange from the top of the stairs, unnoticed, and my chest goes tight and warm at once, watching a man who once told me plainly he never expected to want children answer every single one of a six-year-old’s questions like each answer actually mattered to him.

He doesn’t perform patience. He isn’t managing her the way some adults manage children, waiting them out until the questions stop.

He’s actually present for every single one, treating the crawl space under the porch and the baby’s potential name with equal weight, equal care.

Once she’s finally asleep, book abandoned halfway through the seventh chapter, Viktor finds me still standing at the top of the stairs.

“How much of that did you hear?”

“Most of it. The crawl space bit especially.”

“She’s not wrong. That crawl space is genuinely unsettling.” He leans against the wall beside me, tired in the particular way that comes from answering forty consecutive questions from a six-year-old with total sincerity. “She’s going to be a good big sister. Bossy, probably. But good.”

“You’re going to be a good dad.”

He goes quiet at that, studying me for a long moment before answering. “I hope so,” he says finally. “I didn’t have much of a model for it, growing up. I’m mostly figuring it out as I go, based on what feels right instead of what I actually know.”

“For what it’s worth, what feels right to you looks a lot like actually being a good father.”

He kisses my temple, unhurried, grateful in a way that doesn’t need words attached to it, and we stand there together at the top of the stairs a while longer, listening to the quiet house settle around a family that’s grown considerably bigger than either of us originally planned for, in every sense that matters.

“For what it’s worth,” I say eventually, “watching you tonight, I don’t think you need a model. I think you’re just naturally good at this part, whether you had one or not.”

“You’re biased. You’re carrying my child.”

“I’m allowed to be biased and also correct.”

27

VIKTOR

Six Weeks Later…

Harper’s been stuck on the couch for the better part of ten minutes, trying and failing to get herself upright without tipping the bowl of ice cream balanced precariously on the arm of the cushion.

“Don’t laugh,” she warns, catching my expression from the doorway.

“I’m not laughing.”

“You’re laughing internally. I can tell.”

“I would never.” I lean against the doorframe, watching her attempt a second strategy involving the couch cushion as leverage. “Though for the record, this is objectively very funny.”

“Traitor.”

I cross the room and offer her both hands, and she takes them, letting me pull her up with the particular gracelessness that twenty-two weeks apparently requires of even the most determined woman.

“Thank you,” she says, steadying herself against my chest once she’s fully vertical. “This entire process has been humbling in ways nobody adequately warned me about.”

“You’re allowed to ask for help before you’re stranded on a couch for ten minutes.”

“I like proving I can do it myself first. Then I ask for help.” She presses a hand to the small of her back, wincing slightly. “The baby’s decided my spine is a personal enemy tonight.”

I guide her toward the bedroom without asking, and she lets me, too tired to argue. I have her sit on the edge of the bed while I work my thumbs into the muscles along her lower back, applying slow pressure exactly where she needs it.

“You’re good at this,” she says, voice already softening.

“I’ve had practice. You complain about the same three spots most nights.”

“I do not complain.”

“You narrate your discomfort in vivid detail. It’s not quite complaining, but it’s adjacent.”

“There’s a difference.”

“There isn’t, but I’ll allow you the distinction. It’s good for morale.”

She laughs, and the sound steadies me, quiets whatever’s been slightly unsteady in my chest since I walked in and saw her struggling on that couch

Her body’s changed so completely these last months that some nights I still catch myself staring, not out of anything but genuine wonder, the way her stomach’s grown round and undeniable, the way she moves now with a careful weight she never carried before.

I remember the first photograph Dimitri handed me, months before any of this, a woman laughing at something out of frame, someone I convinced myself I was only marrying for practical reasons.

That woman feels like a different person from the one asleep beside me most nights, or maybe I’m the one who’s different now, seeing her clearly for the first time instead of cataloging her from a folder.

She’s building an entire person inside herself, and some nights the size of that fact still knocks the breath out of me if I let it.

“You’re staring,” she says, without opening her eyes.

“I’m allowed to stare at my own wife.”

“You’ve been staring more than usual lately.”

“You’re growing our child. I find that reasonably worth staring at.”

She opens her eyes at that, warmth passing between us, and I lean down and kiss her.

“Come here,” she says, tugging at my shirt.

“You’re exhausted. We don’t have to.”

“I want to. Exhausted isn’t the same as not wanting you.” She pulls me down beside her, and I go, careful of the way she has to shift and settle now, nothing about tonight requiring the urgency that used to define us.

“Tell me if anything’s uncomfortable,” I say. “I mean it.”

“I will. I promise.”

I keep working the tight muscles along her lower back until her shoulders finally drop and some of the tension leaves her spine. When I ease off, she lets out a long breath and leans back against the pillows I have already stacked for her.

“Better?”

“Much. You have unfairly good hands.”

I help her shift so she’s sitting more upright, one pillow behind her and another supporting her side. The curve of her stomach is a bit full. I rest my palm over it for a moment and feel a small answering push from inside. The sensation still stops me every time.

She watches my face and smiles. “Active tonight.”

“I noticed.”

I undress her slowly, careful with how she has to lift her hips and shift her weight. The shirt first, then the soft bra she has been living in for weeks. Her breasts are fuller and more sensitive than they used to be.

I support their weight with my hands for a moment before setting the fabric aside. When I ease her leggings and underwear down, she has to lean on my shoulder to step out of them. None of it is graceful. None of it needs to be.

Once she is bare, I take my time looking at her. The stretched skin of her stomach, the dark line that has appeared down the center, the way her body has grown round and undeniable. I do not hide the way I look.

“You’re staring again,” she says, but there is no complaint in it.

“I know.”

I help her settle back against the pillows, so she’s half-reclined and supported. Then I stretch out beside her and begin touching her with the same unhurried attention I gave her back.

My hands move over her shoulders, her arms, the new weight of her breasts. I keep the pressure light where she is tender. When my mouth follows the path of my hands, she makes a soft sound, and her fingers slide into my hair.

After a while she reaches for the hem of my shirt.

“Off,” she says quietly. “I want to touch you too.”

I sit up enough to pull the shirt over my head and toss it aside. Her hands settle on my chest, then move lower. There is nothing rushed about the way she explores.

When her palm presses over the front of my pants and finds me already hard, she looks up at my face.

“Come closer,” she says.

I shift so I am kneeling nearer to her, close enough that she does not have to strain. She works my belt open and pushes the rest of my clothes down. I help her get them out of the way. When I am bare, she wraps her hand around me and strokes once, slow and sure.

“You don’t have to,” I tell her.

“I know. I want to.”

She guides me a little nearer and leans in. The first touch of her mouth is warm and careful. She takes her time, learning what she can manage comfortably with the size of her stomach between us.

I keep one hand on the headboard and the other lightly in her hair, not directing, just steadying. Every few moments I check her face.

“Still okay?”

She pulls off long enough to answer. “Yes. Stay still for me.”

I do. She takes me deeper in slow increments, one hand wrapped around the base, the other braced on my thigh. The wet heat of her mouth and the focused way she works me make it hard to keep my breathing even.

I talk to her in a low voice while she does it, telling her how good she feels, how much I love watching her like this, how careful I will be with her afterward. She answers with small sounds around me and the steady rhythm of her mouth.

When the need starts to climb too high, I ease her back with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Enough,” I say. “I want the rest of you.”

She lets me go and settles back against the pillows, cheeks flushed, mouth a little swollen. I lean down and kiss her, tasting myself on her tongue, then help her shift onto her side. I arrange the pillows again, so her stomach is supported and her upper body is comfortable. Only when she is fully settled do I stretch out behind her.

“This position still good?”

“Yes.”

I lift her top knee and rest it over my thigh, opening her carefully. My hand slides between her legs and finds her already wet. I stroke her slowly, watching her face over her shoulder, until she is breathing deeper and pressing back against my hand.

“Ready?”

“Yes. Just… go slow.”

“Always.”

I guide myself to her and push in with careful, shallow thrusts at first, giving her body time to adjust around me. The angle is different with the size of her stomach. I stay mindful of depth and pressure, one hand braced on the bed and the other resting over the curve of her belly.

When I am fully inside, I stop and simply hold her against me, feeling the heat of her and the occasional small movement under my palm.

“Okay?” I ask against her shoulder.

“More than okay.” Her hand covers mine on her stomach. “You can move.”

I begin with long, measured strokes, keeping the pace moderate and the depth controlled.

Every few thrusts I check in with a quiet question or a shift of my hand to make sure nothing is starting to ache. She answers with soft sounds and the way she presses back to meet me. The entire time I stay focused on her breathing, the tension in her shoulders, the small adjustments that keep her comfortable.

There’s no hurry in any of it. Only the steady, careful rhythm of giving her what she asked for while making sure her body stays easy the whole time.

I keep the same rhythm, watching every shift in her breathing and the small sounds she makes. When her top leg starts to tire, I pause and help her adjust, sliding an extra pillow under her knee so the angle stays open without strain. She settles again with a quiet sigh.

“Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I resume the slow strokes, one hand still spread over the full curve of her stomach. Every so often I feel a faint push from inside against my palm. The reminder keeps me careful. I stay shallow enough that nothing presses too hard, deep enough that she still feels full. Her hand covers mine on her belly and stays there.

The pleasure builds gradually for both of us. There’s no sharp climb, only a steady accumulation. I talk to her in a low voice while I move, telling her how good she feels, how much I love the way her body has changed, how I will never get tired of being the one who gets to touch her like this. She answers with soft sounds and the way she presses back to meet each thrust.

When I feel her start to tighten around me, I slow even further, holding her steady through it.

“I’ve got you,” I tell her. “Take your time.”

She comes with a long, quiet shudder, her body gripping me in slow waves. I keep moving through it just enough to draw the feeling out, then let myself follow. The release is deep and controlled. I stay buried inside her while it finishes, forehead resting against the back of her shoulder, breathing hard but still supporting most of my weight so nothing presses on her stomach.

We remain joined for a long time afterward. I don’t pull out until she shifts slightly, signaling she’s ready. Even then I move carefully, helping her roll onto her back against the pillows. I reach for the water glass on the nightstand and hold it while she drinks. Then I settle beside her again, one arm under her neck and the other resting over the curve of her belly.

A small movement pushes against my hand. I leave my palm there.

“Active again,” I say quietly.

“She likes when you’re close.” Harper’s voice is already heavy with sleep. “Or he. We still don’t know.”

“Either way.” I press a slow kiss to her temple. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She turns her head enough to look at me for a moment. Her eyes are soft and tired.

“That was exactly what I needed,” she says.

“Good. That was the only goal.”

She lets her eyes close. Within a few minutes, her breathing has evened out into sleep.

28

HARPER

I’m early to pick up today, thirty-four weeks making everything take longer than it used to, even the short walk from the car to the fence line where the other parents wait.

I see him before I’ve even found a spot to stand.

Same dark jacket, same stillness that never quite matched anyone else in a pickup line. But today he’s not standing at the edge of the lot the way he used to. He’s at the fence itself, close enough to talk to Mrs. Alvarez through the chain link, and she’s listening to him with the polite, confused expression of someone trying to place a face she doesn’t actually recognize.

My stomach drops in a way that has nothing to do with the baby.

I move closer without fully deciding to, close enough to catch pieces of what he’s saying, something about being a family friend, checking in on behalf of relatives who couldn’t make it today. Ms. Alvarez’s expression shifts from confused to careful, the particular caution teachers develop for exactly this situation.

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t discuss any student with someone who isn’t listed as an approved contact. If you’d like to speak with the office, I can point you there.”

“Is there a problem here?”

Another staff member, older, more authoritative, appears at Mrs. Alvarez’s shoulder, and the man at the fence straightens slightly, recalibrating.

“Everything all right over here?” the second woman asks, positioning herself between the fence and the children still filing out of the building.

“No problem. Just checking on a family friend’s kid. My mistake.” He backs away from the fence, unhurried even as two staff members watch him go, and he doesn’t look at me directly, though I’d swear he clocks exactly where I’m standing before he turns for the parking lot.

I stand frozen for a second too long, watching him walk to a car I don’t recognize, get in, and pull away without hurrying, like the whole encounter cost him nothing at all.

Ginger comes bounding out a few minutes later, oblivious, already talking about something that happened during recess, and I hug her tighter than the moment probably calls for, my heart still hammering from an encounter she has no idea just happened twenty feet from where she was learning long division.

“You okay, Aunt Harper?”

“I’m okay, baby. Just glad to see you.”

She accepts this without further question, already moving on to recess drama, and I get her buckled in with hands that won’t quite stop shaking, and I call Viktor before I’ve even pulled out of the parking lot.

He picks up on the first ring. “Harper.”

“He was here again. The man. He was talking to Ginger’s teacher, Viktor, at the actual fence this time, not just standing across the lot like before.”

There’s a beat of silence on the line, and when Viktor speaks again, his voice has gone completely flat, the particular stillness I’ve learned means he’s furious and controlling it with everything he has.

“Are you both safe? Right now, this second?”

“We’re in the car. We’re fine. I’m just—Viktor, he was close enough to actually talk to someone. He asked about her by claiming to be a family friend.”

“What did he look like today? Same as before, or different?”

“Same. Dark jacket. He left when a second teacher intervened. He didn’t try to push past her or anything; he just left.”

“That’s nothing. That means he’s still testing boundaries, not ready to force anything yet. It also means he’s getting bolder about how far he’s willing to test them.” His voice tightens further. “I’m calling the school security team now, and I’m coming home early. I want you both there when I arrive, doors locked, nobody in or out until I get there.”

“Viktor, you’re scaring me.”

“Good. I need you scared enough to be careful for the next hour, and I promise you answers the second I walk through that door.”

He hangs up before I can push further, and I drive home faster than I probably should at thirty-four weeks pregnant, Ginger chattering obliviously in the back seat the entire way, and I lock every door the moment we’re inside, exactly like he asked, my hands still shaking as I do it.

Viktor’s home within twenty minutes, faster than should be physically possible from the club, and the second he’s through the door he pulls me into him, one hand splayed protectively over my stomach like he’s checking for himself that everything’s still intact.

“Tell me everything,” he says. “Every detail you remember.”

I tell him. The jacket. The fence. The staff member who intervened. The car I didn’t recognize, though I give him the make and color as best I remember it, and he listens with total focus, already texting someone with his free hand even as he keeps the other arm around me.

“Ginger’s fine,” I say, watching his face. “She didn’t even notice. I made sure of that.”

“Good. That’s good.” He exhales, some of the tension leaving his shoulders, though not all of it, not close to all of it. “I’m increasing the school detail again, effective immediately. Someone inside the building at all times now, not just during pickup and drop-off.”

“Viktor.” I pull back enough to look at him properly. “I need you to tell me what’s happening. Not later. Not a few more days. Now. He got close enough to talk to her teacher today. Whatever you’re protecting me from clearly isn’t staying at a safe distance anymore.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, jaw working like he’s fighting something internal, and for a second I actually believe he’s about to tell me everything.

“You know him… His name is Pavel Ivanov,” he says finally. “As it turns out… He’s someone I’ve had a history with, a dangerous one, and he’s been watching this family for months.”

“Ginger’s grandfather. I know him—and that’s the same thing you told me weeks ago. I need more than that.”

“I know you do. I’m not ready to give you all of it yet, not until I understand exactly what he wants and how to stop him from getting it.” His hands come up to frame my face, gentle despite the tension radiating off every other part of him. “I promise you, Harper, the moment I have something solid, you’ll have all of it. Every piece.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I know I do.”

“And every time, it’s another few days, another piece I don’t get to see.” My voice cracks, exhaustion and fear catching up with me all at once. “I’m carrying your child. I’m raising Ginger. I have a right to know what’s actually threatening my family, Viktor, not a vague name and a promise that keeps getting pushed back.”

“You’re right.”

“Then tell me.”

“I will. Soon. I need days, not weeks; I promise you that much has changed.” He presses his forehead against mine, and I can feel him trembling slightly, something I’ve never once felt from him before, not at the courthouse, not anywhere. “I’m asking you to trust me a little longer, knowing exactly how unfair that request is given everything you just went through today.”

“Do you understand what it’s like, standing at that fence today, not knowing if he was going to reach for her? Not knowing anything except that something’s wrong and you won’t tell me what?”

“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.”

“She’s thirty-four weeks pregnant.”

“I’m aware. Which is exactly why this needs to happen now, while she’s still capable of making informed decisions about her own safety, instead of after something happens that takes that choice away from her entirely.” Dimitri’s jaw tightens. “I like her, Viktor. I liked her before I trusted her, which frankly surprised me more than it should have. I like Ginger enough that I’ve started letting her win at cards, which anyone who actually knows me will tell you never happens. I’m not pushing you on this because I think you’re weak for hesitating. I’m pushing you because I think you’re wrong, and because I care what happens to both of them almost as much as you do.”

I don’t have any good argument left. I’ve been running the same one in my head for weeks, certainty before honesty, protection through silence, and every version of it has gotten thinner with every new piece of intelligence Dimitri’s brought me.

“You’re right,” I say finally, the words costing me more than I expect them to. “I’ve been protecting myself from her reaction more than protecting her from the truth.”

“Glad we agree. Took you long enough.”

“I’ll tell her tonight. Everything. The club, my father, Pavel, the Ivanovs, all of it.”

“Good.” Dimitri stands, gathering the folder, some of his usual ease returning now that he’s actually gotten through to me. “For what it’s worth, she’s tougher than you’re giving her credit for. She proposed marriage to a stranger in a strip club and then talked her way through a custody case, a pregnancy, and months of you being cryptic about your entire double life. I think she can handle the truth about a rival family, Viktor. I think she’s been ready for it longer than you have.”

“Since when did you become the expert on my wife’s emotional resilience?”

“Since I started actually paying attention, unlike some people in this room.” He grins, brief and genuine, the tension of the last ten minutes finally breaking. “Also, since she beat me at poker last month and didn’t even gloat about it properly. I respect restraint like that. It’s rare.”

“You let her win. I was there.”

“I did not let her win. I was distracted by strategy on multiple fronts, one of which happened to be your entire life falling apart in real time.” He heads for the door, pausing with his hand on the frame the way he always does when he wants the last word to land. “Tell her tonight. And Viktor, for once, don’t make it about managing her reaction. Just tell her the truth and let her decide what to do with it herself.”

He leaves before I can respond.

30

HARPER

I sign myself in at the front office for an early pickup, thirty-five weeks and craving exactly one thing today, the specific soup from the place near Ginger’s school that apparently only tastes right eaten together at a corner table before her afternoon classes even start.

It’s a small thing. A ridiculous thing, probably, leaving work early for soup and an hour with my niece on an ordinary Tuesday. But the last few weeks have taught me to grab ordinary wherever I can find it, and today felt like a day that needed one.

The office assistant buzzes Ginger’s classroom, and I wait in the small lobby, watching kids file past on their way to recess, until her teacher walks her out personally instead of just sending her alone, which strikes me as slightly unusual before I decide it’s probably just standard procedure I never noticed before.

“There she is,” I say, and Ginger’s whole face lights up the way it always does now, no hesitation at all, running the last few steps to wrap her arms around my waist as far as they’ll reach around the belly currently making hugs increasingly complicated.

“Are we really getting soup?”

“We’re really getting soup.”

She chatters the whole way down the hallway, backpack bouncing, already narrating the classroom hamster crisis in exhaustive detail, and I sign us both out at the front desk with the receptionist who’s started recognizing my face enough to wave us through without much fuss.

One of Viktor’s men nods at me from near the entrance as we pass, a face I’ve started recognizing over these last weeks, part of the quiet architecture of security that’s become just another feature of our lives. I nod back, unbothered by now, the way you stop noticing a smoke detector once you’ve lived under one long enough.

We’re halfway across the parking lot, Ginger’s hand in mine, chattering about a classroom hamster that apparently had a dramatic morning, when I notice the car.

Not the gray sedan. Different, dark, parked at an angle that puts it closer to the pedestrian walkway than any normal parking job would allow, engine already running.

Two men get out.

They move fast, faster than my mind can fully process before my body reacts on pure instinct, and I pull Ginger behind me a half second before the first man reaches for her, close enough now that I can see he’s not hesitating at all, not questioning, just executing something he’s clearly rehearsed.

“Ginger, run!” My voice comes out sharper than I’ve ever heard it, pure animal fear stripped of anything else. “Back to the building, now!”

She freezes for one terrible second, too shocked to move, and the man closes the last few feet between us. I do the only thing I can think to do, throwing myself between him and her despite thirty-five weeks of pregnancy screaming every possible reason this is a terrible idea.

His hand closes around my arm instead of Ginger’s, wrenching hard enough that pain shoots up into my shoulder, and I scream, more out of fury than pain, twisting away with everything I have while shoving Ginger toward the school doors with my free hand.

“Run, baby, run to the office, now!”

She runs.

The second man lunges for her anyway, faster than she is, and for one suspended, horrifying second, I genuinely believe I’m about to watch someone take her right in front of me.

Then everything happens at once.

Two men in plain clothes I vaguely recognize from around the property these last weeks come out of nowhere, tackling the second man before he can close the distance. A third appears from somewhere near the building’s entrance, moving with the same economical, brutal efficiency I’ve only ever seen once before, the night I watched Viktor step off a stage he never actually danced on.

The parking lot fills with sound all at once: shouting, a car alarm someone must have triggered in the chaos, a teacher somewhere behind me screaming for everyone to get inside. It all blurs together, disconnected, like I’m watching it happen to someone else through glass.

The man holding my arm releases me the second he realizes what’s happening, shoving me hard enough that I stumble backward, and turns to run.

He doesn’t get far. One of Viktor’s men catches him before he reaches the dark car, and what happens next is fast and controlled and nothing like the movies, no drawn-out struggle, just efficient, decisive force that has both men face down on the pavement within seconds, restrained, not going anywhere.

I’m on my knees before I fully register sitting down, one hand braced against the asphalt, the other pressed protectively over my stomach, gasping air that doesn’t feel like it’s actually reaching my lungs.

“Ginger.” My voice barely works. “Ginger, where’s Ginger?”

“She’s here, she’s safe, she made it inside.” One of the men, the one who tackled the second attacker, crouches beside me, voice steady, businesslike in a way that somehow helps ground me even through the panic. “Are you hurt? The baby?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, I need to see her, I need to see her.”

He helps me to my feet, keeping one arm around me for support, and we make it to the school entrance where Ginger’s standing frozen just inside the doors, the front office assistant crouched beside her, both of them staring out at the parking lot in shock.

The second Ginger sees me, she launches herself forward, and I catch her, sinking back down despite every protest my body’s currently making, holding her so tight I probably hurt her, though she doesn’t complain.

“You’re okay,” I say, over and over, more for myself than her at this point. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

I feel her whole body shaking against mine, small and violent, the particular trembling of a child who’s just learned something about the world she can never fully unlearn.

“Those men,” she says, voice small, shaking. “Why did that man grab you?”

“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.”

“Was it because of Grandma and Grandpa?”

The question lands like a blow, and I don’t have an answer now. Not one I trust myself to give her right now, not with police lights still flashing across the parking lot behind us.

“We’ll talk about it later, okay? Right now, I just need to hold you for a minute.”

She doesn’t push, burying her face against my shoulder instead, and I hold her exactly as long as she needs, ignoring the ache already building in my lower back from sitting on hard pavement this far along.

But I do know, or at least I know enough now to understand exactly whose men those were, exactly what months of vague explanations and half-truths were actually protecting me from. The knowledge sits in my chest like something physically heavy, crushing whatever remained of the fragile safety I’d been quietly building around this family for months.

Police arrive within minutes, then Viktor, moving faster than should be humanly possible, face white with a fear I’ve genuinely never seen on him before, not once, not even at the courthouse.

He drops to his knees in front of both of us, hands shaking as he checks Ginger over, then me, then presses his palm flat against my stomach like he’s checking for himself that everything’s still intact.

“I’m okay,” I manage. “We’re okay. Viktor, we’re okay.”

He pulls both of us into his arms, holding on so tight it’s almost painful, and I feel him shaking too, the first time I’ve ever felt him lose that control entirely, not even at the wedding, not even the day I told him about the baby.

“I should have told you everything weeks ago.” His voice breaks completely, no composure left at all. “I should have gotten both of you somewhere safe the second I confirmed the surveillance. I let this happen. I let this get this close.”

“Not now.” I grip his hand hard enough that he actually focuses on me instead of spiraling. “Get us home. Get us somewhere safe. Then you tell me everything, right now, tonight, no more waiting.”

“Everything,” he agrees. “I promise you, everything.”

An officer takes a brief statement from me right there in the parking lot, gentle, given my visible state, promising a full follow-up once we’ve actually had time to process what happened. I answer what I can, my voice steadier than I feel, Ginger pressed against my side the entire time, refusing to let go of my hand for even a second.

The drive home passes in a blur I barely register, Ginger silent and shaking in the back seat despite Viktor’s constant reassurance, my own hands refusing to stop trembling no matter how tightly I clasp them in my lap.

I catch him glancing at us in the rearview mirror every few seconds, jaw tight, knuckles white on the steering wheel, a man visibly holding himself together through sheer will alone.

By the time we’re actually inside, doors locked, security doubled again around a perimeter that clearly wasn’t enough today, the adrenaline finally starts to drain out of me, leaving a cold, bone-deep exhaustion in its wake.

I get Ginger settled with a movie and a blanket, staying close enough to keep an eye on her while Viktor makes a series of calls I can’t fully follow.

Ginger falls asleep on the couch before the movie’s even halfway done, worn out past the point where fear can keep a six-year-old awake any longer. I carry the exhaustion of the entire day in my own shoulders as I get her settled properly upstairs, checking the locks on her window twice even though I know Viktor’s already had them checked three times since we got home.

I sit with her a while longer than usual, watching her sleep, memorizing the steady rise and fall of her breathing like it might disappear if I stop paying attention.

Once she’s finally, mercifully asleep, exhausted past the point of resistance, Viktor finds me in the kitchen, and neither of us says anything for a long moment, just standing there, taking in the fact that we both survived a day that could have ended so much worse.

“Sit down,” he says quietly. “I’m going to tell you everything now. All of it. And I need you to know, before I start, that I am so sorry it took something like today to make me finally say it.”

I sit.

Whatever safety I thought I’d built here, whatever fragile sense of normal I’d let myself believe in over these last months, shattered somewhere in that parking lot, in the space between a stranger’s hand closing around my arm and Ginger’s terrified sprint toward the school doors.

And I’m ready to know exactly what shattered it.

31

VIKTOR

I sit across from her at the kitchen table, the same table where I gave her a fraction of the truth weeks ago, and I understand, looking at her face, that fractions aren’t going to survive tonight.

“Start from the beginning,” she says. “All of it. I don’t want pieces anymore, Viktor.”

So, I do.

“I’m not just a club owner. I run an organization, one that doesn’t advertise itself, that operates through the club and several other businesses as legitimate cover. In my world, the man who runs an operation like mine is called a Pakhan. I’ve held that position for fifteen years, since I was young enough that most people thought I’d never hold it long.”

Harper’s face doesn’t change much, though her hands go still on the table, flat, bracing. “That’s not a business. That’s organized crime.”

“Yes.”

“Say it plainly. Don’t dress it up.”

“I run a criminal organization, Harper. Drugs, in part. Money that moves through channels the government would very much like to tax and can’t find. Men who work for me, some of whom you’ve met, who’ve spent years learning how to hurt people efficiently when hurting people becomes necessary.” I make myself hold her gaze while I say it, refusing to soften a single word. “That’s what the club actually is. A front, and a genuinely profitable one, but a front regardless.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, absorbing that, and I watch her expression harden in a way it wasn’t a minute ago.

“Keep going,” she says. “Tell me about Pavel.”

“Eleven years ago, there was a standoff at a warehouse on the east side of the city. A rival organization, run by a man I only ever knew by face, never by name. Twelve of my men against fifteen of his. It nearly ended both organizations in one night.” I pause, the memory still sharper than I’d like after all this time. “There was a moment, guns drawn on both sides, close enough to a bloodbath that I still remember the exact silence right before someone decided against pulling a trigger. Neither side ever agreed on who backed down first.”

“And nobody died that night.”

“Not that night. Within the year, though, his face disappeared from every corner of this business. Presumed dead. Nobody looked for a body. Men in this business vanish for a hundred reasons, and a rival not showing up anymore was treated as good fortune, not a mystery worth solving.”

“And that man is Pavel.”

“That man is Pavel Ivanov,” I say, the full weight of it plainly, watching it land. “The same man who sat in that courtroom watching you fight for custody. The same man whose face I recognized the day of the hearing, though I didn’t have a name to attach to it until the lawyer said it out loud.”

Harper’s breathing changes, shallow and fast. “Grandma and Grandpa Ivanov. Ginger’s grandparents. You’re telling me that is who this guy is.”

“He’s the same man you danced at Mia’s wedding with. The same man who taught you to make pierogi in his kitchen.” I don’t look away from her, though every instinct tells me to. “I’ve suspected it since the courtroom. I had it fully confirmed only recently, once we traced the surveillance funding back to accounts controlled by the family directly.”

“You’ve known since the courtroom.” Her voice comes out low, dangerously controlled. “Months, Viktor. You’ve known for months.”

“I suspected. I didn’t have confirmation until weeks ago.”

“That’s not the same as telling me nothing. You let me sit across a courtroom from him. You let me let him near Ginger for supervised visits. You let a man who’s apparently spent your entire war circling my family into a room with my daughter, and you said nothing.”

“I know.”

“Don’t just say ‘I know’ like that settles anything.” She stands, too agitated to stay seated, one hand braced against her lower back as she paces. “Today, Viktor. Today a man grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise it trying to take Ginger, and I still didn’t have the full picture until right now, sitting at this table, hours after it happened.”

“You’re right to be furious with me.”

“I am furious with you.” Her voice cracks, fury and grief tangled together in a way that’s worse than either alone. “You made a choice, over and over, every single day for months, to keep me blind to exactly how dangerous this family actually is. You let me trust them at that visitation center. You let me leave my daughter in a room with a man who’s apparently been planning something against us since before I even married you.”

“I made that choice because I was trying to protect you.”

“You don’t get to decide what protecting me means without asking me first!” Her voice breaks entirely on the last word, and she’s crying now, angry tears, the kind that come from exhaustion and fear as much as rage. “I’m not fragile, Viktor. I proposed to a stranger in a strip club to save my family. I’ve handled everything this custody case threw at me. I could have handled the truth. I deserved the truth, and instead you decided, again and again, that your comfort with silence mattered more than my ability to protect my own daughter.”

I don’t have a defense for that. I don’t try to build one.

“You’re right,” I say instead. “I don’t have a good excuse. I told myself I was protecting you. The truth is I was also protecting myself from watching exactly this happen, you looking at me like this, knowing how badly I failed you by staying silent.”

“How long have you actually known who you married into, in the sense that matters? Not the club. The rest of it. When did you first suspect the man in that courtroom could be Pavel?”

“The second I saw his face. Before the lawyer said a word.”

“And you said nothing. Not that day. Not the next day. Not for months.”

“I told myself I needed certainty before I frightened you with something I couldn’t yet fully explain. I told myself that story so many times I nearly believed it myself.” I hold her gaze, refusing to look away from the anger there. “The truth is simpler and worse. I was afraid of exactly this conversation. I was afraid of watching you look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.”

“You should have been more afraid of what happened today.”

“I know that now. I knew it the moment I saw those men on the ground in that parking lot and understood how close we came to losing everything because I chose silence over honesty one time too many.”

She wipes her face, furious at her own tears as much as at me, and paces another lap around the kitchen before finally stopping, hands braced on the counter, back to me.

“Tell me the rest,” she says, voice steadier now, though still edged with anger. “All of it. What does he want? Why now, after eleven years?”

“I don’t fully know yet. My best guess, based on everything Dimitri’s gathered, is that Pavel never actually died to us by choice alone. Something forced him underground, possibly infighting within his own organization, possibly something else we haven’t uncovered. He’s spent eleven years rebuilding under the Ivanov name, patient, waiting for an opening.” I choose each word deliberately now. “When my name landed on your custody case, he found out exactly who you’d married. I believe that changed his priorities entirely. This stopped being about winning Ginger back in court a long time ago. I think he wants to hurt me, and he’s decided the way to do that is through everyone I love.”

“That’s why they tried to take her today.”

“Yes.”

“And the baby.” Her hand goes to her stomach instinctively. “He knows about the baby.”

“I have to assume he does. If he’s been watching this closely, he knows everything.”

Harper turns to face me finally, and the anger’s still there, real and justified, but underneath it a raw fear has surfaced too, one that makes my chest ache to witness.

“What happens now?”

“Now we stop being reactive. I should have gone on the offensive weeks ago instead of hiding you both behind cameras and hoping patience would run out on his side before it ran out on mine.” I stand, crossing to her, stopping close enough that she’d have to step back to keep the distance, though she doesn’t. “I’m not asking you to forgive me tonight. I don’t think I’ve earned that yet. I’m asking you to let me fight for this family the way I should have been fighting for months, out in the open, with you fully informed instead of protected into ignorance.”

“What does fighting for us actually look like? Concretely, Viktor. Not vague promises.”

“Moving somewhere more secure than this house, for a start. Somewhere I can guarantee the perimeter completely, not just reinforce it after the fact. Dimitri’s already working every contact we have to find out exactly what Pavel’s planning next, so we’re not just waiting for him to make the next move.” I keep my voice steady, deliberate, wanting her to hear the actual plan rather than empty reassurance. “And you’re part of every decision from here forward. Not informed after the fact. Part of it.”

“I need time,” she says. “To be angry. To actually sit with everything you just told me instead of just reacting to it in the moment.”

“Take whatever time you need.”

“I need to check on Ginger,” she says, standing before I can respond, needing motion more than anything else right now.

She leaves the kitchen without another word.

32

HARPER

Fury and terror don’t usually occupy the same body well. Tonight, they’re sharing mine without any apparent conflict, taking turns, sometimes arriving at once.

I keep seeing the parking lot. The man’s hand closing around my arm. Ginger’s face, frozen for that one terrible second before she ran. I keep seeing it, and then I keep seeing Viktor’s face across the kitchen table telling me he’s known, in some form, for months, and the two images tangle together until I can’t tell anymore which one is making my hands shake harder.

Ginger’s door is cracked open when I push it the rest of the way.

She’s asleep, curled small under her blankets, one arm flung over the edge of the mattress the way she sleeps most nights, utterly unaware that her own grandfather spent eleven years hiding from a war he started, unaware that today a stranger nearly succeeded in taking her because of a family history she has no idea she’s connected to.

I sit on the edge of her bed and watch her breathe for longer than I probably need to, memorizing the rhythm of it, the small rise and fall, proof that despite everything, tonight ends with her safe in her own bed instead of somewhere I can’t reach her.

I think about Sunday dinners at the Ivanovs’ house, years ago now, before any of this, before Mia died, before any of us knew what waited underneath the surface of that family. Ginger used to fall asleep in her grandfather’s lap during those visits, worn out from too much cake and too much attention. I used to think that was the safest place in the world for her, surrounded by people who loved her unconditionally.

I don’t know how to reconcile that memory with what I know now.

The baby shifts inside me, a small deliberate movement that used to feel purely wondrous and tonight feels like something closer to grief, this child arriving into a world I no longer trust to be as safe as I believed it was this morning.

I think about every moment from these last months that makes sense differently now. Viktor going rigid at the courthouse. The security that quietly doubled without explanation.

The car outside the house I convinced myself was nothing. The vague answer about an old business rival, technically true, deliberately incomplete. Every single piece slots into place now, and the picture it makes is worse than anything I let myself imagine while I was still giving him the benefit of the doubt.

He let me leave Ginger in a supervised visitation room with the man who apparently orchestrated months of surveillance against us.

He let me believe, every single day, that whatever danger existed was vague and distant, manageable, nothing requiring my full attention, when the truth was close enough to reach out and grab my daughter from a school fence.

I don’t know how to hold that fury and my love for him in the same chest without one of them cracking under the weight of the other.

Ginger stirs slightly, and I still, waiting until her breathing evens back out, before easing off her bed and slipping out into the hallway.

Viktor’s waiting there, leaning against the wall a few feet from her door, the particular stillness he gets when he’s giving me room without actually leaving.

“She’s okay,” I say, more to fill the silence than because he asked.

“I know. I checked on her myself an hour ago.”

I nod, and we stand there, neither of us quite looking at the other, the hallway suddenly feeling smaller than it ever has before.

“I keep thinking about all the ordinary moments,” I say, surprising myself by speaking at all. “Grocery shopping. The diorama. The porch, every night, wine going warm in our glasses. I was living an entire life next to a man I only knew half of.”

“You knew all of me that mattered. Just not the part that could get you killed.”

“That’s not a small part to leave out, Viktor.”

“No. It isn’t.” He doesn’t defend himself further, doesn’t reach for the argument that might make this easier for him.

“I need space tonight,” I say finally. “I can’t lie next to you right now and pretend I’m not furious. I can’t perform calm for your benefit when I’m not anywhere close to calm.”

“You don’t have to perform anything for me.”

“I know that logically. I still can’t do it tonight.” My voice cracks, and I hate that it does, hate how much of my anger is tangled up with a fear I can’t fully separate from it. “I need to be alone with this. Not forever. Just tonight.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t argue, doesn’t reach for me, accepts it with a quiet that somehow makes the anger worse instead of better, because some small, exhausted part of me wanted him to fight for a different answer. “The guest room’s made up. I’ll stay away from it, unless you need me.”

“Thank you.”

I turn toward the guest room, and he doesn’t follow, and I make it three steps before the words come out anyway, the ones I can’t quite hold back even now.

“I don’t know if I can trust you again the way I did yesterday. I need you to understand that. Whatever this becomes, it’s not going back to what it was before today, not completely.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“No,” he admits, low, honest in a way I wasn’t expecting tonight. “Not fully. But I understand enough to know I don’t get to ask you to pretend otherwise just because it would be easier for me.”

I don’t have anything else to say to that, so I don’t say anything, and I let myself into the guest room and close the door quietly behind me, sinking onto the edge of an unfamiliar bed in a house I’d finally started calling home.

I press both hands flat against my stomach, feeling for movement, needing the small proof of life under my palms more than I need sleep tonight.

“I’m going to keep you safe,” I whisper, to the baby, to Ginger down the hall, to the version of myself that walked into a club months ago believing the worst thing that could happen to her was a bad decision, not this, never anything close to this. “I promise you that, whatever else I have to figure out first.”

I think about Denise, about what she’d tell me if I called her right now at midnight, furious and pregnant and processing a truth too large to hold alone.

She’d probably tell me the same thing she told me the day I signed that contract. That love and good judgment aren’t always the same instinct, and it’s allowed to take time to figure out which one you’re actually following.

I don’t call her. It’s too late, and there’s nothing she could tell me tonight that would make any of this feel smaller than it does.

I lie awake a long time, fury and fear trading places in my chest, and somewhere past midnight, exhaustion finally wins out over both of them, pulling me under into a sleep too heavy to dream through.

33

VIKTOR

It’s been three days since I told her everything, and Harper’s been sleeping in the guest room, polite about it in a way that somehow stings more than if she’d slammed a door about it.

“Just until I’ve had time to process,” she said the first night, and I told her that was fine, that she could have whatever space she needed, and I’ve kept that promise since, even when every instinct in me wants to knock on that door and ask if three days is enough time yet.

It isn’t my place to decide that. I remind myself of this constantly.

She’s still here, still present at dinner, still warm with Ginger in a way that hasn’t changed at all, still civil with me in a way that’s careful without being cold.

It’s not the silence of a marriage ending. It’s the silence of a woman deciding, day by day, how much trust she’s willing to extend back to a man who spent months deciding for her how much truth she could handle.

I understand the distinction. I don’t love living inside it.

This morning, she asks me to pass the coffee without quite meeting my eyes, and I do. Ginger fills the space between us with an update on Theo’s opinions about a class field trip, oblivious to the careful distance her parents are currently navigating around her.

Once Ginger’s off to school, Dimitri arrives with a folder, and I meet him in the study instead of the kitchen, giving Harper the house to herself the way I’ve been giving her most mornings.

“Found three properties that fit what you asked for,” Dimitri says, spreading photographs across the desk. “Gated, defensible perimeters, far enough outside the city that surveillance becomes considerably harder to maintain without being noticed. This one’s my favorite.” He taps a photo of a stone house set back from a long private drive, hills visible behind it. “Single road access, sightlines for at least half a mile in every direction. A man would have to work considerably harder to watch us there than he does watching this house.”

“How fast can we move if we choose it?”

“A week, if you want it done properly. Faster if you’re willing to skip a few of the security upgrades I’d recommend adding first.”

“We do it properly. A week’s acceptable, assuming nothing changes before then.”

“Agreed.” Dimitri studies me for a moment, setting the photographs aside. “How’s Harper?”

“Angry. Reasonably so.”

“Still in the guest room?”

“You don’t need to sound so pleased about that.”

“I’m not pleased. I’m impressed you’re actually respecting it instead of trying to talk your way back into her good graces early, the way you’d normally handle a problem.” He leans back, arms crossed, something almost approving in his expression. “That’s growth, Viktor. I didn’t expect it from you this fast.”

“I don’t have much choice. She asked for space. I’m giving it to her.”

“You’ve had a choice every day of your life, and usually you’ve chosen to fix things through action instead of patience. This is different for you. I’m noting it because it matters.”

“Noted. Can we move on to the actual property?”

“We can. I’ll set up viewings for this afternoon. I don’t expect you’ll be bringing Harper along, given where things stand.”

“No. Not yet. This is mine to handle for now.”

“Understood.” He gathers the photographs into the folder. “There’s also movement on the other front. The logistics contact finally gave up an address he’d been sitting on. Small warehouse on the east side, not the same one from eleven years ago, but close enough to it that I don’t think that’s an accident. Could be nothing. Could be where he’s actually operating from now.”

“Get eyes on it. Quietly. I don’t want him spooked before we understand what we’re looking at.”

“Already arranged. I’ll have something concrete in a day or two.” Dimitri pauses at the door. “For what it’s worth, the club’s numbers are up this month, in case you needed one piece of good news that has nothing to do with any of this.”

“I’ll take it.”

He leaves, and I sit with the photographs a while longer, imagining Harper walking those hallways someday, imagining Ginger finding a bedroom she’d actually want, imagining a version of safety that doesn’t require either of them to live inside a fortress they never asked to need.

I find Harper in the kitchen an hour later, going through mail at the counter, and I set the folder down beside her without a word, letting her open it herself instead of narrating my way through it.

She looks through it briefly, expression unreadable, and closes it again.

“This is the relocation you mentioned.”

“Three options. Dimitri and I are viewing the top one this afternoon.”

“Fine.” She slides the folder back toward me, not unkindly, just final. “Let me know when it’s decided. I trust you to choose somewhere safe for Ginger.”

“I’d rather you were part of choosing it.”

“I know you would.” She doesn’t look up from the mail. “I’m not there yet, Viktor. I can’t stand in a house with you picking out bedrooms like nothing happened. Handle it. Tell me when it’s done.”

It isn’t the answer I want, but it’s an honest one, and I’ve promised myself I won’t push her past what she’s actually offering.

“All right,” I say. “I’ll handle it.”

She nods once, still not looking at me, and goes back to the mail, and I take the folder and leave her the kitchen, the way I’ve been leaving her most rooms these last three days, giving her exactly as much space as she’s asked for and not one inch less.

That evening, once Ginger’s asleep, I pass the guest room on my way to my own, and the door’s shut, light off underneath it, the same as every night this week.

34

HARPER

I wake to a sound I can’t immediately place, low and pained, coming from somewhere just outside my door.

For a second I think I dreamed it. Then it comes again, closer this time, a man’s voice, straining, and I’m out of bed before I’ve fully processed why, feet hitting the cold floor, heart already racing ahead of my thoughts.

I open the door to find Dimitri half carrying Viktor down the hallway, one of Viktor’s arms slung over his shoulders, though Viktor’s very much on his own feet, just favoring one side.

The hallway light catches the state of him all at once. His shirt is torn at the shoulder, a scrape along his jaw still bleeding sluggishly, a deeper cut across the bridge of his nose that’s already swelling. Nothing about the way he’s moving looks broken, just bruised, sore, furious.

“Viktor.” His name comes out of me before I’ve decided to say it, sharp with a fear I haven’t felt since the parking lot at Ginger’s school.

“I’m fine,” he says immediately, wincing as he says it. “Harper, I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.”

“He’s stubborn, not dying,” Dimitri says, quick, before I can spiral further. “Help me get him sitting down somewhere I can actually clean him up.”

I don’t ask more yet. I move, pulling a chair out at the kitchen table instead, clearing space, my hands working faster than my mind can keep up with. Viktor sits without much help from either of us, more annoyed than incapacitated, and up close the damage looks like exactly what Dimitri said: scrapes, a split across his nose, bruising already forming along one cheekbone.

“What happened?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Dimitri, what happened to him?”

“Car accident. Or made to look like one. Someone ran him off the road on his way back from the club.” Dimitri’s already moving, pulling supplies from a bag I didn’t notice him carrying: gauze, antiseptic, a small suture kit he doesn’t end up needing. “It wasn’t an accident. Whoever did it wanted to send a message, not kill him, or he wouldn’t be sitting here arguing with both of us right now.”

“Should I call an ambulance? A doctor, anyone?”

“No. No hospitals, no calls. I need you to trust me on that for now.”

“How am I supposed to trust that with him bleeding all over my kitchen, Dimitri?”

“Because it looks worse than it is, and because I’ve cleaned up considerably worse than this myself.” Dimitri glances at Viktor. “Tell her yourself. You’re the one insisting you don’t need stitches.”

“I don’t need stitches. Scrapes and a bruised nose. That’s the extent of it.” Viktor catches my hand before I can pull further away, his grip steady, strong, nothing weak about it at all. “I promise you, Harper. I’ve had worse mornings after sparring with Dimitri.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I know. I’m trying anyway.”

I clean the scrape along his jaw myself, hands still not quite steady, while Dimitri tapes gauze across the bridge of his nose and checks his ribs with a few firm presses that make Viktor grunt but nothing worse.

“Nothing cracked,” Dimitri confirms. “He got lucky. Airbag did its job, and whoever hit him wasn’t actually trying to kill him tonight.”

“Who did this?” I ask once the worst of the cleaning is done, Viktor sitting steadier now, color back in his face. “Was it them? The Ivanovs?”

“We don’t know yet, not for certain. But given the timing, given everything else, I’d bet on it.” Dimitri cleans his hands, expression grim. “This isn’t watching anymore, Harper. This is them actively trying to send a message. That’s an escalation we haven’t seen before tonight.”

My hands are still shaking, even with him sitting right here, clearly whole, clearly strong enough to argue with both of us about whether he needs help. I press them flat against my knees anyway, trying to steady myself against the image of him in that hallway a few minutes ago.

“You could have been killed tonight.”

“I wasn’t.” Viktor reaches for my hand again, steady, certain. “I promise you, this is nothing. A message, like Dimitri said. Not an attempt that actually worked.”

“That’s not as reassuring as you think it is.”

“No. I suppose it isn’t.” He studies my face, something apologetic crossing his features despite the bruising. “I’m sorry you had to see this before I could clean myself up first.”

Dimitri leaves not long after, promising to have full details on the car and the men responsible by morning, and it’s just the two of us in the kitchen, Viktor testing his own range of motion in his shoulder, wincing but clearly fine, nothing about him actually fragile despite the state of his shirt.

“Come sit with me,” he says. “Properly. Not hovering.”

I sit across from him instead of pacing, and some of the shaking finally starts to settle now that I can actually see for myself how little damage there really is.

My anger doesn’t feel like it matters anymore, sitting here looking at him. It hasn’t disappeared, not fully; the hurt of these last four days is still real, still valid. But it’s shrunk down to something small next to the much larger fact that I could have lost him tonight, even if tonight turned out to be scrapes and a sore shoulder instead of something worse.

“You stayed close the whole time,” he says, watching me. “I thought you needed space.”

“I needed space from the anger. I don’t need space from watching you come through that door bleeding, Viktor. Those are different things.” I reach for his hand again, still slightly unsteady myself, though he’s rock solid under my grip. “We need to talk. Not about what happened four days ago. About what happens now.”

“Now?”

“They’re not just watching anymore. This is them coming for you directly, which means it’s coming for all of us eventually, whether I’m angry at you or not.” My voice steadies as I say it, the fear resolving into something closer to resolve. “I can’t keep doing this from a distance. Being angry didn’t protect either of us tonight. It just meant I almost lost the chance to tell you I forgive you for trying, even when you got it wrong.”

“Do you? Forgive me?”

“I’m getting there. Faster than I expected to, watching tonight happen.” I hold his hand tighter. “Watching that hallway, I kept thinking about every version of tonight that could have gone worse. It didn’t. But it could have, and I don’t want to spend whatever time we actually have left being angry instead of together.”

“I’m sorry you had to see any of this.”

“I’m not sorry I was here to see it. I’m glad I was, honestly, instead of finding out after the fact the way I’ve found out everything else these last few months.” My voice steadies further. “But forgiveness isn’t the thing that matters most right now. What matters is that we stop facing this apart. I want in, Viktor. All the way in. No more decisions made for me.”

35

VIKTOR

I’m at the kitchen table by seven, coffee in hand, when Ginger wanders in still half asleep and stops dead in the doorway, staring at my face.

“What happened to you?”

“I had a little accident with my car last night. Nothing serious.” I keep my voice light. “Bumped my nose. It looks worse than it feels.”

“Did it hurt?”

“A little. I’m fine now.”

She studies me, then apparently decides my answer is acceptable, because she climbs into the chair beside me and asks if she can have the syrup for her pancakes. “Does it look cool?” she asks, apparently reconsidering. “Like a scar?”

“Devastatingly cool. I’m considering keeping the bandage forever for the effect.”

“You should. It makes you look tough.”

“I appreciate the endorsement.”

Harper watches the exchange from the stove, saying nothing, letting me handle it my way, and once Ginger’s fully absorbed in breakfast, she catches my eye with a look that says we’ll be having a longer version of that conversation later, just not in front of her.

I’m sore, genuinely, my shoulder aching every time I reach too far, a dull throb behind my bandaged nose that ibuprofen’s only partially managing. But I’m upright, functional, capable of doing everything today requires, which is considerably more than I could say for myself twelve hours ago when I was still half convinced I’d broken something worse than pride.

Dimitri arrives before Ginger’s even finished breakfast, tablet in hand, expression sharp with the particular focus he gets when he’s spent all night working instead of sleeping.

“Mechanic finished the assessment on the car,” he says, once we’re alone in the study. “You want the short version or the technical one?”

“Short version first.”

“Someone tampered with your brake line before you ever left the club last night. Not enough to fail immediately, enough to fail exactly when you hit that curve on Delancey, which anyone who’s driven your usual route home knows requires real braking. This wasn’t a random accident, and it wasn’t opportunistic either. Someone had access to your car, knew your route, and timed this specifically.”

“Show me.”

Dimitri pulls up photographs on the tablet: close-ups of the brake line itself, a clean partial cut that wouldn’t have shown on a casual inspection, engineered to fail under exactly the pressure a sharp curve demands.

“Whoever did this knew what they were doing,” I say, studying the image. “This isn’t amateur sabotage. This is someone with real mechanical knowledge, or someone who paid for that knowledge.”

“My thoughts exactly. Which narrows the list of who could pull this off, even if it doesn’t narrow who ordered it.”

“Who had access?”

“That’s the part I don’t like.” Dimitri sets the tablet down, jaw tight. “The car was parked in the club’s private lot the entire evening. Staff access only. Which means either someone on our own payroll is compromised, or someone got past security good enough that we didn’t notice, which is its own problem entirely.”

I sit with that, the two possibilities equally unwelcome. “Pull employment records. Everyone with lot access, cross-reference against anyone hired in the last six months, anyone with financial trouble we might have missed in the original background checks.”

“Already started. I’ll have a shortlist by tonight.” He studies me for a moment. “How are you actually doing? Not the version you gave Ginger.”

“Sore. Functional. Considerably better than I have any right to feel after a rigged brake line sent me into a curve at speed.”

“You got lucky.”

“I know.”

“Harper?”

“Better than I expected. Angry, still, in places. But she stayed with me all night instead of going back to the guest room, and this morning she looks at me like she’s actually choosing to be here, not just tolerating it.” I rub a hand over my face, careful of the bruising. “We move today. To the property. I’m not waiting another night in a house with a compromised security perimeter and a brake line that proves someone can reach us here.”

“Agreed. I’ll have the team start loading by nine.”

Harper finds me in the study twenty minutes later, Ginger occupied with a cartoon in the other room, and closes the door behind her.

“Tell me the real version,” she says. “Not the one you gave Ginger.”

I do. The brake line, the timing, the fact that whoever did this had access to the club’s private lot, meaning this wasn’t a stranger watching from a distance anymore; this was someone close enough to reach directly into my life.

“That’s why we’re moving today,” she says, working it out loud. “Not just because of the attempt on Ginger. Because they’ve proven they can get to you too, wherever you actually are.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She nods, steadier than I expect, already thinking practically instead of spiraling. “What do I need to pack? What does Ginger need to know before we go?”

“Whatever you think she can handle. I’ll follow your lead on that, same as always.”

“I’ll tell her we’re moving somewhere with a bigger yard. Somewhere she can see the treehouse she already fell in love with.” Harper’s voice stays level, working through the logistics with the same focus she brings to everything now that she’s actually let herself be part of it. “I don’t want to scare her more than necessary.”

“Agreed.”

We spend the morning packing, with Harper handling Ginger’s room herself to keep the transition as painless as she can manage, while I coordinate with the security team to move furniture and equipment ahead of us to the new property. Dimitri splits his attention between logistics and the growing list of club employees who had lost access last night, narrowing it steadily as the day goes on.

By early afternoon, the caravan’s ready, three vehicles instead of one, security front and back, Harper and Ginger in the middle car with two of my most trusted men, myself trailing behind with Dimitri, watching the road behind us more closely than I’ve watched anything in years.

The drive out takes just under an hour, city thinning into hills, until the stone house finally comes into view at the end of its long private drive, exactly as defensible in person as it looked in the photographs.

Ginger’s out of the car before it’s fully stopped, sprinting toward the treehouse visible from the back windows, and for a moment, watching her run free across an open yard without a single visible worry, the entire weight of the last twenty-four hours eases slightly, replaced by something closer to relief.

Harper watches her too, then looks at me, taking in the bandage still taped across my nose, the careful way I’m still favoring my shoulder.

“We made it,” she says.

“We made it. For today.”

“For today’s enough.” She takes my hand, careful of the bruising along my knuckles I hadn’t even mentioned to her yet. “Tomorrow, we figure out the rest. Tonight, I just want to get Ginger settled and actually sleep somewhere that isn’t waiting for another car to come through a wall.”

I squeeze her hand, watching Ginger disappear into the treehouse, and for the first time since the accident, I let myself believe, even briefly, that today’s move might buy us the time we need.

The investigation doesn’t pause just because we’ve moved. Neither does the danger. But tonight, at least, we face both of them from somewhere considerably harder to reach.

36

HARPER

Five days in, and I’m still finding new rooms.

This morning it’s a small library off the second-floor landing, shelves half full already, a window seat overlooking the drive that I claim immediately as mine, mental note made to bring a blanket up here before winter actually arrives.

Viktor finds me there, coffee in each hand, and passes one over without asking if I want it, which he knows by now.

“You’ve been quiet about the house,” he says. “Good quiet or bad quiet?”

“I keep finding things. Yesterday it was a mudroom I didn’t know existed. Today it’s this.” I gesture at the shelves, half stocked with books that look like they were chosen rather than inherited. “Did you actually pick these, or did someone do it for you?”

“I picked most of them. A few years back, before I had any real reason to expect I’d ever bring anyone here to read them.”

I don’t ask what he means by that, filing it away the way I’ve learned to file away the pieces of him that come out sideways instead of directly, and we finish the coffee together before he heads down to meet Dimitri, who’s been arriving earlier every day this week, tablet in hand, expression harder to read than usual.

I spend the rest of the morning doing what I’ve been doing most mornings since we arrived, walking the house properly, room by room, the way you learn a place you actually intend to live in rather than pass through.

The kitchen’s bigger than anything I’ve cooked in before, an island large enough that Ginger’s already claimed one end of it for homework, the other end mine for whatever I’m making that night.

The dining room connects to a sunroom I didn’t notice on the first walkthrough, glass on three sides, currently empty except for a single chair someone left behind. However, I’ve already started picturing a reading corner there, plants, something that makes the room feel used instead of just beautiful.

Ginger’s room sits at the end of the hall upstairs, painted a soft green she picked out herself from a stack of swatches Viktor brought home the second day. She’s already made it hers. Stuffed animals arranged by some logic only she understands, the dragon book from home propped prominently on her nightstand.

The nursery sits two doors down, pale yellow walls already dry, empty except for a crib assembled and waiting, the same one Viktor apparently ordered in secret months ago, and I stand in the doorway most mornings just looking at it, still not quite believing how close we are to actually needing it.

The grounds themselves take longer to learn than the house does. There’s the treehouse, obviously; Ginger’s now spent so many hours in it I’ve started sending snacks up via a bucket and rope system Viktor rigged for her, delighted with himself the entire time he built it.

There’s a small stable, empty for now, though Ginger’s already lobbying hard for a horse, an argument I suspect she’s going to eventually win given how thoroughly Viktor seems willing to indulge her. There’s the pool, quieter here than at the old house, hidden behind a hedge that gives it a privacy I didn’t expect a fortress to bother with.

And there’s the perimeter itself, cameras built into the landscaping so subtly I only notice them because I know to look now, security walking the property line at intervals I’ve started unconsciously tracking without meaning to.

It’s a house first, if you don’t look too closely. A fortress if you do.

I’m hanging laundry in the mudroom that afternoon when Ginger finds me, still in her school clothes, backpack dropped somewhere in the hallway behind her.

“Why did we have to move here?” she asks, no preamble, the question apparently building all day before finally surfacing.

I set down the shirt I’m folding, giving her my full attention. “Do you not like it here?”

“I like the treehouse. And my room’s bigger.” She picks at a loose thread on her sleeve. “But we didn’t tell anyone we were moving. Not Mrs. Bennett, not Theo. We just left.”

“I know that was fast. I’m sorry it felt sudden.”

“Is it because of Grandma and Grandpa?”

The question lands the way it always does, direct in a way only a six-year-old can manage, and I choose my words with deliberate care, wanting honesty without handing her more weight than she can carry.

“Some of it’s about them, yeah. There’s been some tension, adult stuff, and Viktor wanted us somewhere safer while we figure it out. That’s really all it is.”

“Are we in trouble?”

“No, baby. You’re not in trouble. Nobody’s in trouble.” I pull her into a hug, resting my chin on top of her head. “Viktor and I are handling it. Your job is just being a kid, going to your new school, enjoying that treehouse. Okay?”

“Okay.” She accepts it the way she’s learned to accept most things lately, trusting rather than doubting, and pulls back to ask if she can have a snack before homework, already moving past the heaviness of the question entirely.

I watch her go, marveling again at how much easier this transition seems to be landing on her than the one four months ago, back when every change felt like proof adults couldn’t be trusted to keep their promises. This one, apparently, she’s just filing under inconvenient rather than catastrophic.

That evening, once Ginger’s asleep, I find Viktor in the kitchen, sleeves pushed up, actually cooking instead of just supervising takeout, something with garlic and wine that smells better than anything I’ve managed all week.

“You cook.”

“Occasionally. When I have a reason to.” He glances at me, something easy in his expression that wasn’t there a week ago, before the accident, before the guest room, before any of it. “Sit. This is almost done.”

I sit at the island instead of hovering, watching him work, and there’s no guardedness left in it, none of the careful distance I’ve been holding onto since the reveal. Just a man cooking dinner in a kitchen I’m slowly learning to call mine, and a version of trust that’s rebuilding itself one ordinary evening at a time.

“Thank you,” I say once he’s plated the food and joined me at the island. “For the house. For today. For not pushing when Ginger needed space to ask her own questions in her own time.”

“You handled that better than I could have.”

“We handled it. Together, remember?”

“Together.” He reaches for my hand across the counter, and I let him take it, no hesitation left in the gesture at all. “How are you, actually? Not managing everyone else’s feelings for once. You.”

I consider the question honestly before answering. “Tired. Still a little scared, if I’m honest. But steadier than I expected to feel, given everything.” I squeeze his hand. “This house helps. Having you close again helps more.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know.” And for the first time since the reveal, I actually believe it, no guard left up against the possibility he’s wrong.

We eat dinner slowly, talking about nothing important, the house settling into its evening quiet around us, and somewhere upstairs, past the nursery and Ginger’s room and the library I’ve already claimed as mine, the property line holds steady, cameras watching, security walking their rounds, buying us whatever peace tonight’s willing to offer.

37

VIKTOR

Dimitri arrives after dinner, later than usual, and the look on his face tells me before he says a word that whatever he’s brought isn’t going to let either of us sleep tonight.

“I need you to hear something,” he says, setting a small recorder on the desk between us. “Sit down first.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

I sit.

“The housekeeper,” Dimitri says. “The one who’s worked for the Ivanovs for six years, the one I’ve been quietly paying for information since the week after the hearing. She finally got close enough to plant something in the study. Recorded two nights ago. Pavel and the grandmother, talking freely, believing themselves alone.”

“Why now? What made her risk it?”

“Money helps. So does watching an old man she’s worked for start ordering equipment she recognizes from her nephew’s time in the military. She’s frightened, Viktor. She thinks something terrible is coming, and she’d rather be paid to help stop it than caught in the middle of it.”

He presses play.

The recording’s rough and distant, but the voices come through clear enough: Pavel’s low and measured, the grandmother’s sharper, more frantic beneath a thin layer of composure.

“The girl is all we have left,” the grandmother says, voice catching. “Our son is gone. We are too old for another child. If we lose her, the family name ends with us. Everything your father built, everything we sacrificed, gone with two old people in an empty house.”

“We won’t lose her,” Pavel answers, flat, certain. “The husband is a complication, not an obstacle. Men like him die eventually, one way or another. We simply need to be the ones holding her when it happens.”

“And the wife?”

“Expendable. Regrettable, perhaps, given the child she’s carrying, but expendable regardless. Our granddaughter is the only irreplaceable thing in this equation. Everyone else is a variable we can afford to lose.”

I stop the recording before it finishes, my hand not entirely steady on the desk.

“There’s more,” Dimitri says quietly. “About four more minutes. I don’t think you need to hear the rest tonight.”

“Tell me the rest.”

“They’re planning something within the week. Direct, not another surveillance operation. Pavel talks about a window, some event that puts Ginger somewhere predictable, somewhere they can move on her without needing to breach the property directly. He mentions a school function. I haven’t confirmed which one yet.”

“They said Harper’s expendable.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. “Regrettable, given the baby. Expendable regardless.”

“I heard it.”

“They’re planning to kill my wife to get to my daughter, and they’re calling it a variable.”

“I know, Viktor.”

I stand, needing to move, pacing the length of the study once, twice, trying to walk off something that pacing isn’t built to fix. The recording plays again in my head without my permission, the grandmother’s voice cracking with what almost sounds like grief, Pavel’s flat and certain underneath it, a man who’s already made his peace with whatever violence gets him what he wants.

“They actually believe this justifies it,” I say. “Grief. Bloodline. As if either of those excuses murdering a pregnant woman to get to a child who isn’t even legally theirs anymore.”

“Grief makes monsters out of people who’d otherwise never have become one. Doesn’t make them any less dangerous for the reason behind it.” Dimitri’s voice stays level, though I can hear the same fury underneath it that’s currently threatening to take mine apart entirely. “We don’t have the luxury of being surprised by this. We have the luxury of finally knowing exactly what we’re facing, which is more than we had yesterday.”

“A school function. Which one?”

“I’m working on it. Ginger’s new school has an open house scheduled for parents next week, first one since she enrolled. If that’s the window Pavel meant, it’s public, crowded, exactly the chaos that makes a direct move easier to execute and harder to trace back cleanly.”

“We cancel it. Pull her out entirely if we have to.”

“We could. Or we let them believe the window’s still open and control every variable inside it ourselves, instead of just removing the danger and letting them find a different one we don’t see coming.” Dimitri meets my eyes, steady, deliberate. “I’m not saying that lightly, Viktor. I’m saying it because reactive defense hasn’t worked so far. A car accident, a man at a fence, a stranger at a pickup line—we’ve been one step behind every single time. This might be our chance to be ahead of them instead.”

“And if we’re wrong? If they’ve got a second plan we haven’t found yet, and pulling her from the open house pushes them toward that instead?”

“Then we’re back to reacting, same as always. Which is exactly why I think controlling this window, rather than closing it, gives us better odds than either canceling the event or waiting for whatever they try next.”

I sit with that, the horror of the recording still sitting heavy in my chest, weighed against the cold logic of what Dimitri’s actually suggesting.

“You want to use the open house as a controlled encounter. Draw them into a situation where we hold every advantage instead of reacting to one they chose.”

“I want to end this, Viktor. Properly, permanently, before they get another attempt at either Harper or Ginger. If that means letting them believe an opportunity’s still available, so we can control exactly how it plays out, I think that’s worth considering.”

“Harper needs to know all of this. Tonight. Not a sanitized version.”

“I agree. She has a right to help decide this, especially if it involves Ginger being anywhere near a plan like this one.”

I think about Harper asleep upstairs right now, unaware that two people she once trusted with holidays and pierogi recipes have just been recorded discussing her as an acceptable loss. I think about the baby she’s carrying, dismissed in the same breath as something regrettable but ultimately unimportant.

“I’ll wake her,” I say. “She’ll want to hear this herself, not secondhand from me.”

“I’ll wait.”

I find Harper in bed, not fully asleep, and she sits up the moment she sees my face, already bracing for whatever I’m about to hand her.

“What happened?”

“Dimitri has something you need to hear. Tonight.” I sit on the edge of the bed, taking her hand before I say anything else. “It’s about Pavel. About what they’re actually planning, and why.”

“Tell me.”

So I do, as gently as the truth allows, watching her face go through exactly the horror I felt hearing it myself, watching her hand find her stomach instinctively the second I repeat the word Pavel used for her and the baby both.

“Expendable,” she repeats, voice hollow. “He called me expendable.”

“I know.”

“I sat at that man’s table. I ate his wife’s cooking. I let Ginger fall asleep in his lap more times than I can count.” Her voice shakes, fury and grief tangling together the same way mine did downstairs. “And this whole time he was capable of this. Of calling me a variable he can afford to lose.”

“I know, Harper. I heard it myself an hour ago, and I still can’t fully sit with it.”

“And you’re telling me this because.”

“Because we have a chance to end this instead of just surviving the next attempt. But it’s not my decision to make alone anymore. Not after everything I’ve already taken from you by deciding things without you.” I hold her gaze, steady despite everything currently sitting in my chest. “Dimitri thinks we can use their own plan against them. I need you to help me decide if that’s a risk worth taking, with everything currently at stake.”

Harper’s quiet for a long moment, and I watch her arrive at the same cold calculation Dimitri and I already have, weighing horror against the strategic reality underneath it.

“Tell me the whole plan,” she says finally.

38

HARPER

“Can I sleep in here tonight?” Ginger asks, already in the doorway of my room in her pajamas, arms wrapped around the dragon book like a shield. “I keep thinking about the bad men.”

“Of course, baby. Come here.”

She climbs in beside me, curling close, and I pull the blanket up over both of us, tucking her hair back from her face the way I have every night since Mia died.

“Are we safe here?” she asks, small and direct, the question she’s clearly been sitting with all evening before finally letting it out.

“We’re safe here. This house has lots of people watching over us, remember? Viktor made sure of that.”

“Will you stay awake until I fall asleep?”

“I’ll stay right here the whole time.”

“Read me the part where the dragon isn’t scared anymore,” she says. “The end part.”

I find the page and read it slow, doing the voices even though I’m tired, because some nights the voices matter more than the sleep does. Ginger’s eyes grow heavy halfway through, her breathing evening out against my shoulder, one hand still fisted loosely in the blanket.

“He’s not scared anymore,” I read, “because he learned that even dragons need somebody brave enough to stay close.”

She’s asleep before I finish the sentence. I set the book on the nightstand, turn off the lamp, and lie there a while longer in the dark, listening to her breathe, feeling the baby shift low in my stomach, thinking that despite everything, tonight feels almost peaceful.

I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep when the hand closes over my mouth.

I wake fighting before I’m even fully conscious, thrashing against a grip too strong to break, a man’s weight pinning me flat against the mattress, his forearm pressed hard across my collarbone.

He shifts his weight off my stomach at the last second, and somewhere beside me I hear Ginger scream, sharp and terrified, cut short by another man’s hand.

“Ginger!” The word comes out muffled against the hand over my mouth, barely a sound at all.

I twist, trying to see her, one arm curling instinctively toward my stomach even as he pins my wrists, but the man on top of me is too heavy, pinning my wrists with one hand while the other keeps my mouth sealed shut.

My mind screams at my body to fight harder, and my body simply can’t, outmatched in every possible way, terrified for the baby as much as for myself.

I see him lift her, one arm locked around her small body, and she’s fighting too, small fists useless against him, her legs kicking uselessly at his shins, and the man carrying her turns toward the door and, almost casually, pulls a gun and points it directly at her face.

“Stop moving,” he tells her, voice flat, bored, like he’s done this before. “Or I use this. Understand?”

Ginger goes still, eyes huge, tears streaming silently now instead of screaming, her whole small body gone rigid with a fear no six-year-old should ever have to understand, and he carries her out the door like that, gun still raised, and I scream against the hand covering my mouth, thrashing so hard the man holding me has to use his full weight to keep me down.

Then, all at once, he releases me, and he’s gone too, out the door after the other one, footsteps receding fast down the hallway, and I’m alone in a bed that still smells like Ginger’s shampoo, gasping, shaking so hard my teeth are chattering.

Gunshots crack somewhere outside, three in quick succession, then more, scattered, distant and close at once, echoing through walls that were supposed to keep exactly this from happening.

I don’t remember deciding to move. I’m just suddenly on my feet, legs unsteady, one hand braced against my stomach, stumbling toward the door.

I open it to find the guard who’s been posted outside my room every night since we arrived lying flat on the floor, unmoving, a dark stain spreading beneath him that I don’t let myself look at directly.

The hallway beyond him is chaos. Smoke, somewhere, acrid and thin, stinging my eyes before I even register where it’s coming from.

Another body further down, one of the men I’d started to recognize by face over these last two weeks, sprawled at an angle that tells me everything I don’t want to know.

Shouting, more gunfire, further away now, moving further from the house with every passing second, punctuated by the distant roar of an engine.

A third body near the top of the stairs, a man I don’t recognize at all, someone who clearly wasn’t one of ours, and the sight of him almost steadies me, proof that whatever happened here wasn’t entirely one-sided.

“Viktor!” His name tears out of me, raw, desperate. “Viktor, where are you!”

Nobody answers. I stumble down the hall, past another body, past a shattered window with curtains moving in a wind that shouldn’t be inside a house at all, screaming his name into rooms that don’t answer back, my bare feet catching on debris I can’t see clearly enough to avoid.

I find Dimitri near the top of the stairs instead, blood on his shirt that doesn’t look like it’s his, radio in hand, barking orders to someone I can’t see.

“Where’s Viktor?” I demand, grabbing his arm hard enough that he actually turns to face me fully. “Dimitri, where is he? Where’s Ginger? What is happening?”

“He went after them himself.” Dimitri’s voice is controlled, but his eyes are wild, adrenaline and fury both barely leashed. “The second he heard the room breach on the radio, he was out the back door before any of us could stop him. He’s tracking the vehicle now.”

“Alone?”

“Two men with him. Not enough, and he knows it, but he wasn’t waiting for a better option while they drove away with her.” Dimitri’s jaw tightens. “Harper, you need to get somewhere safe. Now. We don’t know if this is the only team on the property.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I know Ginger’s safe.”

“You’re pregnant. I need you downstairs, in the safe room, immediately, or I swear to every god either of us believes in I will carry you there myself.”

“Dimitri, please. I need to do something; I can’t just stand here.”

“No.” His voice cracks like a whip, sharper than I’ve ever heard from him. “I don’t have time to argue with you right now. Viktor’s out there chasing a car full of armed men who just proved they’ll shoot through anybody to get what they want, and I have exactly as many resources as I have right now to help him, not one of which involves standing here convincing you to survive the night.”

I stare at him, shaking, furious and terrified in equal measure, every instinct screaming at me to run out that same back door after all of them.

“How did they get in, Dimitri? We had cameras. We had men on every corner of this property.”

“One of our own let them through. I don’t know who yet, and right now I don’t have the luxury of finding out before I make sure Viktor has backup.” His voice breaks slightly on the admission, the first real crack in his composure since I found him. “Someone we trusted did this. I promise you I will find out exactly who.”

“I want to help,” I say, voice breaking. “I can’t just sit in a room while they have her.”

“You can, and you will, because right now the single most useful thing you can do for that little girl is stay alive long enough for us to bring her back to you.” Dimitri’s expression softens by a fraction, just enough to show me the fear underneath the command. “Please, Harper. I can’t fight for both of them tonight. Let me fight for one while you protect the other one growing inside you.”

I don’t answer right away, torn between every maternal instinct I have and the cold, undeniable logic of what he’s saying.

“Find her,” I finally manage, voice barely above a whisper. “Find her, and bring her back, and bring him back too. Please, Dimitri.”

“I intend to.” He grips my shoulder once, hard, grounding. “Safe room. Now. I’ll have someone update you the second there’s anything to report.”

I let him steer me toward the stairs, legs still unsteady, mind still screaming Ginger’s name even as my body finally, reluctantly, obeys.

The safe room door closes behind me with a heavy, mechanical sound, and I stand there alone in a space built for exactly this scenario, stocked with everything Viktor promised months ago and I never let myself fully believe I’d need. Bottled water. A cot. A radio I don’t know how to use properly, sitting silent on a small shelf.

I sit on the small cot against the wall, hands pressed flat against my stomach, and I cry the way I haven’t let myself cry since the night of the reveal, loud and ugly and completely unrestrained, because there’s no one left to perform strength for down here, no six-year-old to shield from the truth of how frightened I actually am.

Time moves strangely in a room with no windows. I don’t know if minutes pass or an hour does, only that at some point the shaking in my hands slows enough that I can actually think again instead of just reacting.

Somewhere out there, past walls that suddenly feel too thin despite everything Viktor built them to be, Ginger’s being driven further away with every passing minute, and Viktor’s chasing her through a night full of men who’ve already proven exactly how far they’re willing to go.

I think about the gun pointed at her face. I think about her eyes, huge and silent, the exact moment she stopped fighting because fighting had just become too dangerous to risk.

I think about every promise I’ve made her since Mia died, every assurance that I would keep her safe, and how completely tonight has broken every single one of them despite everything Viktor and I built to prevent exactly this.

I don’t know how long I sit there before the shaking finally starts to slow, replaced by something colder, steadier, an anger that settles into my chest and refuses to leave.

They took her. They took her from my own bed, from beside me, and pointed a gun in her face like it was nothing at all. A six-year-old girl, terrified into silence by a stranger who treats children like leverage instead of people.

I press my hand harder against my stomach, feeling the baby shift beneath my palm, small and unaware of everything currently happening around it, and I make myself a promise in the quiet of that locked room, the same promise I’ve apparently been making since the night I first walked into a club looking for anything that might save my family.

Whatever it takes. Whatever’s left of tonight, whatever comes after it…

I will get her back.

39

VIKTOR

The car ahead of us takes the turn onto the service road too fast, tires screaming, and I match the speed without hesitation, my own vehicle fishtailing slightly before the road straightens out again.

“They’re heading toward the industrial district,” Sergei says from the passenger seat, eyes fixed on the taillights ahead. “Nothing out there but warehouses and the old airfield.”

“The airfield.” The word lands heavy in my chest, immediate understanding following right behind it. “They’re taking her out of the country.”

I press the accelerator harder, closing the distance, and the car ahead swerves violently, someone in the back seat firing blind through the rear window. The shot goes wide, cracking against the road beside us, and I don’t slow down, not now, not with Ginger somewhere in that vehicle.

We lose them at a fork in the road, two paths splitting toward different sections of the industrial sprawl, and I make the only choice available, following the fresher tire marks still visible in the road dust.

It’s the wrong choice. Or it would be, if we hadn’t found the other car first.

A second vehicle sits abandoned near the fork, engine still ticking as it cools, driver’s door hanging open. One man remains beside it, clearly left behind in the chaos of splitting up, patting down his jacket for something that isn’t there anymore.

I’m out of the car before it’s fully stopped.

He goes for a weapon and doesn’t reach it in time. I have him against the hood of his own abandoned car within seconds, forearm braced hard across his throat, close enough to feel him shaking.

“Where?” I say, voice low, controlled in a way that costs me everything I have to maintain right now. “Where are they taking her?”

“I don’t know anything.”

I press harder, and he makes a choked sound, eyes going wide with genuine fear rather than practiced defiance.

“You have exactly one chance to be useful to me instead of disposable,” I tell him. “Where?”

“The hangar.” The words come out fast, desperate, self-preservation winning over loyalty the way it usually does when a man realizes exactly how alone he actually is. “Private airfield, north end, hangar three. There’s a plane waiting. They’re supposed to have her in the air within the hour.”

“Whose plane?”

“I don’t know, I swear, I just drive, I don’t know who arranged it.”

I believe him, mostly because men this frightened rarely have the composure left to lie effectively. I release him into Sergei’s custody, already moving back toward the car, adrenaline burning through every ounce of exhaustion I should be feeling after tonight.

“Hangar three,” I tell my other man, already turning the car back toward the main road. “North airfield. We have less than an hour.”

The drive there stretches into the longest twenty minutes of my life, every red light an obstacle I run through without slowing, every mile marker a fresh wave of fear that we’re going to be too late, that Ginger’s going to be somewhere over an ocean before I ever get close enough to stop it.

I keep running the math in my head, distance against minutes, refusing to let myself land on the version where the numbers don’t work out in our favor. Every siren I hear in the distance makes my chest seize, wondering if it’s already too late, if somewhere above the city a plane’s already climbing with my daughter locked inside it.

My phone rings halfway there. Dimitri.

“House is secure,” he says, breathless, clearly running toward his own car as he talks. “Harper’s safe, in the safe room. I’ve got two men on her personally. I’m coming to you now, where are you.”

“North airfield, hangar three. They’re trying to fly her out.”

“I’m fifteen minutes behind you. Don’t go in alone if you can possibly help it.”

“I’m not waiting fifteen minutes, Dimitri.”

“I know. Just try to still be alive when I get there.”

He hangs up, and I drive faster.

The airfield comes into view exactly as the informant described, a scattering of hangars along a cracked runway, most of them dark, hangar three lit from within, a private jet visible through the open bay doors, engines already spinning up, the whine of them audible even from this distance.

I don’t wait for backup. I can’t, not with those engines already turning, not with every second bringing that plane closer to leaving the ground with my daughter on it.

I park short of the hangar, approaching on foot, Sergei and Dimitri’s second man flanking me, weapons drawn.

Four men guard the plane itself, positioned loosely, clearly not expecting pursuit this fast, and that miscalculation is the only advantage we have.

We take the first two before they fully register we’re there, close range, efficient, no room for hesitation with Ginger’s life measured in minutes now instead of hours.

The remaining two open fire, and the world narrows down to exactly this: muzzle flash and concrete dust and the deafening chaos of a real firefight instead of the abstract concept of one. Sergei goes down hard beside me, a graze along his arm that has him cursing but still upright, still firing.

Something whines past my ear close enough to feel the heat of it, and for one fractured second, I think about Harper in that safe room, about the nursery with its pale yellow walls, about how close I might be to never seeing either of them again. I push the thought away, because there’s no room for it right now, only the next shot, the next threat, the next second between me and the plane.

I take cover behind a fuel cart, heart slamming against my ribs, counting shots, counting seconds, every fraction of delay another fraction closer to that plane finding a way to still leave without us stopping it. One of the guards breaks toward the cockpit, and I put him down before he covers half the distance, every shot exact, nothing wasted.

I put the last remaining guard down before he gets close enough to reach the boarding stairs, and for one terrible, suspended second, everything goes silent except the whine of engines and my own ragged breathing.

“Ginger!”

I run for the plane, taking the boarding stairs two at a time, weapon still raised, and find her exactly where I prayed she’d be, strapped into a seat near the back, a single man standing guard over her, weapon halfway raised before I put him down first.

Ginger screams at the gunshot, flinching hard against her restraints, and then her eyes find mine and everything in her face breaks open at once, relief and terror tangled together too fast to separate.

“Viktor!”

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you, you’re safe now.”

I cross the cabin in three strides, hands shaking as I work the restraints free, and the second she’s loose she launches herself into my arms, small and shaking and sobbing, and I hold her the way I’ve never held anything in my life, absolute, unwilling to ever let this feeling of her small heartbeat against my chest become something I take for granted again.

“You came,” she says, muffled against my shoulder. “I knew you’d come.”

“Always. Every single time, Ginger. I promise you that.”

I carry her off the plane, cutting the engines myself on the way past the cockpit, silencing that whine that’s been eating at my nerves the entire drive here, and by the time we reach the tarmac, the adrenaline’s finally starting to recede enough that my hands won’t stop shaking around her.

Dimitri arrives moments later, headlights cutting across the runway, skidding to a stop, taking in the scene, bodies and blood and the plane finally sitting silent behind me.

“She’s safe,” I tell him, before he can even ask. “She’s safe, Dimitri.”

Relief breaks visibly across his face, the first crack in his composure all night. “Pavel?”

“Not here. His men were running this alone.”

“He sent them without coming himself.” Dimitri’s jaw tightens, fury replacing relief almost instantly. “Of course he did. He’s never once put himself in the actual line of fire, not eleven years ago, not tonight.”

I hold Ginger tighter, feeling her heartbeat finally start to slow against mine, and I think about a man patient enough to watch from a distance for months, careful enough to never once risk himself directly, and I understand with sudden clarity that stopping him for good is going to require more than tonight’s victory alone.

“He’s still out there,” I say. “Which means this isn’t over. Not completely.”

“No. But she is safe, and that’s what matters most tonight.” Dimitri rests a hand briefly on Ginger’s back, checking for himself that she’s actually whole. “Let’s get her home. Let’s get her back to Harper before either of us thinks about anything else.”

I carry Ginger to the car myself, refusing to let go even for the walk across the tarmac, and somewhere behind us, the hangar sits littered with evidence of exactly how close tonight came to ending in a way neither of us could have survived.

Ginger falls asleep in my arms before we’ve even cleared the airfield gate, exhausted past the point of staying awake despite everything her small body just survived, and I hold her the entire drive home, watching the road, watching the mirrors, unwilling to fully believe we’re actually safe until I see Harper’s face myself.

Every mile closer to home, I run through the last hour again, the fork in the road, the informant’s fear, the exact second I saw Ginger’s face on that plane and understood we hadn’t been too late. I don’t let myself relax, not until I’ve counted every heartbeat still beating in this car myself.

Tonight, we won. Ginger’s coming home. But somewhere out there, Pavel Ivanov is still alive, still patient, still convinced that grief excuses whatever it costs to finish what he started.

This war isn’t over yet. Not by a long way.

40

HARPER

I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been sitting on this cot, knees pulled to my chest, phone clutched in one hand though there’s no signal down here, nothing to do but wait and pray and wait some more.

I count the minutes in heartbeats instead of a clock I don’t have, the baby shifting occasionally beneath my palm, a small reminder that I’m not just waiting for Ginger tonight, I’m also holding still for someone who has no idea any of this is happening at all.

I think about every version of tonight that could still be unfolding somewhere out there beyond these locked walls. I think about the gun pointed at Ginger’s face, replaying it over and over, unable to stop myself, unable to fully believe any version of tonight where it doesn’t end in tragedy.

The radio on the shelf crackles to life sometime past two in the morning, and I’m on my feet before the voice fully registers.

“Mrs. Markov. She’s safe. They’re bringing her in now.”

Relief crashes through me so hard my knees nearly buckle, and I have to brace a hand against the wall just to stay upright, the words repeating themselves in my head until they finally feel real instead of like something I’m imagining out of pure desperation.

I don’t remember crossing the room. I don’t remember unlocking the door, though I must have, because I’m suddenly in the hallway, running, past the same dead guard, past bloodstains someone’s already started cleaning, none of it registering the way it should, my entire body narrowed down to one single need.

I reach the front entrance just as the car pulls up, and the door opens, and Viktor climbs out first, Ginger cradled against his chest, and the sight of her, small and disheveled but breathing, awake, alive, breaks something open in my chest that I didn’t know was still holding.

“Ginger!”

She twists at the sound of my voice, reaching for me before Viktor’s even fully upright, and I take her from his arms without either of us discussing it, her whole body colliding into mine with a force that nearly knocks me backward.

“I’m here, baby, I’m here, you’re safe, I’ve got you.”

She doesn’t answer, just clings, arms locked around my neck tight enough to hurt, her whole body trembling against mine, and I sink down onto the front steps because my legs won’t hold either of us standing any longer, rocking her the way I did when she was younger, before any of this, before any version of a world where six year olds get taken from their beds at gunpoint.

“You’re shaking,” I murmur into her hair. “You’re okay. You’re okay, and I’m not letting go of you.”

“He had a gun right here.” She touches her own cheek, showing me exactly where. “He said if I moved he’d use it. I didn’t move, Aunt Harper. I did what he said.”

“You did exactly the right thing. You were so brave, baby. Braver than most grown-ups would have been.”

“Are you okay?” she asks, small and worried, checking on me the way I’m checking on her.

“I’m okay because you’re okay.” I pull back just enough to check her over myself, hands running along her arms, her face, searching for anything I might have missed. “Does anything hurt? Anywhere at all?”

“No.” Her voice comes out small, hoarse from crying. “I’m okay. I was so scared, Aunt Harper. The man had a gun and he pointed it right at me and I thought.”

“I know. I know, baby. You’re safe now. It’s over.”

She buries her face against my neck instead of finishing the sentence, and I hold her there, rocking slightly, murmuring nonsense reassurances that are as much for me as they are for her, and it isn’t until she finally starts to go slack with exhaustion in my arms that I let myself look up at Viktor properly.

He’s standing a few feet away, watching us, and the state of him stops my breath entirely.

His shirt’s torn at the shoulder, dark stains across the front of it that I know, immediately, aren’t his own blood. There’s a graze along his jaw, another darker mark blooming along one forearm. His hands, when I finally look at them, are shaking slightly, adrenaline still working its way out of his system.

“You’re hurt,” I say.

“Not badly. None of this is mine.” He says it plainly, no drama attached, though the words land in my chest like something physical. “It’s over, Harper. She’s safe.”

I look at him for a long moment, really look, taking in every detail I’ve been too consumed by relief to notice until now, and the full weight of what those details actually mean settles over me slowly, inevitably, impossible to hold back once it starts.

He did this. He drove into the night after armed men, found them, fought them, and whatever happened at wherever he found her, he came out the other side of it covered in evidence of exactly how far he was willing to go.

“How many,” I ask quietly, not entirely sure I want the answer.

“Enough.” He doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t push, some instinct telling me neither of us is ready for the full account tonight, maybe not for a long while yet. “I’d do it again. Every single time, without hesitation, if it meant bringing her home to you.”

I believe him completely, and that belief sits strangely alongside everything else I’m feeling right now, gratitude and horror and love all tangled together in a way I don’t have a clean name for.

“Come here,” I say instead of responding directly, and he crosses the distance, kneeling down in front of both of us, and I reach out with my free hand and pull him into the same embrace I’m holding Ginger in, all three of us tangled together on the front steps of a house that nearly cost us everything tonight.

“Thank you,” I whisper against his shoulder. “Thank you for bringing her back to me.”

“Always.” His voice breaks slightly on the word. “I told her that tonight, and I meant it for both of you. Always.”

We stay like that a long while, none of us willing to be the first to pull away, Ginger finally fully asleep between us, Dimitri and the security team giving us the space to simply exist in this moment before the practical realities of tonight inevitably catch up with all of us.

Eventually Viktor carries Ginger inside himself, refusing to hand her off even to me, and I follow behind them both, taking in the visible aftermath of tonight’s violence with fresh eyes now that the immediate terror has finally started to recede.

There’s so much I don’t know yet about what happened after Dimitri sent me down to that safe room.

So much I suspect I’m not going to fully understand even once Viktor eventually tells me the rest of it.

41

VIKTOR

Dimitri finds me in the study three days after the hangar, tablet in hand, expression sharper than I’ve seen from him since the night Ginger was taken.

“He’s making a move himself this time,” he says. “No more sending men to do it for him. Our informant says Pavel’s been agitated since the plane failed, erratic in a way she’s never seen from him before. He’s planning something personal now, something he intends to do with his own hands.”

“Where?”

“An old property he still owns under a shell name, half an hour outside the city. She overheard him telling the grandmother he needed to finish this properly, that sending others has only proven he’s lost control of his own operation.”

I sit with that, a cold clarity settling over the fury I’ve been carrying since that night. “He’s coming for one of us directly. Me, most likely, given everything else has failed.”

“That’s my read too.” Dimitri sets the tablet down. “Which gives us something we haven’t had this entire war. Advance knowledge of exactly where he’ll be, and exactly when.”

“I want him alive.” The words surprise me even as I say them, though the reasoning behind them settles quickly once spoken aloud. “Killing him ends the immediate threat. It doesn’t end the questions. Who funded him all these years. What he actually did during the time everyone believed him dead. Whether there’s anyone else out there still loyal to him who might pick up exactly where he leaves off.”

“You want to interrogate him.”

“I want him to answer for eleven years, properly, to people who have more reason to want those answers than we do.”

Dimitri studies me for a long moment, understanding arriving slowly. “Volkov.”

“Volkov,” I agree. “Pavel used his resources to disappear after the warehouse. Money, safe houses, false identities, all of it borrowed against promises he apparently never intended to keep. Volkov’s been hunting a ghost for eleven years without knowing the ghost was hiding in plain sight as a grieving grandfather.”

“That’s a significant favor to call in, Viktor. Volkov doesn’t forget debts, and he definitely won’t forget this one.”

“I’m aware of the cost. I’m also aware Pavel tried to kill my daughter twice and called my pregnant wife an acceptable loss. I’ll pay whatever debt this creates.”

I make the call myself, and Volkov’s voice on the other end of the line carries the particular stillness of a man who’s been waiting a long time for exactly this information.

“You’re certain,” he says, once I’ve laid out everything Dimitri’s informant confirmed. “Certain enough to stake your own operation’s credibility on it.”

“I watched his face in a courtroom months ago and knew him instantly, eleven years of presumed death notwithstanding. I’m certain.”

“Then we have business to discuss.” Something that might be satisfaction colors his voice, cold and patient. “I’ll bring my own people. This isn’t a favor I’ll be doing quietly, Markov. I want him to see exactly who’s finally caught up to him.”

“Understood.”

We move two days later, converging on the property from separate directions, Volkov’s men and mine coordinating through Dimitri’s careful planning, everyone in position before the sun’s fully down.

Pavel’s alone when we find him, standing in what was once presumably a study, surrounded by boxes half packed, a man clearly planning to disappear again rather than execute whatever personal violence Dimitri’s informant overheard him planning.

He doesn’t reach for a weapon when I step through the doorway. He simply straightens, studying me with the same unnerving stillness I remember from the courtroom, eleven years compressed into a single, silent moment before either of us speaks.

“Viktor Markov.” He says my name like he’s tasting it, testing its weight after all this time. “We finally meet properly. I confess I expected this conversation years ago.”

“You’ve had eleven years to arrange it yourself. You chose silence instead.”

“I chose survival. There’s a difference, though I don’t expect a man your age to fully understand it yet.” His eyes flick past me, taking in the men filling the doorway behind me, understanding arriving visibly across his face. “You didn’t come alone.”

“No.”

“Ambitious of you, bringing help to face a dying old man.”

“You’re not dying. You’re desperate, which is considerably more dangerous.” I keep my voice level, refusing him the satisfaction of watching me lose composure the way he clearly hoped to provoke. “You tried to take my daughter twice. You called my wife expendable while she carries a child you’ll never meet. I’m done treating you like a ghost from my past, Pavel. Tonight, you become someone else’s problem entirely.”

“You speak of family as though I don’t understand the concept myself.” His voice sharpens for the first time, real emotion cutting through the composure. “My son is dead, Markov. My bloodline ends with a girl who now calls another man her father. Everything I have done, I have done because grief leaves a man with very few options he can still call his own.”

“Grief doesn’t excuse pointing a gun at a six-year-old’s face.”

“No,” he admits, quieter now. “Perhaps it doesn’t. I stopped examining that particular distinction a long time ago.”

Understanding crosses his face slowly, followed by something close to genuine fear for the first time since I’ve known him existed.

“Volkov.”

“Volkov,” I confirm. “He’s been looking for you considerably longer than I have. Eleven years of borrowed resources tends to accumulate interest.”

“I can offer you something better than whatever debt you think settling this repays.” Pavel’s composure cracks fully now, calculation replacing the earlier stillness. “Information. Resources. Things Volkov doesn’t know I still possess.”

“I don’t need anything you have left to offer. I have everything that actually matters already, safe, alive, waiting for me at home.” I step aside, and Volkov’s men move past me into the room, efficient, unhurried, the particular calm of men who’ve waited a long time for exactly this moment. “This isn’t about what you can give me anymore, Pavel. This is about eleven years finally catching up to a man who thought he’d outrun them.”

Volkov himself appears in the doorway a moment later, studying Pavel with an expression I don’t fully want to interpret, cold satisfaction layered beneath something considerably darker.

“Hello, old friend,” he says, voice quiet, almost gentle, which somehow makes it worse. “We have a great deal to discuss. Privately, I think, don’t you?”

Pavel doesn’t struggle as Volkov’s men take him, some final calculation apparently convincing him resistance serves no purpose here.

He looks back at me once as they lead him out, and whatever he intends that look to communicate, I feel nothing in response beyond the simple, exhausted relief of watching a threat finally leave my life for good.

“That’s the last of it,” Dimitri says quietly, appearing at my shoulder once the room’s finally empty. “Eleven years, over in about ten minutes.”

“Feels like it should have taken longer.”

“Most endings do, in the moment. They rarely match the buildup.” He claps a hand on my shoulder, something like relief finally breaking across his own face. “Let’s go home, Viktor. Tell Harper it’s actually over this time.”

I drive home in a silence that feels different from every other silence these last few months, lighter somehow, the specific weight of Pavel Ivanov finally lifted from a place in my chest I’d stopped noticing was carrying it.

The threat that shaped every single day since that courtroom is finally, actually closed.

42

HARPER

I find the folder while cleaning out the study, tucked behind a row of books that have never once looked like they belonged to a man with Viktor’s actual life.

I almost don’t open it. Almost.

But my hands are already pulling it free, and once it’s open there’s no putting it back unread, not with my own name appearing on the very first page, followed by pages and pages of things I never knew he was tracking so closely.

Photographs of the courthouse, printed and annotated. A timeline stretching back eleven years, dates and locations in his own handwriting, crossed out and revised as new information came in.

Notes about the warehouse standoff, about men whose names I don’t recognize, about a business rivalry that apparently shaped his entire adult life long before I ever walked into his club looking for a stranger to marry.

There’s a page devoted entirely to Pavel, photographs spanning what must be over a decade, an old grainy shot beside a recent one from the custody hearing, side by side, a visual record of exactly how long Viktor carried the weight of recognizing that face.

Further in, printouts of financial records, the shell companies, the wire transfers, the whole slow unraveling Dimitri walked him through over months, laid out in a sequence that must have taken hours to organize this cleanly. A man building a case not for a courtroom but for his own understanding, piece by piece, alone, late at night while I slept upstairs unaware.

And there’s a page about me too, further back, photographs I recognize now as the ones Dimitri originally gathered, alongside handwritten notes in margins that read less like surveillance and more like a man trying to understand a stranger he’d unexpectedly married.

Works nights. Raising her niece alone since her sister’s death. Doesn’t ask for help easily.

I sit down on the study floor, folder open across my lap, and I read through months of Viktor’s private accounting of a war I only fully understood a few days ago, and something in my chest that’s been holding steady since the hangar finally starts to give way.

This is what he was carrying alone. Not just secrets, but this, pages and pages of careful, obsessive documentation, a man trying to solve an impossible problem by himself because he genuinely believed that was the only way to actually keep me safe.

I’m still sitting there, folder open, eyes wet, when Viktor finds me.

He doesn’t say anything right away. He just sits down across from me on the study floor, close enough that our knees almost touch, and waits, giving me the space to finish whatever I’m working through without rushing me past it.

“This is everything,” I say finally, gesturing at the folder. “All of it. Every single thing you were carrying by yourself.”

“Most of it, yes.”

“You built an entire case file on my own life before you’d even really gotten to know me.”

“I did. I’m not proud of how it started. I’ve told you that before.” He watches me, unsure yet which direction this conversation is heading. “I’m not sure what you want me to say about it now.”

“I don’t want you to say anything yet.” I close the folder, setting it aside, and look at him properly, really looking, the way I’ve been trying to since the hallway in this house when everything finally came apart between us. “I want to tell you something instead.”

“Okay.”

“I forgive you.” The words come out steadier than I expect, certain in a way I didn’t anticipate feeling until I actually said them out loud. “Not because enough time’s passed, though it has. Not because I’ve forgotten how angry I was, because I haven’t, not entirely. I forgive you because I finally understand what this actually was.”

“Harper.”

“Let me finish.” I take his hand, holding it the way I have countless times since that night, though this time it feels different, less like reaching for stability and more like offering it. “You didn’t lie to me because you enjoyed keeping secrets. You lied to me, or withheld things, because you were carrying an impossible weight and you genuinely believed silence was the only way to keep Ginger and me safe from it. That’s not deception, Viktor. That’s protection that went on too long, applied wrong, but protection all the same.”

His eyes go bright, something breaking open in his expression that I’ve rarely seen from him, not even during the worst of these last few months.

“I don’t deserve that grace,” he says, voice rough. “I’ve told you that before, and I still believe it.”

“Maybe you don’t. I’m giving it to you anyway.” I squeeze his hand. “Because I watched you carry this entire folder’s worth of fear alone for months, convinced you had to protect me by keeping me blind to it, and I understand now that the silence wasn’t about trusting me less. It was about trusting yourself too much to handle it without help, until you finally couldn’t anymore.”

“That’s a generous read of it.”

“Maybe. It’s also an accurate one, once I actually sat with the whole picture instead of just the parts that hurt me directly.” I tap the folder beside us. “You annotated a photograph of me with a note about not asking for help easily. Do you understand how strange it is, reading that about yourself, written by someone else’s hand?”

“I noticed things about you before I understood what I was noticing them for.”

“I know. That’s the part that finally got through to me, sitting here. You weren’t just watching me as a threat assessment. You were trying to understand a stranger you’d married, long before either of us called this anything real.”

“I should have let you in from the beginning.”

“You should have. And you didn’t, and it nearly cost us everything more than once.” I say it plainly, not softening the truth even while extending the forgiveness. “But you did let me in, eventually. When it mattered most, when Ginger was actually in danger, you chose honesty over silence, even knowing exactly how angry it would make me. That matters, Viktor. That’s not nothing.”

He pulls me into him then, careful of my stomach, holding on like he’s still not entirely convinced I mean what I’m saying.

“I love you,” he says against my hair. “I don’t think I’ve said that enough, given everything else we’ve been navigating.”

“You’ve said it. Maybe not enough. We have time to fix that now.”

“Do we? Really?” He pulls back slightly, searching my face for the truth of it. “Pavel’s gone. Really gone, not just contained. I keep waiting to fully believe it.”

“I know the feeling.” I rest my hand against my stomach, feeling the baby shift beneath my palm, steady and unaware of how much has finally settled around it. “But I think we get to believe it now. Both of us. Together, the way we should have been facing all of this from the very beginning.”

We sit there a while longer on the study floor, the folder closed beside us, months of careful documentation finally allowed to just be history instead of an active, ongoing threat.

“What happens to all of this?” I ask, gesturing at the folder.

“Whatever you want. Burn it, keep it, box it up and never look at it again. It’s served its purpose.”

“Keep it. Somewhere out of sight but keep it.” I press my palm flat against the cover, one last time. “I want proof someday, for whoever asks, that you fought this hard for us.”

“What happens now?” I ask eventually.

“Now we get to just be a family. No more folders staying secret. No more locked studies full of things I’m keeping from you.” He kisses my temple, unhurried, certain. “Now we get to actually enjoy whatever comes next.”

I think about the nursery down the hall, painted pale yellow, waiting. I think about Ginger, already asleep upstairs, safe in a way she hasn’t been safe in months. I think about the baby due in a matter of weeks now, arriving into a family that’s finally, actually whole.

“I’d like that,” I say. “More than I know how to properly explain.”

“Then that’s what we build. Starting today.”

43

HARPER

Three weeks of ordinary life have passed since the study floor, since the folder, since I told Viktor I forgave him and actually meant it. I’ve spent most of that time simply marveling at how quiet a house can be once nothing’s actively trying to kill anyone in it.

We’ve settled into a rhythm that feels almost impossibly normal. Viktor working reasonable hours again, home for dinner every night without exception.

Ginger back to ordinary six-year-old concerns, currently deep in negotiations about what color to paint her half of a shared playroom she’s decided the baby needs.

Me, thirty-nine weeks and counting, waddling through days that finally, blessedly, contain nothing more dramatic than swollen ankles and an inability to see my own feet.

Denise still calls occasionally, less about custody now and more about how I’m holding up, the way a lawyer becomes something closer to a friend once the case that brought you together is fully resolved.

Dimitri drops by most weekends, usually with some excuse about checking security systems that everyone in the house has quietly agreed to stop pretending is his actual reason for visiting.

It’s the closest thing to peace I’ve felt since long before any of this started, and some days I still catch myself waiting for it to be taken away again, old habits refusing to fully release their grip even now.

I’m folding tiny onesies at the kitchen table when the first contraction hits, sharp enough that I have to grip the edge of the table to stay upright.

“Viktor.”

He’s beside me before I’ve even finished saying his name, hand on my back, already reading the situation correctly. “Contraction?”

“I think so. It might be nothing.”

Another one hits four minutes later, harder than the first, and the look on his face tells me he’s already past considering it might be nothing.

“I’m calling the hospital,” he says, already moving. “And Mrs. Bennett, for Ginger.”

Everything happens fast after that, the particular efficient chaos of a household mobilizing for exactly the event we’ve been quietly preparing for over these last few weeks.

Ginger gets scooped up, delighted rather than frightened, thrilled at the prospect of a sleepover with Mrs. Bennett and full permission to stay up late watching whatever she wants.

“Call me the second the baby comes,” she instructs Viktor solemnly, backpack already packed, apparently more organized about this than either of us currently are. “I want to know immediately.”

“Immediately,” Viktor promises, kissing the top of her head. “I love you. Be good for Mrs. Bennett.”

Then it’s just the two of us, in the car, Viktor driving with careful urgency, one hand finding mine across the console every red light we hit.

“You’re doing great,” he says, as another contraction rolls through me, sharper now, closer together than I expected labor to move this fast.

“You don’t know that. You’ve never done this before either.”

“I know you specifically are doing great. That’s a fact I can verify regardless of my personal experience with childbirth.”

I laugh despite the pain, grateful for exactly this, his steady presence cutting through fear the same way it’s cut through every crisis these last several months, except this time the crisis is one we get to be excited about.

The hospital moves fast once we arrive: nurses and monitors, and a doctor who’s calm in the specific way that either means everything’s fine or that she’s simply very good at her job. Viktor stays exactly where I need him, one hand in mine, the other smoothing hair back from my face between contractions, murmuring reassurances I only half process through the growing intensity of everything happening to my body.

“You’re allowed to be scared,” I tell him, somewhere between contractions, catching the tightness around his eyes he’s trying to hide from me. “You don’t have to be steady every single second.”

“I am scared. I’m choosing to be steady anyway, because that’s what you need from me right now.” He presses a kiss to my knuckles. “Being scared doesn’t cancel out being useful. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way this year.”

Hours blur together, the particular timeless quality of labor swallowing whatever sense of clock time I started with. Viktor never leaves, not once, counting through contractions with me, feeding me ice chips, absorbing every sharp word I throw at him during the worst of it without a single complaint.

“You’re allowed to hate me a little right now,” he says, after I’ve squeezed his hand hard enough to leave marks. “I understand this isn’t entirely pleasant.”

“I don’t hate you. I hate this specific contraction. There’s a difference.”

“Fair distinction.”

It’s sometime past midnight when the monitors change, a sound I don’t fully understand but immediately recognize as wrong, the nurse’s expression shifting from routine calm into something sharper, faster.

“The baby’s heart rate’s dropping,” she says, already reaching for the call button. “I need the doctor in here now.”

Fear crashes through me instantly, cutting through the exhaustion and pain, and I grip Viktor’s hand hard enough that he winces.

“What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know yet.” His voice stays remarkably level despite the fear I can see plainly in his eyes. “But you’re not alone in this. Whatever happens, I’m right here.”

The room fills fast—the doctor and two more nurses, someone checking the monitor, someone else gently pressing against my stomach, adjusting my position. This rapid, urgency terrifies me more than any explicit words could.

“On your left side, now,” the doctor instructs, already helping guide me into position. “Oxygen, please. Let’s see if position and oxygen bring this back up before we consider anything more drastic.”

I watch the monitor over Viktor’s shoulder, numbers I don’t fully understand but can read well enough to know they’re not where they’re supposed to be, and every second that passes without improvement feels like an hour.

“We may need to move to an emergency delivery,” the doctor says, calm but fast, already prepping equipment nearby, just in case. “The heart rate’s recovering slightly with the position change, which is a good sign, but I want to be ready to act quickly if it drops again.”

“Is the baby okay?” My voice cracks entirely, panic finally breaking through everything I’ve been holding together. “Please, is my baby okay?”

“We’re watching closely. Right now, yes. I need you to trust us and follow my instructions exactly, okay?”

I nod, unable to manage words, and Viktor’s hand tightens around mine, grounding me even as his own face carries a fear I’ve genuinely never seen from him before, not at the hangar, not anywhere.

“Stay with me,” he says, forehead pressed against mine. “Harper, look at me. Stay right here with me.”

I focus on his eyes, dark and steady despite everything, and I breathe the way the doctor instructs, and the monitor’s alarming sound slowly, gradually, begins to even out again.

“There we go,” the doctor says, some of the urgency finally draining from her voice. “Heart rate’s stabilizing. Good girl. We’re going to keep a very close eye on things, but for now, we continue.”

Relief hits so hard I start crying, and Viktor kisses my forehead, my temple, whispering something that might be Russian, might just be relief with no words attached to it at all.

“You scared me,” I manage, once I can speak again.

“You scared me more.” He laughs, shaky, real, dragging a hand down his face like he’s trying to physically wipe away the last few minutes. “I’ve fought armed men in a burning hangar, and nothing came close to how afraid I just was. I’d take that fight again over these last five minutes.”

“Well, don’t get too comfortable. I’m told the actual hardest part is still coming.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not for any part of it. I’ve sat through worse than pushing, Harper. I promise you that.”

“That’s not actually comforting.”

“I’m aware. I’m still saying it.”

The doctor confirms it a few minutes later, checking the monitor one more time, satisfied with what she’s seeing. “Everything looks good now. And Harper, you’re fully dilated. It’s time to start pushing.”

I look at Viktor, exhausted and terrified and more ready than I’ve ever been for anything in my entire life, and he squeezes my hand once, steady, certain, exactly the anchor he’s been through every single moment of tonight.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Ready,” I say, and mean it completely.

44

HARPER

Pushing is nothing like anyone actually prepares you for: effort that empties everything else in the world until there’s only this- Viktor’s hand locked in mine, the doctor’s steady count, my own body doing something I didn’t know it was capable of doing.

“You’re doing so well,” Viktor murmurs against my temple, voice rough with his own exhaustion after hours of matching mine. “Almost there. I can see him.”

“Him?”

“Her. Whichever. I don’t actually know; I just needed you to hear something encouraging.”

I laugh, half sob, half genuine amusement even through the pain, and push again, and again, every ounce of strength I have left funneled into this single, overwhelming effort, the world narrowing down to nothing but Viktor’s voice and my own heartbeat and the doctor’s steady count guiding me through it.

Then, all at once, a sound fills the room that I’ll remember for the rest of my life, a thin, furious wail, indignant at having been asked to exist in the world at all, and something in my chest breaks open completely.

“He’s here,” the doctor says, lifting him, and I catch a glimpse of him before they even finish, small and red and completely perfect. “A healthy baby boy.”

“A boy.” Viktor’s voice cracks entirely, all composure gone. “Harper, we have a son.”

I start crying the moment the words actually land, relief and joy tangled together after months of fear I’d almost forgotten how to set down. After the scare tonight, after everything leading up to it, hearing the word healthy attached to my son feels like the single greatest sentence anyone’s ever said to me.

They place him on my chest a moment later, warm and impossibly small, and I look down at him and feel something settle into place that I don’t think I ever fully knew was missing until exactly this moment.

“Hi,” I whisper, voice shaking. “Hi, baby. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Viktor leans over both of us, one hand resting against the baby’s back, the other still holding mine, and I watch him take in his son for the first time, tears he doesn’t bother hiding at all.

“He’s perfect,” Viktor says. “Absolutely perfect.”

“He’s got your nose.”

“Poor child.”

I laugh again, exhausted and overwhelmed and happier than I’ve felt in longer than I can remember, and we stay like that a while, just the three of us, before the nurses gently take him to be checked and cleaned, promising to bring him right back.

By the time Viktor lets Ginger and Dimitri into the room, I’m sitting up, exhausted but steady, our son back in my arms, wrapped in a soft blue blanket that somehow already looks like it belongs to him.

Ginger bursts through the door fully awake at three in the morning, can manage, Mrs. Bennett having apparently driven her over the second Viktor’s call came through, still in her pajamas, one shoe missing entirely.

“Is it here? Is it a boy or a girl?”

“A boy,” I tell her, and her whole face lights up.

“Can I see him? Can I hold him?”

“Come here, gently.”

She climbs onto the edge of the bed with real care, and I shift the baby so she can see his face properly, and she stares down at him with total, silent wonder, all her usual chatter momentarily gone.

“He’s so small,” she whispers.

“You were this small once too.”

“I don’t believe that.” She reaches out one gentle finger, letting the baby’s tiny hand close around it, her whole face softening into pure, uncomplicated love. “Hi. I’m Ginger. I’m your big sister.”

Dimitri hangs back near the doorway, giving the moment space, though I catch him wiping at his eyes when he thinks nobody’s watching, tie loosened, looking more disheveled than I’ve ever seen him, like he came straight from wherever he’d been the second Viktor called.

“Come meet him properly,” I tell him, and he crosses the room slowly, careful in a way I’ve never quite seen from him before.

“He’s beautiful, Harper.” Dimitri’s voice is thick with something he’s clearly trying to keep controlled. “You did good. Both of you.”

“Thank you for everything,” I tell him, meaning far more than tonight alone. “For all of it. I don’t think we’d be standing here without you.”

“Don’t get sentimental on me tonight, Harper. I haven’t slept, and my composure is fragile.” But he says it with a small, real smile, and rests one hand gently against the baby’s back before stepping away.

“We haven’t picked a name yet,” Viktor says, looking between all of us. “We had a few ideas, but nothing that felt entirely right until we actually met him.”

“I have an idea,” Ginger announces immediately, still watching the baby with rapt attention.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Dragon.”

Viktor chokes on a laugh, and I press my lips together, trying not to fully dissolve into laughter myself given how seriously she’s proposed it.

“That’s a wonderful nickname for later,” I tell her gently. “But maybe not his actual name. Judges and teachers might have questions.”

“Fine.” She considers this with visible disappointment, brow furrowed in real concentration, then brightens almost immediately. “What about Drake, then? It still means dragon. I looked it up on Mrs. Bennett’s tablet.”

“You looked up dragon names in preparation for this,” Dimitri says, clearly delighted. “That’s either the most impressive or most concerning six-year-old planning I’ve ever witnessed.”

“Both,” Ginger says, entirely unbothered by the distinction.

“She gets that focus from her aunt,” Viktor says, watching me with visible affection. “Once Harper decides something matters, there’s no talking her out of it either.”

“I resent that comparison being used against me while I’m holding a newborn.”

“It’s a compliment. I promise.”

Viktor and I exchange a glance, warmth passing between us at the suggestion, unexpectedly perfect in a way neither of us anticipated from a six-year-old’s persistence.

“Drake,” Viktor repeats, testing the sound of it. “I actually like that. It’s strong. Distinctive.”

“As a middle name,” I add. “What do you think? Alexander Drake?”

“Alexander Drake Markov,” Viktor says, the whole name slowly, like he’s committing it permanently to memory. “I think that’s exactly right.”

Ginger beams, thoroughly satisfied with herself, already announcing to Dimitri that she personally named the baby, a claim he doesn’t bother disputing.

I look around the room, at Viktor holding his son’s tiny hand like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever touched, at Ginger curled against my side studying her new brother with fierce, protective attention, at Dimitri standing close enough to be part of this family without ever needing to be asked. Something settles fully into place in my chest, complete in a way I don’t think I’ve felt since before Mia died.

We survived everything that tried to take this from us. The custody case, Pavel, the hangar, months of secrets, silence, and fear. And here we are anyway, whole, together, safe, welcoming a new life into a family that fought this hard to keep every single piece of itself intact.

“Welcome to the family, Alexander,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to his tiny forehead. “You have no idea how hard everyone worked to get you here safely.”

EPILOGUE

VIKTOR

Six months in, and Alexander’s discovered his own voice, a fact he demonstrates loudly and often, currently shrieking with delight as Ginger makes increasingly ridiculous faces at him from across his blanket on the living room floor.

“He likes me best,” Ginger announces. “Watch.”

She makes another face, and Alexander shrieks again, kicking his legs with the particular joy only a baby who hasn’t yet learned self-control can manage, and Harper laughs from the kitchen doorway, watching the two of them with an expression I’ve come to recognize as her particular brand of quiet contentment.

“He likes everyone,” Harper says. “You’re just louder about claiming credit.”

“That’s called confidence, Aunt Harper.”

“That’s called being seven.”

Ginger’s turned seven since the birth, a fact she reminds everyone of with some regularity, apparently considering it a significant upgrade in status. Second grade suits her, judging by the enthusiasm with which she reports classroom developments most evenings, and the treehouse still gets regular use, though these days she’s more likely to bring a book up there than a stuffed dragon.

I watch this exchange from my chair by the window, invoice work forgotten in my lap, unable to focus on anything as mundane as numbers when the actual view in front of me is considerably more interesting. Six months since the birth, nearly a year since the reveal, and some days I still find myself simply watching this family exist in a house that no longer needs cameras built into the landscaping to feel safe.

Renata arrives just past noon, exactly as promised, carrying a cake box and an expression that suggests she’s already planning to overstay her welcome by several hours, which by now is simply how she visits.

“I come bearing sugar and gossip,” she announces, setting the box down and immediately scooping Alexander up before either Harper or Ginger can object. “Hello, handsome. Has your mother told you yet that she used to work the world’s most thankless front desk job before she landed all this?”

“Don’t corrupt him with hotel stories,” Harper says, though she’s smiling.

“I’m building character. There’s a difference.” Renata settles onto the couch, Alexander perfectly content in her arms, and looks around the room with the satisfaction of someone who’s watched this entire story unfold from the very beginning. “I still can’t believe this is the same woman who used to complain about the broken ice machine on the third floor.”

“That machine was still broken when I left.”

“Some injustices never get resolved.” Renata glances at me, something warm and slightly teasing in her expression. “And you. Still can’t believe you actually turned out to be a decent husband. I had my doubts, you know. Strip club owner marrying a woman who mistook you for a dancer. Not exactly a fairy tale opening.”

“I’ve been informed several times that I exceeded expectations.”

“Low bar, but you cleared it admirably.” She adjusts Alexander against her shoulder, patting his back absently. “I still tell people about it sometimes, you know. The version where I don’t have to explain the actual complicated parts. Coworker proposes to a club owner on a whim, marries him, ends up happier than anyone I know. People love that story.”

“They’d love the real version considerably less,” Harper says dryly.

“The real version has excellent bones. It just needs a better editor for polite company.”

“Ginger, tell me everything about school. Leave nothing out, I want the full report.”

Ginger launches into an enthusiastic account of second grade politics, something about a classroom hamster and an ongoing dispute over recess equipment, and Harper settles onto the arm of my chair, close enough that I rest a hand against her back without either of us discussing it, the easy, unguarded intimacy of two people who’ve stopped needing permission to simply be close.

“She talks about you a lot, you know,” Harper says quietly, watching Renata and Ginger. “Renata. When Ginger’s telling stories about her week, half of them somehow end up involving her too.”

“She’s good for her. Good for both of you.”

“She’s good for all of us.” Harper leans into me slightly, and I press a kiss to the top of her head, unhurried, an ordinary gesture between us now, one I barely register doing anymore, though it still means everything it ever did.

Dinner that evening is loud and chaotic in the particular way family dinners apparently always are, Ginger narrating her hamster saga in exhaustive detail, Alexander banging a spoon against his highchair tray with enthusiastic disregard for anyone’s eardrums, Renata staying long past when she should have left, exactly as expected.

It’s well past nine by the time she finally goes, and the house settles into the quieter rhythm of bedtime, Ginger reading herself to sleep now most nights, proud of the skill in a way that makes my chest ache every time she mentions it, Alexander down for the night after his own elaborate routine of songs and rocking that Harper insists is necessary and I’ve long since stopped questioning.

I find Harper on the back porch afterward, wine in hand, feet tucked beneath her the same way she’s settled onto this porch a hundred times before, though tonight, watching her, I’m struck by how completely different this moment is from every version that came before it.

“You’re staring,” she says, without opening her eyes.

“I’m allowed to stare at my own wife.”

“You’ve said that exact line before.”

“It remains true every single time I say it.” I sit beside her, close enough that our shoulders touch, and take the offered glass she’s already poured for me, an old habit neither of us bothers commenting on anymore. “I was thinking about the club tonight. About the night you walked in and mistook me for a stranger you could hire for a few months.”

“That feels like a lifetime ago.”

“It does. And it doesn’t, somehow, both at once.” I turn the wine glass slowly, watching the porch light catch it. “I agreed to that arrangement because it cost me nothing. Because I genuinely believed a temporary marriage to a stranger was the easiest, least complicated transaction I’d make all year.”

“You were spectacularly wrong.”

“Spectacularly,” I agree. “I don’t think I understood, standing in that hallway shaking your hand, that I was agreeing to the single most significant decision of my entire life. Not the marriage itself. Everything it eventually became.”

Harper’s quiet a moment, studying me with the particular focus she still brings to conversations that matter.

“Do you regret any of it? The way it started, I mean. How complicated it got before it got easy.”

“Not for a single second.” I mean it completely, the truth of it settling somewhere solid in my chest. “Every difficult piece of this, the silence, the danger, everything I got wrong before I finally got it right, all of it led directly here. I wouldn’t trade the ease of a simpler path for a version of my life that doesn’t include exactly this family.”

“Even the parts where I was furious with you for months at a time?”

“Especially those parts. They taught me I could survive your anger and still keep you, which is more than I ever expected to learn about myself.”

She leans into me, resting her head against my shoulder, and we sit there together a long while, the house quiet behind us, both children finally asleep, danger finally, genuinely behind us in a way I still sometimes have to remind myself to fully believe.

“I love you,” she says eventually, simple, certain, no hesitation left in it at all. “I don’t think I say that enough, given everything we’ve survived to actually get here.”

“You say it exactly enough. And I love you too, more than I knew I was capable of feeling for anyone, before you walked into my club and changed the entire trajectory of my life without either of us realizing it yet.”

She laughs, soft and warm, and tips her face up to kiss me, unhurried, certain, nothing left between us that needs protecting or hiding or managing anymore.

I hold the woman who walked into my club with nothing but nerve and a ridiculous proposal, and I understand completely how lucky I am that she did.

The End.

My dearest reader, thank you for reading Marrying the Pakhan!

If, like me, you couldn’t get enough of Harper and Viktor, then click here to get your bonus epilogue.

P.S. If you enjoyed reading Marrying the Pakhan, then I think you’ll enjoy Baby for My Ex’s Brother! Swipe to the next page for a quick sneak peek…

I crashed my ex’s wedding for revenge…

My fake date?

His estranged older stepbrother…

My ex-fiancé cheated…

So I made a plan:

Crash his wedding…

And humiliate him in front of two hundred guests.

But his ruthless stepbrother caught me,

Dragged me into a closet,

And made me an offer I couldn’t refuse…

Play his fake date…

And give his little brother a wedding he’ll never forget.

Ivan Fedorov.

The scarred silver fox Bratva kingpin who walks into a room…

And owns every inch of it.

One dance.

One night.

Two pink lines.

If revenge wasn’t sweet enough?

Now I’m pregnant with my ex’s brother’s baby too…

1

LUNA

I’ve rehearsed this speech forty-seven times.

I know because I counted. Twice in the shower this morning, six times on the L, three times in the Uber from the stop because I was running late, and the rest in the mirror of my apartment while I did my makeup and told myself I was absolutely, one hundred percent going to do this.

I’m going to walk through those doors, find Hugo Dumas in whatever obscenely expensive suit he bought for his obscenely expensive wedding to the woman he cheated on me with, and I’m going to say what I came here to say.

I’ve got it memorized. It’s a good speech. It opens strong, has a solid emotional throughline, and ends with a line I borrowed from a documentary about a Victorian poisoner who smiled at her sentencing. Cherry said it was “unhinged in the best possible way.” Mike said it made him want to stand up and clap, but he once cried at a fabric softener commercial, so the bar there is debatable.

The point is, I’ve prepared.

But what I have not prepared for is the Elysian Hotel.

I knew the wedding was being held here because Hugo used to talk about this place as if it were a religious experience, some temple to the kind of wealth that didn’t announce itself because it didn’t have to. His family owns the place, but did he ever take me here?

Nope.

The exterior alone is enough to make you feel underdressed at the cellular level—pale stone and iron and the kind of architectural detail that says we have always had money and we always will—and I’m standing on the sidewalk in front of it, and the massive ornate brass and glass doors are right there. Suddenly, my forty-seven rehearsals are doing absolutely nothing for the certainty that I’m about to make a very public, very permanent mistake.

But I look good. That part, at least, I got right.

The dress is black silk and flares just slightly at the knee, low-cut in a way that screams scandalous-but-appropriate—the exact the energy I was going for. I even used a little bronzer to make my cleavage pop, since the neckline plunges between my tits.

But… What the fuck am I doing?

I never wear anything like this. My normal aesthetic runs more toward black jeans and oversized vintage tees and secondhand boots that have seen things. This dress is a different species entirely. It makes me feel like someone who knows exactly what she’s doing and where she’s going, which is useful right now because I’m faking both.

My hair is up, black and pinned into something that took forty minutes and two YouTube tutorials, with the white streak at my left temple curled and framing my face on purpose. Hugo used to ask me, gently, repeatedly, if I’d ever thought about dyeing it. I never did.

Tonight, it feels like a flag I’m planting.

I smooth the dress. I check my clutch for my phone and lipstick. Got it. I take a breath and walk toward the doors.

Inside, there’s enough marble and gold and warm chandelier light to give me pause. But I came here for revenge, and I’m not leaving until I get it. I will humiliate Hugo in front of his new bride, the woman who apparently has no sense of solidarity with other women.

Excuse me, it should be more like child. She’s twenty-one, for fuck’s sake.

I march toward the sign that reads, “Dumas-Witte Reception,” and make it approximately twelve steps before a hand closes around my elbow.

It’s a large hand, and it comes from a large person—I process this in the half-second before I turn, a looming figure at my periphery.

Security. Fuck.

My second thought is I should have gotten a plus-one, because there’s nothing that says ‘I belong here’ quite like another human being vouching for your existence with their physical presence.

The security guard is tall in a way that requires a slight recalibration of my field of vision, silver at the temples of dark hair that’s gone mostly gray, and he has the kind of face that isn’t handsome so much as significant—all hard angles and a jaw that could break his teeth if he’s not careful. Those eyes are chilling, though, so I don’t struggle.

They’re nearly black.

Now that I’m really looking at this mountain, there’s history written all over that hard face. Scars. Not subtle ones. A thin one bisects his left brow. Another traces the edge of his jaw. Even with his salt and pepper stubble, that scar can’t hide. His hands are scarred, too, and tattooed, ink climbing past the crisp cuff of his suit jacket—which is, I notice despite myself, an extraordinarily well-made suit. Very dark. Very precise.

The grip on my elbow is not painful.

Security, I remind myself. Rich-person security, which is apparently just regular security in better clothing.

“Okay,” I say, giving him a sheepish smile. “You’ve got me. I admit it. I’m deeply suspicious. But you don’t need to manhandle me.”

He doesn’t respond to this. He simply moves, one hand at my elbow, steering me away from the doors with the calm efficiency of a man returning a book to a shelf, and I’m apparently going with him because my feet are making that decision before my brain files its objection.

“I can explain why I’m here, just let go,” I say, mostly to his profile, which does not react.

We stop in front of a door I hadn’t noticed, tucked into the wood-paneled wall of the corridor just inside the lobby, and he opens it, and we are, inexplicably, in a coat closet.

A very nice coat closet, because this is the Elysian Hotel and even the places they store things are lovely—cedar and dim warm light from a single overhead fixture, coats and jackets on a long brass rail, a shelf above stacked with hat boxes that probably contain actual hats. The door closes behind us with a soft, definitive click.

And I’m trapped in a room with a man three times my size and zero sense of humor about these things. I turn to face him in about fourteen inches of available space, which means I’m also tipping my head back to maintain eye contact, which I resent on principle.

“I’ve been to smaller apartments.”

Still nothing.

“Not mine,” I clarify. “Mine is a reasonable size. I’m just saying, as closets go⁠—”

“You’re Luna Ambrose.” His voice is low and vibrates in my spine, as if he growls more than speaks. It stops me mid-sentence, the same way a hand on a shoulder stops a spinning thing.

I guess Hugo expected me. Dammit.

“Twenty-eight,” he continues, unhurried. “Candle shop on Wicker Park. Previously engaged to Hugo Dumas for approximately eight months, during three years together. The engagement ended within a week of his newest engagement’s beginning.”

“Are you—” I pause, and then restart. “Did Hugo hire you to keep me out? Because I didn’t realize he took me so seriously, considering everything.”

“I’m not employed by Hugo.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Then how do you know who I am?”

He looks at me for a moment, and his expression doesn’t change in any meaningful way. “I make it my business to know who attends events at my hotel.”

“Your hotel.”

“My hotel.”

I process this. “So you’re not security.”

“No.”

“You’re—” I stop again. Look at him. At the suit, the scars. “Who are you?”

“I’m Ivan Fedorov. Hugo’s stepbrother.”

Hugo never spoke much about his family, or his friends, or anything too deep. He kept that part of his life in a separate compartment with the lid on tight. At first, I thought he was just private. But over the years, I realized he was connected. I knew enough to understand that his family’s business was not the kind of thing you Googled unless you wanted the FBI to start a file on you.

I knew he had an older stepbrother, but the name was never offered.

“You’re at your stepbrother’s wedding,” I say slowly, because I’m still orienting.

“I am.”

“In a coat closet.”

His lip twitches. “Temporarily.”

“With me.”

“Also temporarily,” he says, and then, with no change in tone whatsoever, “though that’s negotiable.”

“And what are we negotiating, exactly?” I fold my arms across my chest. “If you know who I am, you know I’m not a real threat. I was just going to go in there and say my piece and⁠—”

“And make a scene at a wedding in my hotel,” he cuts in. “In front of two hundred guests, a third of whom have a professional relationship with me.”

“I wasn’t going to make a scene⁠—”

He looks at me, an eyebrow raising.

“It’s a very dignified speech,” I continue, “One I designed to surgically eviscerate your stepbrother in front of his new child bride.” Which gives me pause. “Okay, maybe I was going to make a tiny scene⁠—”

“Right.” He reaches into the interior pocket of his jacket, produces a slim silver case, and I think for a surreal moment that he’s about to offer me a cigarette, but he just opens and closes it once—a thinking gesture, maybe—and puts it away. “Hugo has recently made things very difficult for me. Professionally. This marriage is a problem I didn’t need and didn’t consent to.” He pauses. “We had words, before the ceremony.”

I think about Hugo and this man having words and decide that it must have been a very specific and probably one-sided kind of words. Like an Italian Greyhound going up against a Mastiff.

An angry Mastiff.

“He said some things,” Ivan continues, “that I would prefer to respond to personally.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

He looks at me then with the full weight of those almost-black eyes, and I become briefly and intensely aware that I’m in a very small space with a very large, very serious person who has, by his own account, reasons to want Hugo Dumas to suffer, which puts us in rare and somewhat alarming company. At some point, Hugo cared about me. If this giant wants revenge…

“Um—”

“You want him to see you happy. Unbroken. With someone he cannot compete with.” He says this without vanity, which somehow makes it worse. Or better? I can’t decide. “I want him to understand that his position is not what he believes it to be. That his choices have consequences.”

It clicks. “So you want to use me to upset him at his own wedding.”

“I want to offer you the opportunity to upset him at his own wedding. A speech is all well and good, but what is the old phrase? Show, don’t tell?”

Feels like a pity to waste all that time on a speech and not use it.

But the same is true of this dress. If I go in there and do my speech and leave, what was the point of the dress? What was the point of any of this, if I don’t ruin his big day properly?

I purse my lips, and then take the bait. “Okay, what exactly are you proposing then, Ivan?”

He looks at me in the warm, dim light of a coat closet in his own hotel. “Play my date tonight, and we’ll show Hugo what it means to regret. Together.”

A dozen thoughts come to mind. Cherry would want me to ask follow-up questions. Uncle Marty would tell me to try any approach I wanted, because he supports me no matter what. My therapist, if I had one, would strongly advise against doing any of this, because it’s crazy.

Which is all the answer I need.

I smile up at Ivan. “Yes.”

2

IVAN

Luna Ambrose walks into a room the way a match strikes, and now, Hugo is on fire.

He notices us the moment we cross the threshold. The color drains out of his face in a way that is, I will admit, deeply satisfying. He’s standing near the head table with a glass of champagne and his new father-in-law, looking exactly as he always looks—polished, handsome, and performative.

And when we walk in, the performance stuttered.

Luna makes a small sound beside me. “Look at his face⁠—”

“No.” I keep my eyes forward, nodding to a man I recognize from the hotel’s catering contract. “If we look, then he knows we’re doing this for him. Let him wonder what is going on. Let him stew on it.”

She glances away. I can feel the effort it takes her. She smiles at a passing guest she has never met in her life with the warm ease of someone who belongs here entirely, and I revise my estimation of her upward by several degrees.

For all his bitching about this woman, Luna is rather impressive. She takes my cues well, not faltering in the slightest. I wonder how long she’s been performing for rooms, too. That kind of talent comes from years of practice.

We make a slow circuit of the room. I stop to greet two men I do business with, a city alderman who owes me a favor he pretends not to remember, and a woman who manages three of my legitimate properties. I introduce her to Luna without elaboration.

Elizabeth smiles. “So nice to meet you. Wasn’t the wedding lovely?”

“The best of the season so far,” Luna says like a cheeky debutant.

“I know exactly what you mean. This early in the season, you never know what you’ll find.”

They chatter, and I make note of the fact that Hugo doesn’t approach.

He won’t. He’s smarter than he is wise, which means he knows better than to make the first move without understanding what he’s walking into.

During a lull in conversation, Luna leans close enough that I can hear her without her raising her voice. “You were right about how to play this.” A pause. “He’s fuming.”

She laughs then, and it’s a better sound than anything else in this room, which is full of an orchestra and two hundred people performing wealth at each other.

This arrangement is temporary, but there’s no reason a man can’t appreciate a thing he does not intend to keep.

I shift my gaze toward him, and sure enough, he’s pinching at his coat, as if there’s something on it. Fuming, indeed.

When the orchestra shifts tempo, I offer my hand.

She looks at it, then at me. “Are we dancing?”

“We are.”

“Do you actually dance, or is this one of those things where you stand in one place and sway with authority?”

“Come and find out.”

She takes my hand.

The song is fast enough that it requires genuine effort, and Luna meets it without hesitation—she moves well, easily, without self-consciousness, and I find myself adjusting to match her rather than leading outright, which is not something I typically do. We draw attention, which is not surprising. I’m known, and if they don’t know me, I’m large. I tend to gather eyes wherever I go.

But more than that, Luna is enchanting.

Her onyx black hair is striking against her pale ivory skin—elegant black paint on a blank canvas. And the crisp white curl near her temple, like a forties starlet, swirls near her bright green eyes. By its root, a mottled scar at her hairline. The white streak is from some kind of old injury she doesn’t bother to hide.

I like that. And I like that she smells like flowers.

The tempo moves through me, and as I follow the music, a memory surfaces. An ugly one.

The argument was nothing new, taken piece by piece. Hugo has been sharpening his resentments for years, and I’ve let most of them pass because the cost of responding was higher than the cost of endurance.

I’ve always understood cost. It comes with the job.

But yesterday he had assembled all of it at once—every grievance, every cruelty—and delivered it in the corridor outside the hotel ballroom where his wedding rehearsal dinner had just concluded, in the voice of a man who had finally decided he had nothing left to lose. After all, he’s the public face of the organization. The one who shows up at the legitimate functions, the one who talks to the cameras for us.

Hugo has a good face. Classically handsome, confident. He knows how to move in a room full of important people. In another life, he would’ve made a great politician.

But I’m his stepbrother, and I run the Fedorov Bratva.

So really, in this life, he’s just our mask.

I maintain power, in part, because my stepbrother knows how to talk our way into rooms we wouldn’t otherwise be invited to. His work keeps part of the business legit, and that’s an invaluable person to have.

For now.

But his impending wedding cracked something in him. I don’t know whether he felt guilt over dumping Luna the moment a strategic woman became available or if he was merely feeling his importance, but Hugo lost his composure long enough to piss me off last night.

“You’re a relic,” he’d said. “The men who matter have moved past you. You dress it up in loyalty and tradition, but what you are is afraid.”

He had more champagne in him than judgment, so I let it slide. That was a mistake. I should’ve called him out then and there, but for the sake of familial harmony—what little of it there is—I tried to hold my tongue. “You’re drunk. Go sleep it off.”

He spat, “And you will die alone in that oversized penthouse you call a home, Ivan. No one wants to stand beside a man who looks like you. Who is like you.” His eyes moved over my face, my hands, with the contemptuous ease of someone who has rehearsed this too. “Look at you. You’re a monster. What woman would want you?”

“Perhaps one day, we’ll find out. Do be careful on the stairs, Hugo. I’d hate for you to have an accident.” I had stomped away, letting the threat hang in the air.

I’m human. His bullshit stung.

Hugo’s fourteen years my junior—my forty-eight to his thirty-four—but he still knows how to get under my skin. He’s known how since his mother married my father all those years ago. He was nothing but a nerdy teenager with a chip on his shoulder back then, but he always knew how to get on my nerves.

Maybe all younger brothers are this way. I’m not sure.

I can’t help that I’m six and a half feet tall. No, I will not stop lifting weights, so I will remain this large as long as I’m breathing. The scars… I could take steps to stop accumulating them, but that would hinder my business. The tattoos? They’re a part of who I am.

And he has always hated every inch of me. He resents that I’m his boss, that I’m the reason his life is so easy. All he has to do is show up, look and sound good, and that’s it. He’s overpaid and underworked, and he hates me for it. I always assumed it was because I don’t bother to engage his mind in his work, but I stopped analyzing him long ago. It’s not worth the effort.

Hugo is something I endure because he makes me money. Any brotherly bond that could’ve existed was extinguished long ago.

Now, on this dancefloor, with his new wife watching from a table and his face doing something terrible at the sight of me with Luna, I’m not a relic. Here, I’m the pakhan of an organization he will never run, in possession of a woman he discarded and is now regretting, and the accounting, as far as I’m concerned, is settling itself very nicely.

The song ends. Luna tips her face up toward mine, slightly flushed, and says, “You actually dance.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I had the sway-with-authority theory going pretty strong.”

“Noted.”

She laughs again. There it is again. That music in her.

We move to the bar, and I order. “Russian Standard for me. Luna?”

“Singapore Sling.”

The bartender blinks once before starting her cocktail, and she seems satisfied by his reaction. But my bartenders aren’t the type to not know a classic, and our drinks are up in under a minute.

Armin finds me as soon as he walks into the room. My sovetnik is compact, sharp-eyed, Cypriot by birth, Chicagoan by temperament, and he looks at Luna with his trademark unreadable assessment. “Mr. Fedorov.” Then, with the calibrated courtesy of a man who understands optics, “Good evening, miss.”

“Luna, this is my associate, Armin. Armin, Luna is my date this evening.”

She smiles charmingly. “I’ve met more people at this reception than I did in all my years with Hugo. It’s a refreshing change.”

She lore-drops brilliantly. She made it clear we’re together, and that she was Hugo’s girlfriend for a time, all without making it awkward.

I watch Armin recalibrate in real time, the way a man does when something turns out to be more than he expected. He smiles and holds up his glass. “To changes, may they always be refreshing.”

We drink, and he excuses himself. I explain to Luna, “He does these little check-ins at stressful functions to keep tabs on my mood. He thinks I don’t know, but I do. I’ve known Armin Kazarian far too long not to see what he’s doing.”

“What’s his real job?”

Sovetnik. “Something between an assistant and an advisor.”

“Does everyone here work for you?”

“A reasonable percentage.”

She considers this, turning her glass slowly. “And Hugo?”

“Him, too.”

She nods, not pressing, and I find I don’t mind that she doesn’t press. Most people want more than I’m offering. Luna Ambrose seems to understand discretion better than most.

Across the room, Hugo excuses himself from his new father-in-law and takes his wife’s hand with the studied ease of a man who’s performing contentment for an audience.

Olga Witte—Olga Dumas, now, though the name will take getting used to—smiles up at him with the unclouded warmth of someone who does not yet know she should be asking questions.

She’s very young. But that’s not her fault.

It’s her father’s. Pyotr Witte is a traditional man. He kept her in all-girls schools throughout her life, sheltering her from the realities of the world. I suppose I understand the urge, but now, she’s tied to Hugo. A fate I would not wish upon anyone.

Hugo doesn’t look at us directly. He hasn’t once, not since that first moment at the door. He’s good at this—acting like he doesn’t care—but I know him well enough to read the tension in his shoulders and the way he holds his glass a fraction too tightly.

He wanted to marry into Pyotr Witte’s weapons empire. He wanted the alliance, the elevation, the proof that he could build something I couldn’t take from him. And he has all of it, technically. The marriage happened. The alliance exists. Technically.

Pyotr is not the kind of man who gives something for nothing, and certainly not his daughter. It makes me wonder what Hugo promised him in exchange. Pyotr has long wanted to do business with me.

The next few weeks will be enlightening.

Luna says something to the woman beside her at the bar—a guest I don’t recognize—and within sixty seconds they’re discussing something that makes them both laugh, heads tilted toward each other like they’ve known each other for years.

Why Hugo thought so little of her, I will never understand.

I’m not built for rooms like this. I’m built for the work that happens before and after rooms like this—the calls, the pressure, the mathematics of loyalty and consequence. I’m here tonight because my absence would have been its own message, and I’ve spent years ensuring that every message I send is intentional.

The orchestra moves into something slower. Around us, the room softens and rearranges, couples drifting toward the floor. I glance over at Luna. She’s turned back from her new acquaintance, and she meets my eyes with the directness that I’m beginning to understand is simply how she looks at things.

The slower song would mean a different proximity. A different kind of conversation. I would have the chance to pin down what flower she smells like.

And if I share a slow, intimate dance with Luna in front of all these important people, Hugo will have a fit.

3

LUNA

Hugo’s near the cake now, standing with Olga, a photographer, and two people who are probably her parents. Hugo has his hand on Olga’s waist and is smiling for the camera.

It’s his fake smile. I know it anywhere.

The photographer’s flash goes off. Hugo blinks, and in the half-second before he reassembles the smile, I see the falter. The glance in our direction. The readjustment he thinks no one else notices. The return of that dental billboard smile.

The orchestra shifts to something slower, and Ivan puts down his glass.

He offers his hand, and I look at it for a moment—this large, scarred, tattooed hand that has been at the small of my back all evening like it belongs there—and take it.

The floor is fuller now, couples moving in close, the lights dimmed another degree from wherever they were before. He draws me in, and I go, one hand in his, the other at his shoulder, and we are—closer than the fast song, close enough I can feel the warmth coming off him through his shirt and smell the leather of him that I’ve been failing to not notice since the coat closet.

He moves controlled. Everything about him is controlled, which makes me wonder what he’s like when he loses control.

Strangely, Hugo has become the last thing on my mind. I was here for revenge against him, but he’s on the periphery at most.

Let him watch. Let him try to work out what this is, what I’m to his stepbrother, and why I’m here in a dress that cost too much, slow-dancing with his stepbrother like I was always going to end up here.

Honestly, I’d like to know the answer to that last one myself. Ivan, for all his rough edges, is a magnet. I like being next to him. Or better yet, in his arms.

“You’re not thinking about him anymore,” Ivan says, his arm around my waist.

“I’m allowed to take a break from my revenge.”

“Mm.”

“Don’t ‘mm’ me. It’s been a long night.”

“It has,” he agrees, his hand shifting slightly at my back.

I lose my train of thought.

We finish the dance without talking. That’s fine. It’s better than fine—I’m not, generally speaking, someone who needs to fill silence, and Ivan clearly isn’t built for small talk.

What he is built for, I’m not sure. But I’d like to find out.

Pressed up against this wall of a man, there are all kinds of things I’d like to know about him. Something deep inside me melts when I’m in his arms, and I don’t know how to pretend otherwise. Ever since he stole me away into a coat closet, I’ve felt this thing I don’t really understand.

I’ve never had a one-night stand before, but I think I get the appeal now.

When the song ends, Ivan doesn’t step back immediately. There’s a beat—half a second, maybe less—where we’re still close, and the next song hasn’t started, the room moving around us without noticing we’ve stopped.

His head tips down at the same time mine tips up. His sinister eyes narrow to my lips as he crosses the invisible border between us.

I meet him there, pulse throbbing in my ears, my chest, and lower.

When our lips brush, there’s a spark. I grip his collar and pull him close to me so I can ignite it. His mouth parts, and his tongue glides over mine, all vodka and questionable choices.

This. This is what I need.

We don’t say goodbye to Hugo. We don’t say goodbye to anyone. The reception continues behind us. The cake will be cut, the bouquet thrown, the band will play another two hours of songs for people who’ve had enough champagne to dance badly and not mind.

But none of it matters.

The elevator doors close, and Ivan Fedorov kisses me as though he’s already decided how this ends.

His hand comes up to my jaw, tilting my face to his, and the other finds the small of my back and pulls, and I go—because what else would I do, what possible argument exists against this. The marble wall of the elevator is cold through my silk dress, but he’s not cold at all.

Sure, I’ve been kissed before. I’m on fire now.

His mouth is certain in the same way the rest of him is certain, like he’s never done anything without full commitment once in his life, and I feel it from my jaw to my knees, which have become unreliable. My hands find the lapels of his jacket and hold on, mostly for structural support.

He pulls back just far enough to look at me. His thumb traces my lower lip, unhurried, studying the effect of what he just did with the calm attention of a man taking inventory.

“Camera,” I say, because my brain has produced this word and I’m not sure why, but it turns out to be correct. There is, in fact, a small camera mounted in the upper corner of the elevator, its red light patient and unblinking.

Ivan looks at it. Then he shrugs off his jacket in one motion and drapes it over the camera mount with the ease of a man who’s done exactly this before or is simply constitutionally unbothered by improvisation.

The red light disappears.

“No camera,” he says, and comes back to me.

This kiss is different—deeper, unhurried now that the variables have been managed, his hand sliding from my jaw into my hair. He finds the pins holding it up and removes two of them with a patience that’s somehow more devastating than urgency would have been. The dark mass of it falls partially loose, and he makes a low sound against my mouth.

Then his hands move. The silk of my dress is thin enough that it isn’t much of a barrier, and he seems aware of this in a very specific way—palms against my waist and then my hips.

The vengeful side of my mind speaks. “If Hugo could see you now…”

The thought arrives and dissolves just as fast, because Ivan’s mouth has moved to my jaw, my throat, and I lose the thread entirely.

“We should discuss what you like,” he says against my neck. Low and even, like we’re having a perfectly normal conversation, and his hands aren’t doing what his hands are doing up my dress.

I lean my head back against the wall. “Now?”

“Before we go further. Yes.”

This is, I recognize dimly, both considerate and tactically efficient, but also really inconvenient to my libido. The man’s asking me to think after he took away my thoughts.

Bad timing. But probably necessary.

I’ve done research. I’ve had late nights on the internet and one very illuminating conversation with Cherry that she swore to take to her grave. I know what I want to try. The question has always been opportunity, and opportunity is currently looking at me in an elevator, his jacket on the camera, his full and undivided attention on my answer.

“I don’t know what I like.”

He straightens and frowns. “You were with Hugo for three years—you’re not a virgin somehow, are you?”

“Not since Evan Grimes’ basement in tenth grade. What I mean is, I don’t know what I like because I’ve never had the chance to figure it out. A lot of guys… they don’t know what they’re doing, or they don’t want to experiment, because they know what gets them off, and they think that should be good enough for the girl they’re doing it to⁠—”

“Don’t you mean, doing it with?”

I laugh. Cackle, really. My energy is all over the place, and that’s such an innocent question for someone who looks like him. “No. I meant doing it to. Most guys don’t see a woman as a participant. They see her as the person they won or the person they get to fuck… if they see her as a person at all.”

He considers this. “Then it sounds like you wish to experiment.”

I swallow. “Yes.”

“In what realm do you mean?”

I did not drive across the city in four-inch heels to be coy about it now. “Kink. Bondage, spanking, blindfolds, all that stuff.”

His eyebrow goes up. A quarter of an inch, maybe less, but I catch it. He looks at me for a moment with something that isn’t quite a smile but is the closest relative of one. Then he leans closer, pressing his forehead to mine. His fingers slide beneath the edge of my underwear. “I accept your proposal.”

I stop thinking about his eyebrow.

His fingers are as certain as the rest of him, unhurried, reading me with a focus that makes the rest of the world—the elevator, the hotel, the wedding we just left, Hugo and his fuming and his terrible face—reduce to a very faint signal behind a very loud frequency.

I press back against the wall and grip his forearm. He watches my face the entire time, which should feel like too much, but instead feels like exactly the right amount of everything.

The elevator stops.

We both go still. His hand doesn’t move. The doors open onto an empty corridor, and we look out, and the doors slide shut again.

He hits the button for the penthouse.

“You live on the top floor?” My voice is impressively level, given everything.

“I do.”

“How many floors up?”

“Several.”

His fingers resume their work on my clit, and I begin to shake. His mouth devours mine, and I’m not sure which way is up anymore. All I know is this man. This mouth. Those fingers.

I’m on the edge when the elevator opens onto his private landing. My fingers grip his arm so tightly that it’s an effort to pry them loose. He unlocks the door with the ease of a man who’s not remotely affected, which is either composure or an extremely effective illusion of it, and I have not yet decided which.

The penthouse is large, dark-toned, expensive, with the whole of Chicago glittering through floor-to-ceiling windows as if arranged there specifically for the view. It smells like him. Leather.

I get approximately four seconds of impression before his hands find me again.

He walks me backward through it, unhurried, mouth at my temple, my cheek, the corner of my jaw, while his hand find the zipper at the back of my dress. The dress hits the floor somewhere near the living room. His shirt follows, and I finally get my hands on him properly, discovering the scars on his face and hands are not the only ones.

His body is a map of a life I know almost nothing about, and I trace the edge of a scar along his ribs and feel him go still beneath my fingers.

His voice rumbles there. “I want you naked.”

I gulp and look up at the mountain, taking in the full view of him. I like touching him, but the view is something to be memorized. Beneath the scars and tattoos are muscles in all directions, like his muscles have their own muscles, but there’s a thin layer of padding over all of it, too.

He looks sturdy. I never knew I liked sturdy before now, but I do.

I unclip my bra and move to take off my underwear, but he gently pushes my hand aside and pinches them at the waist before slowly lowering them. His eyes remain on my face the entire time until he kisses his way back up my naked body.

When he gets to my mouth, his hands slide over my skin until they reach my ass and lift.

I gasp as he pulls me upward, and I wrap my legs around his waist for balance. He carries me to his bedroom that way, his mouth still on mine, his hands beneath my ass. I’m not sure how he doesn’t stumble at his size with me in his arms, but the man is far more graceful than he should be.

He lays me on his bed, and I lean on my elbows to watch him remove his trousers. But I can’t take my eyes off his. “You have evil eyes.”

He laughs once, sharply. “Do they offend? Should I pluck them out?”

I snort. “No. I like it.”

“Good.” He grabs my ankles. “I want to know what you taste like. Any reason I shouldn’t find out?”

“You mean like, do I have a condition or something?”

“Yes.”

“No. All my blood tests are always clear. You?”

“Clear.” He pulls me so my ass is almost hanging off the foot of the bed, and I yelp. It makes him smile as he spreads my legs wide and kneels. “You want to try bondage, you said?”

I swallow hard. “Yes, but⁠—”

“The safe word is pineapple.” And then I feel it—something definitely not his hand is around my left ankle. Then the right one. I couldn’t close my legs if I tried. The surge of panic is licked away the moment his tongue collides with my clit.

“Oh, oh God,” I mutter as I lie back. I’m spread wide open for this man, completely on display, and he uses the access to tour every bit, every fold. He’s thorough until he settles on my clit, and my brain lights up. He’s in total control now, keeping me exactly where he wants me.

And I like it.

I dig my fingers into his hair, but it’s so short that I can’t grab onto anything. So, I settle for my nails planting into his scalp. He groans into me, and a finger dips inside my pussy over and over again. Not deep enough to count, but enough to fry my brain.

No thoughts. Just pleasure. And one word left to my mouth.

“More.”

The finger goes all the way in, and I might break if he doesn’t—oh, fuck. The orgasm steals my breath, my core tightens on him, I can’t see straight. I don’t know if I’m speaking words or gibberish as bliss floods me.

He climbs over me, loops an arm under my back, and carries us up the bed, all while I’m still coming. He pulls one of my legs up to split me open, and then his thick cock presses into me, filling me.

And I’m still coming. Only now, I’m coming on him.

I claw at him—his arms, his chest, his back. Bite him, wherever I can. Whatever I can reach. I need contact.

I need this massive man.

When he’s finally seated, he takes full control, pinning my wrists with one hand while the other keeps me split open for him.

He nuzzles up to my ear in the pillows. “You can’t move, babydoll.” He thrusts deep, bottoming out. “All you can do is lie here and take me. And you take me so good.” He rocks in my depths, and my eyes roll back. “Feel that? Feel me pulse in you? You did that. You taste so fucking good that I almost came the moment my tongue touched your sweet pussy.”

“Oh my god,” I whisper.

“Gods don’t have evil eyes.” He releases my leg and pulls me against him, so there’s nowhere to go, no room to maneuver. His thrusts shorten, making his cock grind into my G-spot without any effort.

And then I feel him thicken inside of me. That pulse he mentioned now throbs against my G-spot like a living vibrator.

“You’re going to come for me again.”

I’m almost there. “Yes⁠—”

He lets go of my wrists, pulls out and flips me onto my stomach, re-entering me from behind. I’m pressed face down on the mattress, flattened by his weight. One of his hands snakes beneath my hip, and those deft fingers are on my clit again as he fucks me.

An embarrassing sound comes out of me as my core winds tight around his thickness. I grip the sheets, and everything goes black as I come again, breathless.

His hands clamp around my wrists to hold me down as he slams into my body, and his howl echoes on the walls as he comes, too.

What the fuck did I just do?

End of preview. Continue reading Baby for My Ex’s Brother here.