Curvy Obsession of the Russian Mafia (Ignatov Bratva #7)

Prologue - Harper

The world is breathing again, or at least pretending to.

It’s been a year since the Volkov–Ignatov war, and Moscow exhales in shallow, cautious drags, like a man relearning how to live after nearly drowning. The snow on the streets looks innocent, like something that doesn’t remember blood.

But I do.

Even now, as I walk up the long stone path toward the Ignatov estate, the air tastes faintly of gunpowder and wealth. It clings to the gates, to the marble lions flanking the driveway, even to the wind itself. Moscow’s winter carries memory in its bite.

I’ve learned to live in this new-old world, to adapt. To sharpen.

Survival is its own language here, one I have learned syllable by shredded syllable. I wear confidence like armor now, the kind of poise people in the Bratva mistake for belonging.

But every now and then, my heart still misfires.

Serafina Ignatov opens the front door before I even reach it, her dark hair in a messy braid and her expression so warm it fogs the cold right off my skin. She’s barefoot on marble floors because that’s the kind of power Sera has. She can afford softness.

“Finally,” she says, sweeping me into a hug that smells like jasmine and fresh ink. “You work too much.”

“I could say the same to you,” I answer into her shoulder.

She snorts. “I’m an Ignatov. Work is hereditary.”

I laugh because she expects it, because she’s the only person in this place who sees me as Harper, not Harper Quinn the Ignatov cyber asset. Not the girl who cracked military-grade encryption in the middle of a war.

Sera sees the before and the after. That’s why I came.

We wander through the hallways, the air rich with the scent of polished wood and old money.

Sera updates me on her latest project—something about expanding one of the Ignatov charitable fronts—and I pretend not to notice the guards’ eyes following us.

I’ve gotten used to that too.

Her office is a soft, quiet refuge in a house built to withstand siege. Papers everywhere, a half-finished painting on the easel, books stacked high enough to qualify as small architecture.

We chat as we drink tea. We laugh about absurd things, like how her cousin Vadim thinks Wi-Fi is a CIA conspiracy, or how the family cat has somehow learned to pick locks.

It’s the closest I can get to normalcy.

I feel the ticking of the afternoon like a pulse in the floorboards. Work is waiting; there’s always another code to debug, networks to secure, ghosts in the Ignatov systems that refuse to stay buried.

So the visit is brief, a postcard of comfort before reality calls me back.

Sera walks me to the front door, hugging me again, longer this time.

“Come back soon,” she says against my cheek. “Don’t disappear into your screens.”

“Screens don’t shoot at me,” I reply lightly.

“Yet,” she deadpans.

We both laugh, but there’s not much humor in it.

I step outside into the early winter dusk, the sky low and heavy, thick with unfallen snow. My breath frosts immediately. Cold curls around my ankles, sharp as a whispered warning.

A sleek black car idles at the gate, engine humming like a low, satisfied predator. The windows are tinted to the color of night.

And beside it—him.

Damian Ignatov stands with his gloved hands casually at his sides, dressed in a charcoal suit as dark as his shadow. Even from a distance he looks… dangerous.

Too composed and still, like the air rearranges itself to make room for him.

I haven’t seen him since the last night of the war, not since the moment he walked past me silently, not a single glance thrown my way. Not a flicker of acknowledgment that only hours earlier he’d told me to stay safe, to stay close, to trust him with things I shouldn’t have trusted anyone with.

That version of us died on a battlefield made of code and betrayal.

But now… now he stands there with those dark emerald eyes of his, his lean build wrapped in one of those classic suits of his with a stupid brown tie—always a fucking tie that he pairs with those stupid suits of his.

Stupid.

I’m the stupid one, really, when I think of how easily he left me in the ruins of everything we almost were.

My pulse kicks, sharp and traitorous.

His gaze lifts, catches mine, holds, and my world tunnels around him.

Those dark green eyes soften for a nanosecond before he smooths it away behind that velvet mask he wears so well. His frame towers, standing at his height of six feet.

“Harper,” he says, his voice low enough to heat the frost around us. “I didn’t realize Sera had company today.”

A lie.

Damian Ignatov doesn’t “not realize” things. It’s not in his nature.

“Damian,” I answer, keeping my tone polite, distant. The kind of voice people use with beautiful strangers on elevators. “Didn’t realize you were in Moscow.”

His smile deepens, subtle, devastatingly confident.

“I arrived this morning.”

The cold air suddenly feels intrusive, pressing against my back. He steps closer, and the temperature drops even more. Damian radiates heat in the way fire does—quiet, controlled, capable of burning a city down if someone forgets to contain it.

“Let me give you a ride,” he says smoothly, gesturing to the car.

Just like that.

As if we’re acquaintances. As if nothing happened between us.

As if he didn’t once kiss me like—

I inhale slowly. My armor slides into place.

“Not necessary.”

His head tilts like a hunter noticing movement.

“It’s below freezing.”

“I’m aware.”

“And dangerous to walk alone.”

“Thanks for stating the obvious.”

His eyes narrow, considering, calculating. Damian doesn’t push, but his gaze does the work for him.

“I insist,” he murmurs.

Asshole.

Sera appears briefly on the porch, watching like her favorite soap opera is on. Her gaze flicks between us, her mouth tightening knowingly.

I give her a look.

I’m fine. Really.

She raises one brow.

Liar.

Even so, she doesn’t interfere. This is my battlefield.

I walk toward the car, ignoring all the alarms going off in my head. Snow crunches beneath my boots, each step a small declaration: I’m not that girl anymore.

I’m not naive, no longer the silly girl who mistook his interest for anything other than a man reaching for a tool he found useful.

I pass him as I approach the passenger seat’s door, refusing to meet his eyes. His presence presses along my skin like static, like heat from a fire you promised you’d never touch again.

He reaches for the handle at the same moment I do, his gloved hand barely brushing mine, but the contact snaps through me like a spark jumping wires.

He opens the door, steps back, giving me space.

“After you,” he says.

The door shuts behind me with the soft finality of a velvet coffin. Damian slides into the driver’s seat without looking at me, but the air becomes solid and far more alive than my pride allows me to admit.

The city is a blur of bruised neon and winter breath outside the windows. Inside, it’s warm. My palms sweat inside my gloves.

“Congratulations,” he says as we merge into the quiet road, his voice low enough to feel against my skin. “I hear you’ve carved out a niche in my cyber division.” A pause, a ghost of amusement. “Impressive. You learned the language of power quickly.”

The compliment should feel like a medal, but from him it’s a blade dipped in honey. He says learned as though he taught me.

“I picked it up,” I answer, fighting to keep my voice even. “Survival is a good teacher.”

“Yes,” Damian murmurs. “But survival doesn’t grant fluency. You have… an aptitude.”

My pulse jumps. Why does everything he says feel like both praise and provocation? I look out the window to escape the intensity, but the glass only reflects his sharp jaw and angular nose.

The silence stretches like thick, molten taffy around us.

“You haven’t visited the estate in months,” he says, as if the observation is harmless. “Sera misses you.”

“You don’t,” I say before I can stop myself.

His laugh is soft, but it lands like a gloved hand closing around my throat.

“You assume much.”

“You made it easy to assume,” I shoot back. “You walked right past me that night. Didn’t even look.”

He finally turns his head. The streetlights paint his cheekbones gold and shadow, making him look unreal—too sharp for the world, too defined for mercy.

“If I had looked at you,” he says quietly, “I wouldn’t have walked past.”

The admission makes my stomach clench, and something far south of my belly. I hate the feeling. I hate that he can stir it with a single line. I hate that he knows it.

I straighten in the seat, spine rigid.

“Why did you come for me today, Damian?”

His fingers flex on the steering wheel.

“Because winter is setting in.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is,” he says, glancing at me again. “Cold is when you notice what you’ve been ignoring.”

I swallow drily. It feels like the car has shrunk around us, pressing our breaths into the same small space, tangling them.

The silence returns, but this time it’s swollen, electric, thrumming with all the things we’re not saying. My body recognizes the tightening, the pull, the humiliating flare of awareness I thought I buried before my mind does.

His gaze drops to my mouth for one heartbeat.

“Harper,” he says softly, a warning or an invitation, I can’t tell. Maybe both.

“Don’t,” I whisper.

“Don’t what?” His voice is silk stretched over steel. “Acknowledge how you’ve been chewing on your lip as you stare at my hands and my mouth?”

My cheeks burn, my fingertips spark, my heartbeat is ridiculous. I grip my coat tighter, as if fabric will shield me from him.

“Damian—”

The car slows, drifting into a quieter, darker street. This is a street away from my apartment. He parks beneath a streetlamp whose light seems to bend toward him.

I turn to him, throat tight.

“Why are we stopping here?”

“So we can stop pretending,” he says.

My breath stutters. The temperature inside the car turns molten.