Chapter 27
Mary
Istep back, pulling the door wider. “Fine. But if you’re expecting IHOP, you’re gonna be disappointed.”
Lev brushes past first, already grinning like he won something. “Sunshine, my expectations are subterranean. You could serve us cereal, and I’d be impressed.”
“Cereal requires milk and bowls,” Boris adds, hefting his pastry bag. “Last week, Anton tried to make coffee. He broke the French press.”
“How do you break a French press?” I mutter, following them down the hall.
“Magnificently,” Lev tosses over his shoulder.
Dima brings up the rear, silent as always, but when I glance back, his mouth has that almost-curve that passes for amusement on him.
The kitchen feels smaller with all of them in it.
Lev immediately colonizes the counter by the stove, hopping up and settling in like he pays rent.
His legs dangle, expensive boots tapping against the cabinet.
Boris sets the pastry bag on the island with the reverence of a man preparing a backup plan, then leans against the fridge, arms crossed.
Dima takes up a position near the pantry. Just… stands there. A six-foot-something wall of quiet competence.
“So,” I tie my damp hair back with the scrunchie from my wrist, “pancakes. You want chocolate chips, blueberries, or are we going plain and boring?”
“Chocolate chips,” Lev says immediately.
“Blueberries,” Boris counters.
They both look at Dima.
He considers this like it’s a tactical decision. “Both.”
I blink. “Both? In the same pancake?”
“Why not?” Lev shrugs, all innocence. “Sweet and tart. Chocolate and fruit. It’s balanced.”
“That’s a cry for help.”
“Same thing.”
A laugh escapes me—half-genuine, half-disbelief—and I shake my head, already turning toward the cabinets. “You’re all insane.”
“You’re still making them, though,” Lev points out, smug.
He’s right. I am.
I pull out the mixing bowl, flour, eggs. My hands move automatically—muscle memory from a thousand Sunday mornings in my old apartment when I’d make breakfast just to pretend I had my life together.
Gordo appears from nowhere, winding between Dima’s legs with a chirp that sounds downright friendly. Dima glances down. Pauses. Then—I swear to God—he crouches and scratches behind Gordo’s ears.
Gordo purrs. Loud enough to rattle the tile.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. “He doesn’t purr like that for me.”
“You don’t give him enough respect,” Dima rumbles, still scratching. “He is small king.”
“Small tyrant.”
Boris snorts. Lev is outright grinning now, legs swinging. “Dima’s good with animals. Kids too. It’s unnerving.”
I crack an egg against the bowl, watch the yolk slide into the flour. “Yeah, that tracks. Man of few words, beloved by creatures who can’t talk back.”
Dima straightens, and for a second, I think maybe I went too far. Then his mouth twitches. “You talk back.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“Here I am.”
The moment hangs there, weirdly warm. I whisk the batter harder than necessary, trying to ignore the flutter in my chest that feels dangerously close to belonging.
“Oil,” Dima says quietly.
I glance up. He’s holding the bottle out, already unscrewed.
I didn’t ask for it. Didn’t even reach for it yet.
“How—?”
“You always add oil third,” he says, like it’s obvious.
My hand freezes halfway to the bottle. “How do you know that?”
Lev’s grin goes sharper. “Security feeds, sunshine. We’ve got eyes on the whole penthouse.”
The air shifts. My stomach drops.
“You’ve been watching me cook?”
“We’ve been watching everything,” Boris says, not unkindly. “It’s our job.”
I snatch the oil from Dima’s hand, pulse hammering in my ears. Creepy. It’s creepy. Invasive and controlling and exactly the kind of thing I should be furious about.
Except.
Except Dima knew I take oil third. Which means he paid attention. Which means somewhere between the gunfights and the blood and the violence, he watched me make eggs at 6 AM and filed it away like it mattered.
I pour the oil in, whisk again. My voice comes out rougher than I want. “That‘s… insanely weird.”
“Da,” Dima agrees.
“But also….” Lev leans forward, elbows on his knees. “We know you put too much vanilla in your coffee. You sing off-key when you think no one’s listening. And you talk to Gordo like he’s a therapist.”
“I do not—”
“Gordo, am I an idiot? Tell me honestly,“ Boris recites in a high-pitched voice that sounds nothing like me.
My face goes nuclear. “Oh, my God.”
Lev is wheezing. Actual wheezing. “The cat… the cat just stared at you. You said, ‘That’s what I thought.‘“
“I hate all of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Lev sings.
He’s right. I don’t. And that’s the problem.
I turn back to the stove, flick the burner on. The pan heats, butter sizzling as I drop it in. I pour the first pancake—a decent circle, no wonky edges—and try to pretend my hands aren’t shaking.
“So,” I say, because silence feels too heavy right now. Then it hits me. My stomach drops. “Wait. Security feeds. You’ve been watching me cook.”
“Yes,” Dima confirms.
“In the kitchen.”
“Da.”
My voice climbs. “What about my room?”
Lev’s grin goes absolutely feral. “Why, sunshine? Got something interesting happening in there we should know about?”
My face ignites. “Lev, I swear to God—”
“Relax.” He holds up his hands, laughing. “Your room’s clean. No cameras, no audio. Anton’s psychotic about security, but he’s not a complete pervert.”
“Just a partial one?” I mutter.
“Bedroom and bathroom are off-limits,” Boris adds, more seriously. “Everything else? Fair game.”
The tension in my shoulders eases, just slightly. I exhale, turning back to the stove. “Okay. Good. That’s… good.”
“Although,” Lev adds, eyes glinting, “the walls aren’t exactly soundproof, so—”
I throw a blueberry at his head. It bounces off his forehead.
“Ow! Violence!”
“You earned it.” I scowl. “So,” I say again, face still burning, desperately trying to redirect. “You gonna sit there judging my technique, or—?”
Lev reaches over, dips his finger straight into the batter bowl.
I slap his hand. Hard.
“Ow!” He yanks it back, sucking his finger with an injured expression. “Rude.”
“There are literally three grown men in this kitchen, and you go for the raw batter like a five-year-old?”
“It’s good!”
“It’s salmonella.”
Boris shakes his head, pulling a pastry from his bag. “This is why I brought reinforcements.”
“Your faith in me is touching.”
“I have faith,” he says through a mouthful of croissant. “I also have survival instincts.”
I glance toward the balcony door, where Gordo has abandoned Dima and is now sitting with his nose pressed to the glass, tail twitching.
“Lev, can you let him out? And water the herbs while you’re at it?”
Lev’s head whips around. “Do I look like a gardener?”
“You look like someone sitting on his ass while I cook.”
“I’m providing moral support.”
“You’re providing a headache. The watering can’s right there.”
He groans—long, loud, theatrical—but slides off the counter.
“Unbelievable. I’ve killed men for less than this.”
“The basil thanks you for your service.”
He mutters something in Russian that’s definitely not a compliment, but he opens the door. Gordo streaks out like he’s been freed from prison. Lev grabs the small watering can from the corner, stepping onto the balcony with all the enthusiasm of a man facing a firing squad.
I turn back to the stove, pouring batter into the pan. The apartment goes quiet except for the sizzle of butter and Lev’s continued grumbling outside.
I can feel them behind me. Dima and Boris. Not moving, not speaking. Just… there.
It should make my skin crawl. The weight of their attention. The knowledge that they’re trained to watch, to assess, to see weaknesses.
But it doesn’t.
Instead, there’s something almost solid about their presence. Like sentries. Like if the world tried to crash through that door right now, it would have to go through them first.
I’ve spent my whole life being watched—by managers who didn’t trust me, by men who wanted something, by a city that couldn’t care less if I disappeared tomorrow. This is different. This feels like being seen. And weirdly, impossibly… protected.
The thought settles in my chest, warm and dangerous.
I shake my head, focus on the pancake browning in the pan.
Don’t get comfortable, I tell myself. Comfortable gets you killed.
Ten minutes later, the first pancake bubbles. I flip it—clean, golden, perfect. A tiny surge of pride flickers in my chest.
“Not bad,” Lev concedes.
“High praise from the peanut gallery.”
Dima moves closer, watching the pan over my shoulder. He smells like cold air and something sharper—gunpowder, maybe, or just danger.
“Temperature is good,” he murmurs. “Flip at thirty seconds.”
“You know pancake timing?”
“I know everything.”
“Cocky.”
His mouth curves. Barely. “Accurate.”
I pour two more pancakes, these ones studded with chocolate chips and blueberries because apparently we’re making abominations now. Lev hops down from the counter, snags plates from the cabinet without asking, and sets them out like he’s done this a hundred times.
Maybe they’ve watched me enough to know where I keep everything.
It should feel invasive.
It feels… intimate.
We settle at the table—all of us, like actual people who do normal things like eat breakfast together. The plates clink as Lev stacks pancakes like he’s building a tower. Boris takes two, methodical, while Dima cuts his into precise squares before adding syrup.
“You eat like a serial killer,” I tell Dima.
He doesn’t look up. “Organized.”
“Sociopathic.”
“Efficient.”
Lev snorts, already three bites in. “He’s been like this forever. Drove his sister crazy.”
The words are casual, tossed out like nothing. But Dima goes still. Just for a heartbeat. His fork pauses halfway to his mouth.
Lev catches it. His eyes flick to Dima, something unreadable passing between them.
“Sister?” I ask, because apparently I have zero self-preservation instincts.
Silence.
Then Dima sets his fork down. “Katya.”
Two syllables. Soft. Careful. Like he’s handling glass.
“She was younger,” he continues, gaze fixed on his plate. “By six years. Small. Loud.” His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “Very loud.”
“Sounds exhausting,” I offer, trying to lighten whatever just dropped into the room.
“She was.” But his voice is warm now. Warmer than I’ve ever heard it. “Always singing. Terrible voice. Didn’t care. She sang anyway.”
Lev has stopped eating. Just watching Dima with an expression I can’t quite read—surprise, maybe, or something deeper.
“She sounds amazing,” I say quietly.
Dima nods once. “She was stubborn. Like you.”
My chest does something weird. “Me?”
“Da. She—” He pauses, searching for words. “She saw good in people. Even when she shouldn’t. Even when it was dangerous.” His eyes meet mine. Dark. Heavy. “She tried to fix broken things.”
The weight of his gaze pins me to the chair.
“What happened to her?” The question slips out before I can stop it.
Boris shifts uncomfortably. Lev’s gone completely silent, fork abandoned.
Dima exhales slowly. “Leukemia. Acute myeloid. She was fourteen when they found it.” His voice stays level, but I can hear the cracks underneath. “Fourteen. And I—” His jaw works. “I could kill a man twenty different ways. I could take apart a rifle blindfolded. But I couldn’t save her.”
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
“Three months,” he says. “Diagnosis to—” He doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to. “She was scared. At the end. She asked me to stay with her. To not leave.”
“And you didn’t,” I say. It’s not a question.
“Nyet. I didn’t leave.”
The table has gone completely still. Even Lev looks rattled, like he’s hearing this for the first time. Or maybe just never heard Dima say it out loud.
“She made me promise something.” Dima’s eyes are back on his plate, but I don’t think he’s seeing it. “That I wouldn’t let the world make me cold. That I would—” His voice roughens. “That I would protect the ones who still had warmth.”
The words settle over me like a blanket. Heavy. Warm. Suffocating.
“You, Mary.” He looks up. Meets my eyes dead-on. “You remind me of her. The way you are. Stubborn. Kind, even when people don’t deserve it. Always trying to—” He gestures vaguely at the kitchen, the pancakes, us. “To make something good out of broken pieces.”
My throat closes up.
Lev is staring at Dima like he’s grown a second head.
“Dima, I’ve known you for decades. You’ve never—”
“I know.” Dima picks up his fork again and cuts another precise square. “But she did. Remind me. And I made a promise.”
He doesn’t say anything else. Just eats his pancake like he didn’t just crack himself open at this table.
I swallow hard, blinking back the heat behind my eyes.
“I’m not your sister, Dima.”
“No.” He looks at me again, and this time there’s something fierce in his expression. Protective. “But you have her heart. And I won’t fail again.”
The air is too thick. Too close. I need to move, to do something, before I start crying into my pancakes like a complete disaster.
I stand abruptly, grabbing plates that don’t need clearing yet.
“I- uh. I should—”
My eyes flick to the door. Again. For maybe the tenth time since we sat down.
Lev catches it. Of course he does. His grin returns, slower this time.
“He’s not coming, sunshine.”
“Who?” I try for casual. Fail spectacularly.
“The brooding Russian who’s been living in your head rent-free since pasta day.”
“I don’t—”
“He’s with Ray,” Lev continues, leaning back in his chair. “Business. Won’t be back until tonight.”
Ray. The name means nothing to me. I just nod, shoving down the stupid curl of disappointment in my gut.
“Right. Okay. Good.” I set the plates in the sink, run water I don’t need. “Actually, speaking of tonight… I need to go shopping. For tomorrow. The gala.”
Boris glances up. “Shopping?”
“Jasper’s helping me. Dress, shoes, the whole…” I wave a hand. “Whatever you wear when you’re bait at a fancy party.”
Lev and Boris exchange a look.
Dima stands, pushing back from the table. “Let’s go.”
I blink. “What?”
“Shopping,” he says simply. “We go with you.”