Chapter Mia
Mia
The words leave my mouth before I've fully decided to say them, and once they're out, I can't take them back. They hang in the kitchen between us, too honest and too raw, and I watch his face do something I don't have a name for.
He doesn't say anything immediately. His hand is still over mine on the counter, warm and heavy and very still, and I'm aware of the way his fingers dwarf mine, the way the weight of his palm feels like an anchor rather than a cage.
"That’s not a small thing to say to me."
"I know."
He watches me for a moment longer. Then he withdraws his hand, slowly, with the deliberateness I'm starting to understand is simply how he does everything.
"You need to eat something," he says. "Real food. Not fruit you push around a bowl."
I almost smile. "You noticed that."
"I notice most things."
He says it simply. The same way you'd say the sky is grey or it's January. And I believe him, because I think he notices everything, all the time, as a matter of professional survival, and I think it must be exhausting.
Pavlina appears from somewhere. She has the quality of a woman who materializes precisely when she's needed and not a moment before.
Within minutes, there is toast on the counter, thick-cut and golden, with butter and eggs that smell like they were cracked thirty seconds ago.
I realise as the smell hits me that I am ravenous in a way that feels almost violent, like my body has finally caught up with the fact that it's been running on adrenaline and fear for the better part of twelve hours.
I eat without pretending not to be hungry, which is something I would normally do, calibrating my appetite to make it palatable.
Usually, I’d take small bites and leave something on the plate to prove I don’t need too much.
I don't do any of that. I eat the toast and the eggs and drink the coffee Pavlina refills without being asked.
The food fills my stomach like ballast, like something steadying a ship.
Iosif watches me. Not overtly. He's doing something on his phone, scrolling through messages with the focused efficiency of a man whose morning has already been derailed and who is rerouting around the damage.
But I catch him looking up twice, and both times there's something in his expression that's not pity or assessment or desire. It’s something quieter than all of those.
Something that looks, if I had to name it, like relief.
He's relieved that I'm eating.
Something shifts in my chest. A small, tectonic thing.
"I need to think about what happens next," I say, when my plate is empty. "I can't stay here indefinitely."
"Why not?"
I look at him. "Because I showed up at your club covered in blood, and you've been incredibly generous. And I've already taken up more of your time and resources than any reasonable person would—"
"Mia." He says my name the way he says everything. With weight. "I didn't ask why you think you should leave. I asked why you can't stay."
I open my mouth. Close it.
He waits.
"Because," I say, and the honesty of it surprises even me, "if I stay too long, I'll start to feel more than just safe. And then leaving will be harder."
Something moves behind his eyes. Fast and deep, like a current beneath still water. He sets his phone down on the counter.
“Your family is—" He pauses. "You haven't mentioned any family."
"There isn't any. Not close. My mom's in Florida. We talk at Christmas. My dad left before I was born. No siblings. At least none I know about." I shrug to punctuate how little I care about being alone, and hope he believes it.
"Your bank accounts are in your name. Your phone is traceable. Your job…what do you do?"
"I'm a receptionist. At a physiotherapy clinic in the city." It sounds so ordinary coming out of my mouth. So small against the scale of what's happened. "They'll notice if I don't show up on Monday."
"Monday is two days away," he says. "We have time."
We.
I notice the pronoun. I notice it the way I noticed his hand over mine and the coat over my lap and the way he said I won't do it to a room full of men who wanted him to do it, and I think: this man keeps including me in his plural without being asked to.
"You don't have to do this," I say. "Any of this. I heard what you said to them. I might not be a solution to your mandate, but I don’t want to be a problem for you, either."
"You're not." He looks at me. Steady and dark and absolutely certain.
"But you're in my house," he says. "And in my house, you're under my protection.
That's not negotiable and it's not contingent on you being a solution to anything.
It's a fact. The same way the security system is a fact and the locks on the doors are a fact.
" He picks up his coffee. "Do you understand? "
I do understand. That's the problem. I understand it in a way that makes something behind my ribs ache with a feeling I‘ve never experienced before. It feels dangerously like the first time someone has drawn a line around me and said, inside this line, nothing touches you, and meant it.
"Yes," I say.
"Good." He stands. "I need to make some calls.
Pavlina will show you the rest of the house.
There are books in the library if you want to read, and the garden is enclosed, so you can go outside without being seen from the rest of the estate.
" He pauses in the doorway and turns back.
"If you need anything, ask Pavlina or ask me.
Don't default to managing on your own because you think you'll be a burden. You aren’t. "
Then he leaves.
I sit in the quiet kitchen with my empty plate and my cooling coffee and press my palms flat on the counter and take a slow, deep breath.
The thing about Iosif Dubovich, the thing I'm only beginning to understand, is that he doesn't make promises.
He makes statements. He doesn't say I'll try to keep you safe.
He says you're under my protection and that's not negotiable and the words feel like walls.
Like foundations. Like the kind of thing you could put the entire weight of yourself against and it wouldn't shift.
I have never in my life had someone talk to me like that.
I have had men who said I'll take care of you while meaning I'll take care of the version of you that's convenient for me.
I have had men who said you can count on me while already halfway out the door.
I have had sweetness that curdled and promises that turned out to be provisional, contingent on me staying small enough, grateful enough, easy enough.
This isn't that.
I don't know what this is. But it isn't that.
Pavlina clears my plate and gives me a look that is warm and appraising at the same time, the look of a woman who has watched this household for a long time and is forming opinions she will probably keep to herself.
"Come," she says. "I'll show you where things are."
I follow her out of the kitchen and into the wide, light-filled hallway. As I walk, I think about what he said, the part that's still turning over in my mind like a stone in a river, smooth and heavy and impossible to put down.
When I take a wife, it isn't going to be for some stupid family mandate. It's going to be because the woman I want, wants me back.
I think about that.
I think about the way he looked at me when he said it.
He said no. He said no to his family and no to the easy solution and no to me when I offered myself up like a transaction. Every single ‘no’ was a form of respect I have never once in my life been given by a man who had the power to simply take what he wanted.
Pavlina opens a door to a room full of books and cool winter light.
"The library," she says. "He reads in here most evenings."
I step inside and run my fingers along the spines. I don't think about the blood or the kitchen or the sound the knife made. I think about what he said and the weight of his hand over mine, and I think: I am in so much trouble.
Not the kind I came in with.
A different kind entirely.