Prologue - Misha #2
"You're good at this," she says one night, head in my lap while she reviews cardiac anatomy. "The teaching thing. You should have been a professor."
I stroke her hair, thinking about what I actually am. "I don't have the patience."
"You have patience with me."
"You're different."
She tilts her head back to look at me, upside down and smiling. "Why? What makes me different?"
Everything, I think. You're everything.
"You talk about hearts like they're holy," I say. "It's hard not to be patient with someone who sees the world that way."
Her smile softens into something more vulnerable. "And how do you see the world?"
Bloody. Brutal. Full of men like me who destroy everything they touch.
"Better," I say, "when I'm looking at you."
She pulls me down and kisses me.
It isn't our first kiss—that happened on date two, in my car, her lips tasting like the tiramisu we'd shared. But it's different. Deeper. Full of something I don't have words for.
"Stay tonight," she whispers against my mouth.
My entire body screams yes. I want her so badly I can barely think, can barely breathe past the wanting.
"Not yet," I say, pulling back. "When it happens, I want it to be right."
She studies my face, looking for the lie. Finding none—because it isn't a lie. I want to wait because I know, with sickening certainty, that I will never deserve what she's offering. The longer I wait, the longer I can pretend I might.
"Okay," she says softly. "When you're ready."
I will never be ready. But I kiss her forehead and hold her until she falls asleep, then extricate myself and drive home through empty streets, hating myself with every mile.
We last four months.
Four months of stolen hours and secret meetings and a happiness so sharp it feels like bleeding.
Four months of learning her body in increments—the curve of her hip under my palm, the sound she makes when I kiss her neck, the way she melts against me when we dance in her tiny kitchen to music from her phone.
Four months of lying.
She thinks I'm an investor. A businessman who travels frequently but always comes back to her. A man with a complicated past he doesn't like to discuss but who looks at her like she's hung the stars.
She doesn't know I run background checks on everyone she speaks to. Doesn't know I have men watching her apartment around the clock. Doesn't know that her father's organization is crumbling, and that my family is circling the wreckage like sharks.
She doesn't know that every kiss is borrowed time.
The end comes on a Tuesday.
I'm in Dmitri's office, reviewing intelligence reports, when Alexei walks in with a face like a closed door.
"We have a problem," he says, sliding a folder across the desk. "The Benedettis are making moves. Carmine's been reaching out to the Morozovs, trying to broker an alliance. If they succeed, we'll be fighting a war on two fronts."
Dmitri's jaw tightens. "Options?"
"We could approach Carmine directly. Offer him a better deal." Alexei pauses. "Or we could hit them now, while they're weak. Take out the leadership before the alliance solidifies."
I stare at the folder. Inside are surveillance photos, financial records, communication intercepts. And somewhere in that pile of intelligence is Carmine Benedetti—Bianca's father.
"We'll need leverage," Dmitri says, thinking out loud. "Something to bring Carmine to the table on our terms."
"He has a daughter," Alexei says. "Keeps her out of the business, but she's his weak point. If we—"
"No."
The word comes out harder than I intend. Both men turn to look at me.
"No," I repeat, forcing my voice to steady. "We don't touch the daughter. She's a civilian."
Dmitri's eyes narrow. He's known me for seventeen years. He can read me better than anyone alive.
"A civilian," he repeats slowly. "One you seem particularly concerned about."
Silence stretches between us. I can lie—I'm good at lying—but Dmitri will see through it. He always does.
"I know her," I admit. "We've been... involved."
Alexei's expression doesn't change, but I see the calculation behind his eyes. Dmitri's face goes carefully blank.
"Involved," Dmitri says. "With Carmine Benedetti's daughter."
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Four months."
The silence that follows is worse than shouting. Dmitri stands slowly, walking to the window, his back to me.
"Does she know who you are?"
"No."
"Does she know who her father is?"
"No. Or if she does, she's chosen not to see it."
"And you thought—what? That you could keep her in a bubble? That the war wouldn't eventually touch her?" Dmitri turns, and his eyes are cold. "You've compromised yourself, Misha. Compromised this family. For what? A few months of playing house with a woman you can never have?"
"I know." My voice is hollow. "I know."
"End it."
"Dmitri—"
"End it tonight." He crosses back to his desk, dismissing me.
"Whatever you feel for this woman, it doesn't matter.
She's a liability now. If the Benedettis find out you've been with her, they'll use her against us.
If our enemies find out, they'll use her against you.
She's not safe anymore—not with you, not because of you. "
I want to argue. Want to tell him he's wrong, that I can protect her, that I will burn the world before I let anyone touch her.
But he isn't wrong.
Being with me has painted a target on her back. Every day I stay is another day she's in danger. From her father's enemies. From my family's enemies. From the war that is coming whether I want it or not.
I have to let her go.
It's the only way to keep her alive.
I go to her apartment that night.
She opens the door in sweatpants and one of my shirts—stolen weeks ago, worn soft from washing. Her face lights up when she sees me.
"Misha! I didn't know you were coming. I would have—"
She stops, reading something in my expression. The light in her eyes dims.
"What's wrong?"
I step inside, closing the door behind me. She backs up instinctively, and the distance between us feels like miles.
"I can't do this anymore," I say.
The words fall like stones into still water.
"Can't do what?" Her voice is barely a whisper.
"This. Us." I keep my face blank, my voice steady, even as something inside me cracks and bleeds. "It was fun, Bianca. But it's run its course."
"Run its course?" She shakes her head, disbelieving. "Four months. Four months of—of dinners and dancing and you telling me I make you feel things you haven't felt in years. And now it's just... over? Because it's 'run its course'?"
"Yes."
"That's not an answer!" Her voice rises, cracking. "Tell me what changed. Tell me what I did wrong. Tell me something, Misha, because I don't—I can't—"
"You didn't do anything wrong." That, at least, is true. "I'm just not the man you think I am."
"Then who are you?"
I look at her—this beautiful, brilliant woman who talks about hearts like they're holy—and I give her the only honest thing I can.
"Someone who will only hurt you."
Tears spill down her cheeks. She doesn't wipe them away.
"That's not good enough," she says. "You don't get to just—to walk away without explaining. I deserve more than that. I deserve—"
"You deserve everything." My voice breaks despite my best efforts. "Everything I can't give you. A normal life. A man who doesn't lie about who he is. A future that doesn't end in violence."
"What are you talking about? What violence? Misha, you're scaring me."
I step closer, cupping her face in my hands. She flinches but doesn't pull away. Her tears are warm against my palms.
"Forget me," I say. "Finish medical school. Become the doctor you're meant to be. Fall in love with someone who deserves you—someone kind, someone normal, someone who can give you the life you want."
"I want you."
The words shatter me.
"You want the man I pretended to be." I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in one last time. Jasmine and coffee and something uniquely her. "He doesn't exist, Bianca. He never did."
I kiss her.
It is desperate, devastating—a goodbye disguised as contact. She kisses me back with the same desperation, her fingers clutching my shirt, her body pressing against mine like she can hold me here through sheer force of will.
I pull away before I lose my resolve entirely.
"Goodbye, Bianca."
I walk out the door without looking back. If I look back, I will stay. And if I stay, I will get her killed.
Behind me, I hear her sob—a raw, broken sound that will haunt me for years.
I keep walking.
The months that follow are a blur of violence and strategy.
The Benedetti-Morozov alliance falls apart before it can form—we make sure of that. Carmine's organization continues its slow collapse, hemorrhaging money and men. The war Dmitri predicted never materializes, but smaller conflicts flare constantly, keeping us busy, keeping me distracted.
I throw myself into work. Take the most dangerous assignments. Volunteer for interrogations that leave my knuckles split and my shirts stained with blood that isn't mine.
Dmitri watches but says nothing. He understands, in his way. He's never loved anyone outside the family, but he knows what it looks like when a man is trying to outrun his own heart.
I don't look for her. Don't check her social media, don't request surveillance updates, don't drive past her apartment at night.
For six months, I'm clean.
Then Dmitri gets married.
Kira Sloane—a woman he claimed through circumstances as complicated as my own situation with Bianca. I watch him with her, watch the way he softens, the way he looks at her like she's oxygen and he's been drowning for years.
I recognize that look. I've worn it myself, once.
The night of their real wedding, I stand at the edge of the celebration and watch my brother dance with his wife. She is smiling, radiant, so different from the frightened captive she'd been months ago.
Love has transformed her. Transformed both of them.
I excuse myself early, citing security concerns. No one questions it—they never do.
In my car, in the darkness, I pull out my phone and type her name into the search bar.
Bianca Benedetti.
The results load. Recent photos from a medical school event. An article about her research on cardiac regeneration. A fundraiser she helped organize for underserved communities.
She looks healthy. Successful. Exactly what I wanted for her.
She also looks tired. Thinner than I remember. There are shadows under her eyes that hadn't been there before.
I zoom in on one photo—her at a podium, presenting research findings. She is smiling for the camera, but I know her well enough to see that it doesn't reach her eyes.
Fall in love with someone who deserves you, I told her. Someone kind, someone normal.
I scroll through more photos. Event after event, always alone. No boyfriend in the backgrounds. No ring on her finger. No evidence that she's moved on at all.
She is still waiting.
I close the app and sit in the darkness, her face burned into my memory.
The heart forgives, she told me once. With the right intervention, even the most damaged heart can heal.
I've spent eighteen months proving her wrong. Staying away. Trying to forget. Pretending that what we had was just a temporary madness, easily cured by distance and time.
But she is still waiting.
And I am still watching.
Some hearts don't heal, I think. Some hearts just scar over, hardened and closed, going through the motions of beating without ever feeling alive.
I start the car and drive home to my empty apartment.
Tomorrow, I will go back to being the monster. The enforcer. The Kashkin who feels nothing and fears nothing and needs no one.
But tonight, alone in the dark, I let myself remember what it felt like to hold her. To dance with her in her tiny kitchen. To believe, for four impossible months, that even the most damaged heart could heal.
Tonight, I let myself grieve.