Chapter 4 - Misha
The office is dark except for the lamp on my desk.
I prefer it this way. Shadows make it easier to think, easier to shed the mask I wear in public and confront the man underneath. The man who just paid five million dollars for a woman he promised himself he'd never touch again.
My hand is steady as I pour two fingers of vodka. I don't drink it. Just hold the glass, letting the cold seep into my palm, anchoring me to something real.
Three hours since we left the auction. Three hours since I saw her standing on that stage, chin raised, terrified but refusing to break. Three hours since I destroyed seventeen years of careful discipline with two words.
Five million.
I didn't plan it. Didn't strategize or calculate or weigh the costs. I saw her, and I acted. Instinct. Emotion. Everything I've trained myself to suppress since I was seventeen years old, watching my parents bleed out on a roadside.
Dmitri is going to kill me.
I pull out my phone and dial Alexei. He answers on the first ring.
"Talk to me," I say.
"We weren't followed from the auction. I had two cars run counter-surveillance the entire route—clean." His voice is clipped, professional. "The staff at the house has been briefed. Additional security is en route. She's safe."
"The auction. I need everything on every buyer in that room. Names, affiliations, financial positions, pressure points."
"Already working on it. I should have preliminary files within six hours." A pause. "There's something you should know."
I set down the vodka glass. "Go on."
"The man who bid two million. I got an ID on him before we left." Another pause, longer this time. "Sergei Morozov."
The name lands like a blade.
Morozov. The family Carmine Benedetti has been crawling to for months, desperate for an alliance to shore up his crumbling empire. I knew they were connected—knew the Benedettis owed them money—but I didn't know they'd be at the auction.
I didn't know Bianca was meant for one of them.
"Tell me," I say.
"From what I've pieced together, the auction was a setup. Bianca was promised to Sergei months ago—part of the debt settlement. The bidding was theater, meant to give it legitimacy. She was always supposed to go to him at two million."
"And then I offered five."
"And then you offered five." Alexei's voice is carefully neutral. "Carmine got more money than he expected. But Sergei Morozov didn't get what he was promised."
I close my eyes, processing the implications. Sergei Morozov—Anatoly Morozov's only son, heir to one of the most brutal organizations on the West Coast. A man known for his cruelty, his entitlement, his absolute intolerance for being denied anything he considers his.
I just stole his bride in front of sixty witnesses.
"What do we know about him?" I ask.
"Thirty-four. Runs the Morozov operations in Los Angeles. Reputation for violence, even by our standards. He's been engaged twice before—both women disappeared within a year of the arrangements falling through."
Disappeared. A polite word for something far uglier.
"He wanted Bianca specifically?"
"Apparently. Word is he saw her photo months ago and became... fixated. The debt negotiation was just an excuse. He would have paid twice what Carmine owed just to have her."
I think of Bianca in that holding room, surrounded by other women marked for sale.
I think of her walking across that stage, trying so hard to be brave.
I think of what would have happened if I hadn't been there—if Sergei Morozov had claimed her, taken her to whatever dark hole he keeps his possessions.
My hand tightens around the phone until the case creaks.
"Where is he now?"
"Left the auction shortly after you did. My sources say he's back at the Morozov compound in Los Angeles." Alexei hesitates. "Misha, he's not going to let this go. You didn't just outbid him. You humiliated him publicly."
"I know."
"The Morozovs will see this as an act of aggression. Whether you intended it or not, you've started something."
"I know."
Silence on the line. Then: "What do you want me to do?"
I stare at the untouched vodka, watching light refract through the liquid.
"Double security on the estate. I want eyes on every Morozov movement—Sergei especially.
If he so much as books a flight to San Francisco, I want to know about it.
" I pause. "And find out everything you can about the arrangement between Carmine and the Morozovs.
I want to know exactly what I've stepped into. "
"Understood."
I end the call and sit in the darkness, letting the weight of my choices settle over me.
***
The phone rings twenty minutes later. I don't need to check the screen to know who it is.
"Dmitri."
"Brother." His voice is calm, measured. The voice he uses when he's containing something volatile beneath the surface. "I hear you had an eventful evening."
"Word travels fast."
"Word travels instantly when my brother spends five million dollars at an underground auction." A pause. "For a woman."
I don't respond. There's nothing to say that will make this better.
"Bianca Benedetti," Dmitri continues. "Carmine's daughter. The one you were involved with two years ago—the one I told you to walk away from."
"Yes."
"The one you assured me you'd ended things with. Cleanly. Permanently."
"I did end things."
"And yet here we are." I hear him shift, imagine him in his own office, Kira perhaps asleep upstairs, their son in the nursery. The life he built after swearing he'd never let anyone close. "Tell me what happened."
I tell him. The intelligence about the auction, the discovery that Bianca was being sold, my decision to intervene.
I leave out the two years of surveillance, the obsessive monitoring of her life, the way I've kept her photo in my desk drawer like a talisman.
Some things my brother doesn't need to know.
When I finish, he's quiet for a long moment.
"Sergei Morozov," he says finally.
"Yes."
"You understand what this means."
"I'm beginning to."
"The Morozovs aren't the Ivanovs, Misha. Anatoly was a man of honor, however twisted. We could negotiate with him, find common ground. The Morozovs are different. They're animals. They don't forgive, and they don't forget."
"I know."
"Do you?" His voice sharpens. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you've just painted a target on this family for a woman you barely know."
The words sting, even though he's right to say them.
"I know her," I say quietly. "I know her better than I've known anyone outside this family."
"You knew her for four months, two years ago. People change."
"Not her." I think of the way she grabbed my arm in the foyer, demanding I look at her. Still fighting. Still fierce. "She's exactly who she always was."
Dmitri sighs. It's not an angry sound—more resigned. The sigh of a man who recognizes the symptoms of a disease he's already survived.
"What's your plan?" he asks.
"Secure her. Gather intelligence. Find out what the Morozovs' next move will be."
"And then?"
"Handle it."
"Handle it," he repeats. "That's not a plan. That's a hope."
"It's all I have right now."
Silence stretches between us. I hear him breathing, thinking, weighing options the way he always does.
"She's there with you now?" he asks. "At the estate?"
"Yes. Guest room."
"Guest room." A dry note enters his voice. "Very proper."
"She's not a prisoner, Dmitri."
"Isn't she?" The question hangs in the air. "You bought her, Misha. Whatever your intentions, that's the reality. In the eyes of the world—in her eyes—you own her now."
I flinch. He's not wrong.
"I'm going to explain," I say. "Everything. Who I am, what our family does, why I left her two years ago. She deserves the truth."
"And if she can't accept it? If she runs?"
"She won't run."
"You sound very certain."
"I know her," I say again.
Another pause. Then, softer: "You want her."
It's not a question. I don't answer anyway.
"Protect her, then," Dmitri says finally. "Whatever it takes. But understand the cost, brother. The Morozovs will come for her—and through her, for all of us. This isn't just your fight anymore."
"I know."
"Do you need resources? Men?"
"Not yet. I'll let you know if that changes."
"Kira will want to meet her," he adds, and there's something almost gentle in his voice now. "She remembers what it's like to be thrust into this world without warning. She might be able to help."
I think of Kira—the frightened writer who became my brother's wife, who found her place in our bloody world and somehow emerged stronger for it. Maybe she could help Bianca navigate the same transition.
Or maybe Bianca will be different. Maybe she'll never accept any of this.
"I'll let you know," I say.
"Misha." His voice stops me before I can end the call. "For what it's worth... I understand. If it were Kira on that stage, I would have burned the building down."
The admission costs him something. Dmitri doesn't like acknowledging weakness, even to me.
"Thank you," I say.
"Don't thank me yet. We don't know how this ends."
He hangs up. I set the phone down and stare at the wall, my brother's words echoing in my mind.
If it were Kira on that stage, I would have burned the building down.
Yes. He would have. And so would I.
The difference is, Dmitri had a plan when he claimed Kira. A strategy, however ruthless. He knew what he was doing and why.
I have nothing. Just five million dollars of impulse, a woman who hates me, and a war I'm not prepared to fight.
I push back from the desk and stand. The vodka remains untouched. I leave it there.
Outside my office, the house is quiet. Early morning light filters through the windows, pale and thin. The staff move silently, trained to be invisible. Guards patrol the perimeter in careful rotations.
I should sleep. I should eat. I should do any of the practical things that keep a body functional.
Instead, I find myself climbing the stairs.
Her door is at the end of the hallway. I stop outside it, my hand raised to knock, then frozen.
What am I going to say to her? How do I explain seventeen years of violence and strategy and cold calculation? How do I make her understand that the man who brought her coffee between classes and the man who threatens dismemberment are the same person?
How do I tell her I want her without it sounding like another cage?
I press my palm flat against the wood instead of knocking. The door is solid oak, cold under my skin. She's on the other side—I can feel her presence like a gravitational pull.
Is she sleeping? Crying? Planning her escape?
I could walk in. I have the right—I bought her, after all, as Dmitri so bluntly reminded me. I could push open this door and take what I've wanted for two years.
The thought disgusts me.
I drop my hand and step back. Force myself to turn. Walk away down the hallway, each step heavier than the last.
Leaving was the only way I knew how to protect you, I told her.
It was true then. I'm not sure what's true now. All I know is that I can't be near her when I'm like this—raw, uncontrolled, balanced on the edge of something I might not be able to take back.
She deserves answers. She'll get them. But first I need to find something I haven't possessed in two years.
Control.
***
Mrs. Novak finds me in the kitchen an hour later, standing at the window, watching dawn break over the gardens.
"She hasn't touched her breakfast," she says quietly. "Or slept, from what I can tell. She's been sitting at the window since I left her."
My chest tightens. "Has she tried to leave?"
"No. But she asked about phone access. I told her I'd have to check with you."
Phone access. She wants to call someone. Her friends? The police? A lawyer?
It doesn't matter. She can't contact anyone—not until I've explained the situation, made her understand the danger. One wrong word to the wrong person and Sergei Morozov will know exactly where to find her.
"No calls," I say. "Not yet."
Mrs. Novak nods, her expression carefully neutral. She's been with us for twenty years—survived my parents' deaths, watched Dmitri and Anna and me grow into the people we've become. She doesn't judge. She just adapts.
"She's frightened," she says. "Trying not to show it, but she is."
"I know."
"She's also angry. At you, I think, though she didn't say as much."
"I know that too."
Mrs. Novak studies me with those sharp, knowing eyes. "Your mother would have liked her," she says softly. "She has spirit."
The words hit somewhere I wasn't expecting. I turn away from the window.
"I need to talk to her."
"Yes. You do." Mrs. Novak moves toward the door, then pauses. "Whatever you did to her before, whatever happened between you—she hasn't forgotten. But she hasn't closed the door either. I've seen enough women in crisis to know the difference."
I nod, not trusting my voice.
She leaves. I stand alone in the kitchen, watching light spread across the gardens.
Then I go upstairs.
The walk to her door feels longer than it should. Each step is deliberate, measured—the walk of a man approaching something he's not sure he'll survive.
I knock.
Silence. Then footsteps, soft on carpet.
The door opens.
She's still wearing the black dress—wrinkled now, creased from hours of sitting. Her makeup has smudged under her eyes, and her hair has come loose from whatever style she'd pinned it in. She looks exhausted, hollowed out, running on nothing but spite and adrenaline.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"Bianca," I say.
"Misha." Her voice is flat. Guarded.
"It's time." I hold her gaze, letting her see that I mean it. "Ask me anything."