Chapter 8
PAVEL
Stupid, Pavel. Very, very stupid.
I know it’s reckless.
I have known it since the second time, when recklessness became a choice rather than a lapse, and I made that choice with full lucidity. The first night could be attributed to a year of managed tension finally exceeding its limits. Everything after that is simply want, which is foolish of me.
Yet, here I am. Fully intending to take that woman in every way she will let me.
Molly makes me feel human every time I touch her.
I’m aware of how that sounds. That is exactly the kind of sentiment that gets men like me killed, or worse, gets the people around them killed.
I hold that knowledge in one hand and her in the other, and I keep choosing her, and I’ve stopped pretending I will stop.
When she’s bent over my lap, squirming between her orgasm and her pink-cheeked spanking, I appreciate the moment, but there’s more to it than that.
I know I can’t stop. I’ve come too far with her.
I dig my fingers into her pussy and find her soaked once more, and she moans from my touch sweeter than anything I have ever heard… There is no stopping this.
The smacks echo across my office, just like the sound of her begging. “Please, sir!”
“Please what, pet?”
“Please fuck me!”
“What makes you think you have earned my cock?”
She whines without words, and I spank her once more. The way she groans settles into my balls. She’s right. She’s not the only one who needs this. “Please—”
I throw her onto the couch, and I’m inside of her in seconds. Each time, it feels as if I’ve come home, found God, seen the face of the heavens, whatever metaphorical thing that comes to mind, it is never enough. There is nothing else that compares to this.
She grinds up to meet me every time, like her body is helpless to do anything but seek mine out.
When she comes, I feel her flutter against me, and I let her take me there too.
We kiss once more, and I hold her close until we both calm down.
Our heartbeats sync. For the first time, she begins to doze in my arms.
I hold as still as possible. I will not wake her for anything.
She is extraordinary in ways I did not anticipate and cannot fully account for. It’s not only her patience with my men, or the dry precision of her wit, or the way she runs the office with a quiet competence that makes everything around her function better.
It’s the way she is undiminished by the harshness of the world she has walked into, unbothered by the weight of my silences, unafraid of me in the way that most people, sensibly, are afraid of me.
She looks at me like I’m interesting rather than a man to run from. I find this unreasonably compelling.
I have found it unreasonably compelling for longer than I’ve been willing to admit.
Molly trusts me, which is the part I can’t look away from. In my office, in the low light, when I test the edges of what she will give me, she gives willingly, even eagerly. There’s something in that that reaches past every wall I have built and does damage I can’t yet fully assess.
She is not passive in those moments. She’s present and sharp and entirely herself, even then, and the trust is not blind but chosen, eyes wide open. I find that the chosen kind is considerably more dangerous to receive than the kind people extend out of fear or obligation.
She sniffles once. “Did I fall asleep?”
“You did.”
“Oh, sorry,” she says as she starts to get up.
But I pull her back down to me on the couch. “It’s fine. Rest.”
She half smiles, then relaxes into my arms once again. It’s seconds before I hear her quiet snores.
I will not lose her. That’s not a feeling. It’s a decision made with the same cold clarity with which I make all decisions that matter. And decisions require action.
I will do what it takes to protect what is mine.
Igor comes to me on a Thursday morning with the measured tread that means he has something I won’t want to hear delivered in a way he hopes will soften it. He settles into the chair across my desk, folds his hands, and tells me that Fedor has been making inquiries.
About my operation, my structure, the people closest to me. Mapping the terrain, the way Fedor always does before he moves. Igor’s information is solid. It is always solid. I thank him, and he leaves, and I sit for a moment with the stillness that comes before a decision I have already made.
I call Vet.
Her full name is Svetlana Bodrov, but no one has called her that in years.
She is exceptionally good at keeping people alive when other people are trying very hard to do the opposite, and she’s even more gifted at the opposite.
She worked overseas for me for years, operating in environments where being overlooked was the primary survival skill, and she was never overlooked by anyone who mattered and consistently overlooked by everyone else. It is a rare talent.
She is brunette, brown-eyed, and has the kind of face people look past in a crowd, one that doesn’t snag in memory. She is also precise, disciplined, and entirely without sentimentality, which are qualities I value in the people I trust with things that matter.
Molly matters.
Vet answers on the second ring, which she always does. “Pavel. Long time, no hear.”
She’s using her American accent. This is good. It means she might be in the US already.
“I have an assignment for you. Close protection, indefinite duration. The principal does not know she’s to be protected.”
“How close am I to be?”
“Daily contact. You will be inside the perimeter, not watching it from outside. Her assistant during the day, her stalker at night.”
Another pause. “Is the principal aware of any threat?”
“No, and she won’t be if you do your job.”
“The subterfuge costs extra.”
I nearly laugh. It’s unlike Vet to make a joke. “Double your rate, Vet. I don’t care.”
“I can be in Manhattan within the day.”
“I’ll send you the addresses and other details. And Vet?”
“Yes?”
“No mistakes. The principal is a key asset. The highest level. Understood?”
She falls silent for a breath. “I will pretend you did not just insult me, Pavel.” The line goes dead.
Vet is right. I should not have said the thing about mistakes. Vet doesn’t make mistakes. Ever.
Molly has been managing the office alone for long enough that additional support is a legitimate operational need. I should have addressed it sooner, in fact, and the fact that I didn’t is an administrative oversight I am correcting now. This is the framing I will use, and it’s not entirely untrue.
I call Molly into my office. Her low-cut blouse makes it hard to concentrate, but I manage. “You’re getting an assistant.”
“Why? Did I screw up or overlook something, because I’m sorry—”
“No, no. Nothing like that.” I drag my hand over my face. This is not going how I’d hoped. “You are overworked, Molly. It has been a long time coming. I finally found someone I like for you.”
She looks mildly surprised and then pleased, because she’s professional enough to recognize the practical value even when she suspects she’s being managed. “Oh. Thank you, Pavel.”
“I should have done it sooner.”
She gives me the look she gives me when she knows I’m being less than completely forthcoming, and I hold her gaze until she drops it, which takes longer than it used to. She reads me better these days, and it’s a blessing and a curse.
Vet arrives Monday at eight fifteen. By ten o’clock she has Molly’s coffee order committed to memory. By end of day she has made Molly laugh two times that I can hear. There might have been more.
By the end of the first week, Molly has introduced her to the office as her assistant and is already leaning on her with the easy comfort of someone who trusts quickly once trust has been earned. Vet earns it without appearing to try, which is exactly what I hired her to do.
It’s a relief to know Vet has her back.
The secondary arrangements are quietly put in place.
A monitored thermal camera on Molly’s apartment.
Check-ins from Vet twice daily. Once midday, once when Molly is secured for the night.
Vet knows where Molly is at all times without the need for an inserted tracker, and it puts my mind at ease as much as that’s possible.
The arrangement has been in place for a few weeks by the time Igor stands in my doorway with the stillness of a man choosing his words. From Igor, it means he is genuinely uncertain how to proceed, which is uncommon enough to have my full attention before he says anything.
Once the door is closed, he comes out with it. “Why is Vet pretending not to know me?”
“Because that is her job. You didn’t say anything to the contrary, did you?”
He shakes his head. “Of course not. I’ve been around enough to know better, Pavel, and you know that better than anyone, so why would you ask? I’m no amateur—”
“I know, I know,” I mutter, holding a hand up to salve the wound he speaks of. “Apologies. I do not doubt you.”
He’s quiet for a moment, looking at me with the measured expression he has worn in my service for eleven years, the one that means he has an opinion and is deciding whether I want to hear it. “It’s the girl, isn’t it?”
I draw a long, aggravated breath. I could lie to him. Tell him to mind his own business. “Since when do I dive into my personal life with you?”
“Since when do you have a personal life to dive into?”
Shit. I’m not thinking clearly. “Fair enough.” I motion for him to sit, and we both do. “I have a personal life. It involves Molly. Vet is here to protect her, and no one else knows.”
He sits with that for a moment. “Is that wise?”
“Me and Molly? Absolutely not.”
“I meant Vet.”
“Why?”
“She spent time in the field. Several of your men know her face. If anyone recognizes her, then someone with the wrong connections and enough motivation might do the same.”
Reality is an ugly beast. “I am aware of that. I’m also aware that she’s the best at what she does.”
Igor nods slowly. He’s not a man who needs things spelled out, which is why he has lasted as long as he has. “I will quietly reposition two of our street men to extend coverage on Molly’s block for redundancy.”
I hadn’t thought of doing so, which highlights my lapses in judgment. “Thank you.”
He nods once and leaves without another word about it. This is why I trust him.
The risk is real. I know this. If Fedor is mapping my operation and someone with a connection mentions Vet’s new posting, he will begin asking more questions.
The alternative—leaving Molly unprotected while Fedor finds his footing—is not acceptable. Vet’s cover will hold if no one looks directly at it. The men who know her face are loyal, and loyalty in my organization is not a courtesy. It is a condition of continued employment and breathing.
I have thought this through. Mostly.
But now, what I think about most is Molly.
The way she moved through the office last Tuesday in the dark green dress, the one that does something structurally unsound to my concentration.
The way she stopped in my doorway at the end of the day with a file in her hand and looked at me for a moment without saying anything, and the air between us had that quality it gets sometimes, taut and aware, before she set the file on the corner of my desk and said goodnight in the pleasant professional voice and left.
I sat there for a full minute afterward doing nothing, which is not something I do. I do not sit and do nothing.
Molly apparently makes that possible. She gives me a sense of peace, and it’s the most uncomfortable part of all of this, but I can’t stop craving it either.
She doesn’t know the full shape of what I’m protecting her from, doesn’t know that I’m protecting her at all.
I intend to keep it that way, and the weight of that is something I carry now alongside everything else I carry.
It doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels, uncomfortably and against all reasonable expectations, like something I want to do.
I watch the city from my window in the early dark and think about Fedor, methodical and patient, and currently mapping the edges of my world. But there’s Vet, somewhere below in the city, doing what she does best.
I will not lose Molly. If I have to, I will take the fight to Fedor and end this once and for all. But the city does not need a war, and that’s exactly what it would become if I let it.
I cannot let it.