Chapter 11 Ivy
IVY
My mouth goes dry.
I don’t breathe for a beat. The room tilts, the fire pops, and his words hang in the air between us like a blade.
I wait for my voice, for anger, for the kind of panic that makes my hands shake and my mouth run, but nothing comes at first. It’s like my brain’s buffering, watching the moment circle and circle without loading.
He doesn’t look away. He’s the sort of man who says a thing like it’s already happened, who speaks and the world rearranges itself to agree.
I stare at him, words caught somewhere between my throat and lips.
The fire crackles behind him, sparks shooting up the chimney, but all I can hear is the thundering of my pulse.
“Until you’re my wife,” he’d said. It echoes in my head like thunder.
I’ve seen him before. At Otrava. He was always in the corners—those private tables half in shadow, half in neon.
He’d usually come in late, a couple of hours before closing.
I’d pass his table with change for a customer, or a towel to clean tables, or a tray, and feel the air pull toward him like a tide in the ocean.
He never reached for me. He never touched me.
But I felt watched in a way that didn’t make my skin crawl.
For some reason, his silent presence made me feel safe. Protected.
“Why?” I ask. “Why are you doing this? You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough.”
That’s it. No flourish, no softening. Just the truth as he sees it.
I grip the arms of the chair, not ready to stand yet.
I don’t trust my legs to support me. My entire body feels light as air, as if the smallest breeze will scatter me around the room.
The flames in the fireplace crackle, chewing through a log until it collapses inward and sends a storm of sparks up the chimney.
“What’s enough?” I ask.
“That you’re alive.” The words land flat, controlled. “And that men are hunting you.”
“You act like that’s new,” I shoot back.
Something tightens in his jaw, quick as a pulse. He doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t say he’s sorry he pulled me out of a federal convoy. He just stands there, a wall in a pair of jeans and a dark hoodie.
I wrap my arms tighter around myself. My voice finally works, though it’s shaky and thin. “You can’t be serious. You can’t expect me to marry you!”
His green eyes don’t waver. “I do.”
He says it like it’s already decided, like my opinion is nothing but noise he’s indulging for now.
My stomach twists. This doesn’t make sense.
Nothing about this makes sense. This man—this stranger who isn’t really a stranger—pulled me out of a federal convoy.
Until then, he’d just been a customer sitting in a dark corner, seeming to watch over me.
But then he showed up with his men, all carrying wicked guns.
When he’d opened the car door and leaned in, holding a gun on the agents, at first I’d thought he was there to kill me.
It had taken a second to realize the weapon wasn’t pointed at me.
I’d looked into those green eyes and had fallen into them, into the intensity shining there.
He tilts his head slightly, studying me the way a wolf studies a deer. Silent. Calculating. His silence says more than words. I can’t take the weight of his eyes anymore, so I look away and at the room that’s become my newest prison.
It’s not a prison cell. Not exactly. Even though the door is locked and there are bars on the windows, the furnishings are much nicer than the ones at the safehouses.
Hell, they’re ten times nicer than what I have at my own place.
The bed is heavy oak, carved with crosses at the corners.
A rug covers the floor, patterned with deep reds and golds.
Pine boughs hang along the mantel, dotted with silver tinsel that glitters in the firelight.
Icons hang on the wall, candles burning steadily before them.
Christmas.
Russian Christmas, I realize, the memories faint but insistent.
My grandmother used to talk about it, the Orthodox way, with the fasting and the hymns and the long vigils.
I’d never really celebrated it myself, not fully because Mom didn’t want to, but something about the candles, the pine, the weight of it all makes my chest tighten with a strange, almost-forgotten familiarity.
“You decorated,” I whisper, the words slipping out before I can stop them. I know now, or am reasonably sure, that this man is Russian Mafia. For some reason, I never considered they’d celebrate Christmas. I guess I just imagined them running around shooting each other.
His expression doesn’t change, but his eyes flick to the garlands. “Tradition.”
Tradition. The word feels heavy. It’s not about making things pretty.
It’s about roots, about faith, about a way of life that doesn’t bend just because the world outside says it should.
Or, apparently, just because the man celebrating is a cold-blooded killer.
Not that I’ve seen him kill anyone, but people in the Mafia business aren’t known for their charity.
I swallow hard, looking back at him. “You think all these decorations will make it seem more normal and keep me here?”
His lips twitch, the barest ghost of something that might be amusement. “No. I think staying alive will keep you here.”
The way he says it makes my skin prickle.
The door opens then, and another man steps inside.
My eyes drop to his hands where he’s holding a piece of wood and a carving knife.
A closer look reveals it’s a small frog he’s carved.
My skin prickles as I glance at the fireplace mantel where a small wooden figurine of a rabbit sits.
He walks over and sets the frog next to the rabbit.
First, the one I found in the club kitchen when I was hiding from Vadim.
Then the one at the safehouse. And now this?
A chill goes down my spine, but I’m not sure if it’s fear or something more…
comforting. This man, Konstantin’s man, has been watching me, I realize with a start.
Through my darkest and most frightening times, he was there, putting carved animals near me, and I never saw a glimpse of him.
Was that his way of telling me that I was safe?
That someone was there watching over me?
It would have been nice to know this at the time. It might have helped curb some of my fear.
Or freaked me out even more.
The man gives me a nod, then turns to Konstantin and speaks in Russian.
Their voices are low, too fast for me to catch, but the tone is all business.
I know a little Russian, if spoken slowly.
Just enough to get me by if I’m lost and need directions, need to find a restroom, and a few other little things.
But these are native speakers, and they talk way too fast for me to keep up.
I do hear Konstantin say “Viktor” a couple of times and figure that’s the name of the wood carver he’s talking to.
Viktor’s expression doesn’t change, but he glances at the rabbit and then at me, a quick acknowledgment that stirs more questions. He’s all edges, but his movements are careful, almost quiet, as he leaves my room—prison.
The silence stretches taut again. The room feels larger and smaller at the same time. I can’t stay sitting. My body has too much pent-up fear and anxiety to remain cramped in this chair. I push to my feet. My legs shake, but I don’t let them buckle.
“You can’t keep me here,” I blurt out suddenly.
He blinks. Just once, then his face goes still again. “Yes,” he says, calm as ever. “I can.”
“The Feds will come for me.”
“They’ll die trying.”
The bluntness of it knocks the breath out of me. He says it so casually, like it’s a weather report. Anger flares, hot enough to cut through the fear.
I move to the window because I need space, but there are bars worked into the mullions, black iron threaded with a garland of juniper and ribbon as if someone thought the prettiness might distract from the prison.
Snow coats the sill outside. Beyond, a black-ice yard and a wall.
The wall looks older than the house, stone so thick winter can’t get its teeth into it.
“You think you can just decide this for me?” I turn from the window and meet his emotionless green eyes. “You think you can lock me up, dress it in pine boughs and candles, and I’ll go along with it?”
He steps closer. The firelight catches the gold flecks in his green eyes, the hard lines of his face. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t have to.
“You’ll be my wife. That’s the only way you survive.”
The words hit like stone. He believes them. Every syllable is absolute in his mind.
My throat tightens, but I force the words out anyway. “No. I won’t marry you.”
For the first time, something flickers across his face. Not surprise. Not anger. Something darker, heavier. His eyes lock on mine, cold and sharp.
“Then you’re dead.”