Chapter 11 #2
"Oh, kotyonok, you’ve got claws!" he said, voice dropping to that register that made my insides liquid. "You want to play?"
His retaliation was gentle—barely more than a flick of water—but it was the grin that came with it that undid me.
Boyish and delighted and absolutely devastating.
We splashed back and forth like children, except for the way his eyes tracked water running down my skin, except for how my breath caught when he stood in the shallow end and everything below his navel disappeared into rippling blue.
Then Marina fell in.
The splash was small, but my panic was instant and absolute. She was drowning, her stuffing would be ruined, she'd smell like chlorine forever, she'd—
"Hey, breathe." Ivan was there immediately, fishing Marina out with careful hands. "She's okay. Look—just wet. Like she went for a swim."
He wrung her out gently, gray fabric darkening but maintaining its shape. "She's machine washable, see? The tag says so. We'll let her dry in the sun, and she'll be perfect by dinner. Better, even—she'll smell like sunshine."
The casual competence of it, the complete lack of judgment about a twenty-six-year-old woman panicking over a stuffed whale, made my chest do complicated things. He set Marina on a lounge chair, arranging her carefully so she'd dry evenly, and I wanted to cry. Or kiss him. Or both.
"Lunch?" he suggested, and I nodded, not trusting my voice.
The regular menu was extensive, but my eyes went immediately to the "Little Menu" section. Mac and cheese made with three cheeses. Dinosaur nuggets (specified as "the good kind"). Fruit cut into stars and hearts.
"Mac and cheese," I said, then hesitated. "Is that—"
"I'm having the nuggets," Ivan interrupted, already marking his choices. "Want to share? Get both?"
We ate sitting on the deck's built-in benches, legs dangling in the pool, sharing bites like it was normal to feed each other overpriced comfort food while water evaporated from our skin in the tropical heat.
Ivan ate dinosaur nuggets with the same focus he brought to everything, dissecting them along their anatomical lines.
"That's deeply weird," I informed him, stealing a t-rex.
"It's efficient," he countered, but his eyes were smiling. “And respectful to the majestic creatures.”
The sun and swimming and food combined into a weight that pulled at my eyelids.
I meant to just rest for a moment on the lounge chair, maybe five minutes with my eyes closed.
But the warmth was hypnotic, and Marina was drying next to me smelling like chlorine and happiness, and everything felt safe in a way that made staying conscious seem optional.
I woke to the sensation of hands on my skin—gentle, careful, methodical.
Ivan was applying sunscreen to my exposed shoulder, the one that had shifted out of the umbrella's shadow while I slept.
His touch was clinical, protective, but my half-awake brain cataloged it differently.
The size of his hands. The careful pressure.
The way he made sure to cover every inch that might burn.
"How long was I out?" I asked, voice rough with sleep.
"Two hours." He didn't stop his careful application, moving to my other arm. "You were tired. Your body needed it."
"You've been watching me sleep for two hours?"
"I've been reading," he said, but the book on his chair looked barely touched. "And making sure you didn't burn. You're pale enough to combust in direct sunlight."
The care was overwhelming. This man who ran financial empires had spent his afternoon monitoring my sun exposure, adjusting umbrellas, applying SPF like it was his most important task.
"Ivan?"
"Mm?"
"Thank you."
His hands stilled on my skin. "For sunscreen?"
"For making me feel safe enough to sleep in the open. For catching Marina. For eating dinosaur nuggets with me. For—" I gestured vaguely at everything, at nothing, at the impossible fact of him.
"Always," he said simply, and resumed his careful application of sunscreen, like protecting my skin was a privilege rather than a chore.
The anxiety arrived at 12:47 AM like a rude dinner guest who'd gotten the time wrong—unexpected, unwelcome, but absolutely convinced it belonged here.
I'd been sleeping peacefully in the regression room's daybed, Marina and Peanut standing guard, but suddenly my eyes snapped open and my chest went tight with formless dread.
What if this was temporary? What if Ivan got bored once the novelty wore off? What if I wasn't actually healing, just hiding in an expensive bubble that would pop the moment we returned to New York?
The thoughts multiplied like malignant cells—my father finding loopholes, the bratva deciding I wasn't worth protecting, Ivan realizing he'd married damaged goods that no amount of purple rooms and star pancakes could fix. My throat closed around air that had turned thick as honey.
Just a quick check. Five minutes on the laptop to scan emails, make sure the world hadn't ended while I was playing in pools and eating shaped food. Nothing wrong with being informed. Being prepared.
I slipped from the daybed with practiced silence—a skill learned from years of midnight wandering in my father's house, testing which floorboards creaked, which doors whispered. My laptop was in my bag, and the main room had that massive dining table perfect for spreading out research.
Just five minutes.
The browser opened to my email—nothing urgent, though my father's lawyer had sent three messages about "clarifications" that could definitely wait until never.
But then my fingers were typing without permission, pulling up articles about DDlg dynamics, about trauma-bonded relationships, about whether what Ivan and I had was real or just Stockholm syndrome with better thread counts.
"Differentiating Genuine Attraction from Trauma Response"—twenty-three tabs open before I finished the first article.
"The Psychology of Age Regression as Healing Mechanism"—another fifteen tabs, plus a PDF download of someone's dissertation.
"Power Exchange in Arranged Marriages: A Statistical Analysis"—why did this exist, and why was I reading all forty-seven pages?
The clock disappeared. Time became measured in open tabs and typed notes, my fingers flying across keys with the speed of someone trying to outrun their own thoughts. Each article led to three more, rabbit holes spawning rabbit holes until my screen looked like a Wikipedia editor's fever dream.
Then the real panic started—the treaty. What exactly had my father agreed to? What escape clauses existed? What happened if I couldn't produce an heir, or if Ivan decided I wasn't worth the trouble, or if—
Contract law websites in Russian and English filled my screen. Byzantine legal precedents. Historical bratva agreements and how they'd been broken. My notes grew into something resembling the manifesto of someone who'd forgotten what sleep was for.
"Baby, what are you doing?"
Ivan's voice cut through my spiral like a blade through silk. I hadn't heard him approach—bare feet on tile, that predator silence he could summon when needed. The clock on my screen said 3:23 AM.
Guilt flooded my system with enough force to make me nauseous. But underneath it, something else—anticipation? Fear? That complicated twist in my stomach that happened when consequences stopped being theoretical.
"I couldn't sleep," I said, defensive before he'd even accused. "I was just checking emails, then I needed to understand some things about our dynamic, make sure it's healthy, and then the treaty—"
"Screen time rules." His voice was quiet, controlled, but there was something underneath. Disappointment maybe. Or recognition. "Two hours maximum for work-related research. None after 10 PM."
"I wasn't working—"
"Contract analysis isn't work?" He moved closer, and I could see he'd thrown on pajama pants but nothing else. The laptop screen's blue light painted his chest in ways that made thinking harder.
"I needed to make sure we're safe."
"At three in the morning? By reading—" He glanced at my screen, eyebrows rising. "—'Bratva Marriage Dissolution Precedents 1987-2019'?"
Heat flooded my cheeks. When he put it like that, it sounded exactly as unhinged as it was.
"Anya." He said my name gently, but I could hear the steel underneath. "You know this rule. We discussed it, agreed to it. It exists to protect you from exactly this—spiral researching until your anxiety eats you alive."
"I'm not a child," I snapped, but the words felt hollow when I was literally surrounded by evidence of my inability to self-regulate. "I can decide when to research."
"You can," he agreed. "But you agreed to limits because you recognized that sometimes you need boundaries. External structure when internal structure fails."
He was right. I knew he was right. But something in me needed to push, to test, to see if the framework we'd built would hold when I threw myself against it.
"Maybe I changed my mind about the rules."
"Did you?" He studied me with those gray eyes that saw too much. "Or are you testing whether consequences are real? Whether Daddy actually follows through or if this is all just talk?"
The word 'Daddy' in this context—when I was deliberately misbehaving, when consequences loomed—sent electricity down my spine. My breathing went shallow for entirely different reasons than anxiety.
"I don't know," I admitted, the truth scraping my throat raw.
"That's okay," he said, and reached for my laptop with gentle but firm hands. "But regardless of why, you broke a rule we agreed on. There will be consequences. We'll discuss them in the morning."
The laptop closed with a soft click that sounded like a judge's gavel. He picked it up, cradling it like evidence.
"Ivan—"
"Bed, kotyonok. Whatever you're feeling—anxiety, defiance, fear—it'll be clearer after sleep."
"I can't sleep now," I protested. "Not with consequences hanging over my head."