Chapter 16
SASHA
Ispot her before Bogdan does.
She’s a slash of white in the hard morning light, fuzzy slippers, robe snapping in the wind. She’s walking fast, chin up, shaking. I can tell she’s trying to look confident, like a woman in control.
But she’s rattled. It’s easy to tell.
Only question is what rattled her.
“Stop the car.”
Bogdan eases the car to the curb. He opens his door, but I touch his shoulder.
“I’ve got her.”
Gabriella doesn’t turn to look at me when I get out. Instead, she turns and stares into traffic, like she could step into it and vanish. Her hair is wild from the wind, but her eyes are not. They’re bright and furious.
“Gabriella,” I say, raising my voice to speak over the din of traffic and people.
“Don’t,” she says without turning. “Just… don’t.”
“Get in the car.”
A pause.
“You have guns in your office,” she says. “And you have men with guns in your home.”
And there it is. She’s learned the truth. Or, at least, part of the truth.
“They’re for protection.”
“Protection from what, exactly?” She turns to face me, but every muscle in her body is tense, coiled to run.
“From the same thing you need protection from.”
She swallows. I watch her throat bob up and down. “You say that like I’m supposed to feel grateful.”
“I’d prefer you feel alive.”
She laughs once. It softens the edges of a hard conversation.
“So it’s true. You’re connected.”
She knows. Time to find out how much.
She furrows her brow, something occurring to her in those moments. “But you’re not just connected. That home, that office… that’s not a man connected to the Bratva. That’s a man who is the Bratva.”
I don’t answer. The silence is admission enough. Wind knifes between the towers of downtown Chicago in the way the city is known for. She pulls her robe tighter, but it’s not enough against this cold. She’s shivering.
I step closer, slowly. “Get in the car,” I say again. “Please. You’re going to get frostbite out here.”
She stares at me for a moment, like she doesn’t recognize who I am. Then she looks over my shoulder. Bogdan is out of the car, leaning against it. I’d need to only give the word, and he’d be on her in three seconds flat. I hope it doesn’t come to that—I want her to come willingly.
But she’s coming, either way.
Gabriella turns her attention to herself. “I look like a crazy person.”
“If you ask me, you’re more than entitled to a little insanity. But all the same, I’d prefer if you didn’t freeze to death.”
One more look at me, then she glances down the block as if weighing the possibility of walking on. I glance back; Bogdan is tensed and ready to move.
She sighs. “Fine.”
I close the distance between us, offering her my hand. She takes it, and I can feel how badly she’s shaking. Moments later, I’m helping her into the car, the interior nice and warm.
We ride in silence. Chicago slides by, glass and steel and water catching light. Bogdan drives like he shoots—straight line, nothing fancy. I keep my hands still on my knees. I could reach for her, but I don’t.
She keeps her eyes on the window, jaw tight.
“You shouldn’t have gone into that wing,” I say finally. “That rule was there for a reason.”
Her mouth curls. “I shouldn’t have had to wonder what was there.”
I look at the side of her face and think for a moment about telling her everything, how I’ve watched her from the shadows since the moment she graduated high school, that I was the one connected with a scholarship that paid her way through university, that it wasn’t an accident she came to work for me.
I don’t tell her any of it. She’s not ready.
“You could’ve let me know,” she says.
“It was necessary to keep you safe.”
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“I do,” I say, the words coming out softer than I intend, “if the alternative is watching you die.”
She says nothing. But in those moments, it’s clear—she needs more, and I can’t keep her in the dark forever.
“Back to the penthouse?” Bogdan asks.
My first instinct is to say yes. It’s safe there for her. But as I sit there with Gabriella, I realize she doesn’t need a gilded cage right now.
She needs truth.
“Take us to the closest operations warehouse.”
“You got it.”
Ten minutes later, we’re in the industrial district, where the skyline gives way to scaffolds and smoke.
Frost clings to the edges of the windshield.
Neither of us speaks. I can feel Gabriella’s gaze darting between the glass and her own reflection, trying to reconcile the man beside her with the one she thought she knew.
When the car finally slows to a halt, she breaks the silence. “Where are we?”
“A place where you can get some answers.”
Her eyes flick toward me, fear and defiance in them. I don’t call attention to it.
We pull up to an unmarked building of corrugated steel and blacked-out windows, squatting between two freight lots. No sign, no logos—just a wide bay door and the muted hum of generators behind the walls. A dog barks somewhere in the distance.
“This?” she asks. “You brought me to a warehouse?”
“Not just a warehouse. Come on.”
I unbutton my coat and glance down at her outfit.
The robe’s thin cotton flutters with the draft leaking through the door.
She doesn’t complain, but she’s shivering.
I pull my coat off and drape it over her shoulders.
It swallows her whole, the hem brushing her calves.
She blinks at me like she doesn’t know whether to thank me or throw it in my face.
“Keep it,” I say. “You’ll need it inside. It’s colder than it looks.”
In the front, I spot Bogdan reaching for something in the seat next to him. He turns, a pair of Gabriella’s running shoes in his hands.
“Saw on the footage you were in slippers. Didn’t have time to grab a full change of clothes, but I managed these.”
“Thanks.” Gabriella takes the shoes and slips them on.
Bogdan parks near the loading bay and steps out, scanning the lot before motioning us forward. The door rises on a hydraulic hiss. The smell hits first—oil, gunmetal, something faintly antiseptic. It’s a smell I’m used to.
We step into a cavern of steel beams and concrete. Half the space is a mechanic’s dream of workbenches, engine parts, and rows of vehicles—most of them my shipping cars. The other half is full of rows of crates, computers on folding tables, maps pinned to corkboards.
Gabriella hesitates just past the threshold, her breath ghosting in the air. “This is what you do?”
I glance at the men watching us. They straighten as I meet their eyes. One calls out, low but clear, “Pakhan.”
Gabriella stiffens. I feel the tension in the air between us. She looks from me to the man, then to the insignia on the nearby crate for AngelCorp, stamped discretely in one corner. It’s not enough to fool her any longer.
She turns in a slow circle, taking it all in—the weapons, the crates, the men. It’s too much for her, I can tell.
“So,” she says finally, “this is where the magic happens.”
I almost smile. “Something like that.”
And for the first time, she sees the world as I’ve always lived it.
“Come,” I say. “I’m sure you have questions.”
“You’re damn right about that.”
I nod to Bogdan, and he breaks away from us.
I lead Gabriella up the metal stairs to the mezzanine office.
The room is glass on two sides, looking down over the main floor like a captain’s bridge.
There’s a steel desk, a wall of gray filing cabinets, a map of the Chicagoland area threaded with red twine. No décor, no softness. All function.
Gabriella drifts over to the glass, looking out over the floor. Two men inventory a shipment; a tech cycles through camera feeds. A mechanic rolls a jack under one of my shipping vans. She presses her palm to the cold pane.
“So this is your HQ?” she asks without turning.
“One of them,” I say. “We don’t centralize Bratva operations, if we can help it.”
She turns back to me. “And downstairs. They called you… Pakhan?” She shapes the syllables carefully with her lips, like they’re an incantation she has to pronounce just right. “What does that actually mean?”
“The head,” I say. “Boss, if you like it.”
“Of course.”
I can tell she’s overwhelmed and not sure what to say, so I take over. I move to the map of the city and tap it. “I control the Orlov Bratva, and I control AngelCorp. Everything that happens in this city, I know about, which means I make hard decisions when necessary.”
“Like keeping guns in your office.”
“That’s actually an easy decision to make. I’m never more than a few feet from a gun. I do whatever’s necessary.” I step over to the window and sweep my hand over the floor. “Everyone here is my responsibility. Not just their incomes, but their lives.”
“And you run everything?”
“Almost. There’s a council… think of them like a C-suite board. It’s my job to keep them rich and happy, even if that means not giving them what they think they want in the moment, like with this merger.”
“How does this tie into AngelCorp? The trucks, the warehouses, the logistics… is it all a front?”
“No, AngelCorp is real, though it did start as something like a front. It was conceived as the logistics network of the Bratva—how we move merchandise, illicit goods. We grew, and our networks became more sophisticated. My father, the former pakhan, eventually began using them to move legitimate goods. And when I took over after his death, I looked at the numbers, realizing that if we could move more into regular business, we wouldn’t need the Bratva dealings.
We could make all of the money we need, with none of the risk. The Bratva could exist in name only.”
She looks a bit confused but also intrigued. “What’s the plan? You’re going to buy your way out?”
“This is where you come into the picture. Johan Morozov’s company, Dandelion, is a tech revolution in the making.
Using his crypto transfer networks and AI-powered efficiency, I could take AngelCorp to new heights in logistics.
We’d be so profitable that one would have to be a fool to try to make money moving illicit goods around the country. ”
There’s so much more to tell about the role I’ve played in her life. That Peter Morozov is her father. That Johan is her brother. That her life was, for all intents and purposes, designed.
But that would be too much, too soon.
She wraps the robe tighter. Silence hangs heavy.
“So I’m having a mobster’s child.” She glances aside for a moment, considering her words.
I cross the space slowly, careful not to crowd her. I stand close enough that she could choose to step back if she wants. She doesn’t. I rest my hands on both of her shoulders.
“You’re carrying my child,” I say. “And I will keep you both safe. That’s all you need to know.”
“So you get to decide what I know and what I don’t?”
“It’s for your own safety. These next few weeks and months are going to be difficult. But we’re going to get through them.”
She sighs, shaking her head. “You make all of this sound so simple.”
“It is simple to me,” I reply. “Hard. Ugly sometimes. But simple.”
Her eyes flash. “Sasha, this is my life we’re talking about here. I didn’t sign up to be… this—” She nods towards the glass, the shipments, the men who would kill for me without a moment’s hesitation. “I don’t even know what this is, to be honest.”
“I know you didn’t choose it.”
“But why? Why me?”
Because I promised a dying man I would end a war he started. Because I made a promise to protect her. Because of all the reasons I can’t say.
“Because you matter. Because I can’t lose you.”
Her lip trembles. “You can’t protect me from the whole world.”
“I can keep you from the worst of it. I can protect you and the baby. Our baby.”
“But—” She starts, then looks down at her fingers where she’s twisted the belt of the robe into a knot.
I pull her in, not hard—just enough to offer warmth. I can sense her wanting to hold back, wanting to step away. But then she just sighs, leaning into me.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she says into my shirt. “I don’t know how to live this life. I don’t know if I can be brave enough.”
“You don’t have to be brave,” I say. “You just have to be honest. When you’re afraid, tell me. When you need your friend, we can make it happen the smart way. You give me your honesty; I give you my protection. That’s the exchange.”
She snorts a wet laugh. “So romantic.”
Not to mention that it’s hypocrisy. I’m asking honesty from her, while holding back so much.
“It’s the best I can do.”
There’s so much more I want to tell her. I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of my feelings for her in words. But the way I’m beginning to feel for her is something I can’t quite wrap my head around.
A thought edges up, ugly and familiar: You don’t deserve this. Not love, not her, not the child.
I let it pass. There’s no time now for self-pity.
I lower my mouth to her temple. “Whatever happens next, you don’t have to face it alone.”
She nods once against me. “And if I run?”
“I follow,” I say. “Close, or at a distance. Whatever you need. But I will be there.”
We stand together until her breathing evens. Then she pulls back, wipes the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand, and looks out over the floor again.
“You said answers,” she says. “But it feels like I have more questions.”
She’s smart, senses there’s more. But I can’t tell her yet.
For a heartbeat, I think she has some sixth sense, that she’s on the verge of asking the question that will rearrange every line on the map—the one about Jonas and Peter and what everything really means.
She doesn’t, of course. How could she know?
Then she sighs, steps away, and nods at the door. “Take me home, Sasha.”
I signal to Bogdan through the glass. He looks up from an iPad, meets my eyes, and gives a nod that means the route’s clear, the car’s warm, and the men are briefed. Time to go.
As we descend the stairs, the men look up and then away, the way trained men do. Gabriella walks closer to me than she did on the way in, as if she’s more aware of her place in everything.
For the first time, we feel as if we’re walking side-by-side.
And I like her there.