Chapter 28
ALEKSEI
I saw the ring.
He thought he hid it in time. He didn’t.
Not clearly, not enough for me to know what it was doing in his hand or why he looked at it the way he did, but I saw the glint of gold before it disappeared into his pocket.
I saw the shift in his face. The brief, strange stillness before he pulled me into his lap and made me forget my own name for a while.
I just chose not to say anything. Because what exactly was I supposed to ask?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
So, now I’m alone on the terrace the next morning with coffee in one hand and too many thoughts in the other, watching the waves come in slow and bright under the sun.
Where is this going?
That question has been chewing through me since I woke up.
I’ve known him for two weeks. Two. That’s it.
Two weeks ago, he was an impossible billionaire with an office that smelled expensive and a secretary who hated me.
Now he’s a man who has been inside me, who knows how I sound when I come apart for real instead of into a microphone, who keeps security outside my apartment, who dragged me onto a private jet, who has scars from bullets and a life made of danger and money and secrets.
Oh, and he is also my boss.
He is also older than me by enough that I should probably be alarmed by how much that works for me.
And, perhaps most importantly, he is a part of the freaking mafia.
There is no version of this that should feel normal.
So naturally, I am sitting barefoot in a luxury villa wearing his shirt and drinking coffee from a mug that probably costs more than my winter coat.
My phone buzzes against the chair beside me.
Frankie.
I stare at her name for a second.
Then I answer. “Hey.”
There’s a pause. Then, “Okay, first of all, rude.”
I blink. “What?”
“You’ve been dodging me for, like, twenty-four hours. Which means either you’re dead, in love, or in witness protection.”
I laugh despite myself and look out at the water. “None of those.”
“Mmm.” She is not convinced. “You sound weird.”
“I’m tired.”
“You always say that when you’re about to lie to me.”
I open my mouth to deny it, but she beats me to the next question.
“Where are you?”
I almost answer automatically, but then Frankie says, “Wait. Hold on.”
My stomach drops. “What?”
“Turn your phone.”
I look down at the screen. “What?”
“Turn your phone, Zee. I saw blue. Is that a pool?”
I hesitate.
“Zatanna.”
I sigh, then tip the phone slightly so the camera catches the terrace railing, the white stone, the impossible strip of beach beyond it.
There is a long, loaded silence.
Then Frankie shrieks. “What the fuck?”
I jerk the phone away from my ear. “Jesus.”
“No. No. Absolutely not. What do you mean there is a beach behind you? Yesterday you were in your weird evil-corporate office and now you are in what appears to be a honeymoon resort.”
I press the heel of my hand to my forehead.
“Zee.” Her voice drops into something much more serious. “Where are you?”
I stare out at the water.
And realize I cannot keep any of this in anymore.
Not the dates. Not the guns. Not the suite. Not the private jet. Not the fact that I am standing in something so far outside my normal life it feels like if I don’t say it out loud, I might actually lose my mind.
So I say, very calmly, “Okay. I need you to let me finish before you scream.”
Frankie goes completely silent. That alone tells me how bad this sounds.
I take a breath. “Two weeks ago, I got hired by the billionaire CEO job, right?”
“Yes…”
“And then I accidentally sent him one of my… recordings.”
There is already an inhale on the other end. I keep going before she can interrupt.
“And he listened to it.”
“Oh my God.”
“And then I started working there, and it turns out he hired me to help him find a wife.”
“What…”
“And then I walked in on him in his office bathroom listening to my voice and—”
Frankie makes a sound I can only describe as a spiritual implosion. “Zatanna.”
“And then there were inheritance issues, and fake brides, and his ex showed up pretending to be someone else, and then some men tried to kidnap me, and also he’s in organized crime.”
Silence. But not normal silence.
It’s the kind of silence where I can actually hear Frankie trying to sort human language into categories that still make sense.
When she finally speaks, it’s much quieter than I expected. “I’m sorry.”
I blink. “For what part?”
“For not believing you when you said your life was weird.”
That startles a laugh out of me. Then the laugh dies, because the next words come harder.
“We’ve also had sex,” I say.
Frankie inhales like she’s about to pass out.
“Multiple times.”
“Stop.”
“On a plane.”
“Stop.”
“In a suite.”
“Zatanna!”
I bury my face in my free hand, laughing and mortified at the same time. “You said let you finish.”
“I did not realize finish meant crime romance fever dream.”
I sink farther into the chair, coffee forgotten. “I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” Frankie is pacing now. I can hear it. “Do you hear yourself? He is your boss. He is rich-rich. He is old enough to know better. He is, and I need to circle back to this, the mafia.”
“Yes.”
“And you are at a beach resort with him.”
“Yes.”
“Voluntarily.”
“…Yes.”
There is another long silence.
Then, because she is Frankie and not remotely built for subtlety, she asks, “Is it at least good?”
I close my eyes. Heat crawls up my neck. “Frankie.”
“That is not a no.”
I laugh helplessly. “It’s annoyingly good.”
“Of course it is.”
“That’s the worst part.”
“No,” she says, “the worst part is that this sounds like the beginning of an extremely specific Dateline episode.”
That sobers me a little. Because she’s not wrong.
I sit up straighter and look down at the waves. “I know how this sounds,” I say. “I do. And if this was anybody else telling me this story, I’d assume she had completely lost it.”
“But?”
“But…” I pause. “He’s not what I thought.”
That comes out softer than I intended.
Frankie hears it anyway. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“You like him.”
I say nothing. Which is apparently enough.
“Oh, Zee.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean I really, really need you to hear yourself right now.”
“I do hear myself.”
“Then why are you talking like the man with guns and bodyguards and mystery hit squads is just misunderstood?”
I flinch. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
I don’t answer right away. I know fairness is not the problem.
The problem is that I know exactly what she’s asking. Whether I’m seeing him clearly or through some warped lens of chemistry and adrenaline and the fact that he makes me feel things I have no defense against.
And the truth is, I don’t know.
I only know that when I’m with him, the fear and the desire and the curiosity all braid together into something impossible to separate.
I look out at the ocean and just state the truth. “I don’t know what this is.”
Frankie’s voice softens then, just enough. “Okay.”
“I mean it. I don’t know where this is going. I’ve known him for two weeks. He’s older than me. He’s my boss. He wants a wife, not…” I trail off. “And I saw him with a ring last night.”
There’s a beat.
“A ring.”
“Yes.”
“In his hand.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t ask.”
I rub my forehead. “I was distracted.”
“That’s one word for it.”
I let out a breath that could almost be a laugh. Then I say, much more quietly, “What if I’m making a huge mistake?”
Frankie is silent for a moment before answering. “Then you make sure it’s your mistake,” she says. “Not one he decided for you.”
I look back at the villa behind me. The wide glass doors. The white stone. The life that feels temporary and dangerous and intoxicating.
“I need to know what he wants,” I say.
“Yes.”
“And I need to know what I want.”
“Yes.”
“And if he proposes to some random socialite next week, I reserve the right to commit a felony.”
Frankie laughs so loudly I have to hold the phone away again. “There’s my girl.”
I smile despite everything, and then a shadow falls across the terrace. I look up.
Aleksei stands in the doorway, sleeves rolled up, barefoot, watching me with that unreadable expression he gets when he already knows more than he’s saying.
My pulse jumps instantly.
Frankie notices the silence. “What?”
I lower my voice. “He’s here.”
Frankie makes a noise somewhere between a squeal and a death rattle. “Call me later. Immediately. If you die, I’m haunting you.”
“Very comforting.”
“I mean it.”
The line clicks dead.
I lower the phone slowly and look at him. For a second neither of us speaks.
“Were you snooping on me?” I joke.
Aleksei doesn’t answer my question. Not with words.
He just crosses the terrace in three quiet strides, takes the phone from my hand, sets it face down on the table, and kisses me.
It isn’t tentative. It isn’t even particularly fair.
One second I’m sitting there with Frankie’s voice still echoing in my head and a thousand questions crowding my throat, and the next his mouth is on mine, warm and demanding and somehow quieter than urgency but just as devastating.
I make a small surprised sound, and he swallows it with the kiss.
His hand slides into my hair, tipping my face back the exact way he likes, while the other finds my waist and pulls me up from the chair and into him.
I can feel the heat of his skin through the thin shirt I’m wearing, the solid line of his body, the way he already seems half-wound and dangerous just from looking at me.
“That friend of yours asks too many questions,” he murmurs against my mouth.
“She has excellent instincts.”
“She’s interfering.”
I smile into the kiss. “You’re just annoyed she said things out loud.”
His mouth curves. Then he kisses me again, slower this time, deeper, until the morning and the beach and every practical thought in my head dissolve into heat and the taste of him. When he lifts me into his arms and carries me inside, I don’t protest.
I probably should.
But the truth is, I’m tired of protesting things I know I want.