Chapter 17
NIKOLAI
Ilie in bed, still wearing my suit scrolling through security upgrade options on my phone, beyond pissed.
I slammed the door on Elle over two hours ago. Since then I've been imagining all the ways that woman, Natalia, could have hurt my son. Every scenario is worse than the last. Poison. Abduction. A distraction while someone else got in through the back.
I swipe through reinforced gate specs, drone surveillance systems, motion-triggered perimeter alarms. If I'm going to have a wife who invites strangers into our home, I'm going to need a fortress that shoots before they can knock.
The door creaks open.
I don't look up. I can scent her perfume from across the room. Vanilla. Soft. The kind that sinks into your skin and stays there like a whisper you didn't ask to hear.
I hate that it slows my pulse.
"Hey." Elle's voice is soft. Careful. Like she's approaching a bear with a thorn in its paw and a grudge against the world.
I grunt. I'm not choosing mature today.
The mattress dips as she sits beside me. Her scent gets stronger.
I'm trying to stay angry here, and her scent isn't helping.
"Are you planning to give me the silent treatment forever?" she asks.
"Hadn't decided yet."
She sighs. Reaches for my phone. I pull it away.
"I'm reading."
"Nikolai. Look at me."
I don't. I keep scrolling, because if I look at her in that silk robe with that expression, I'll either fold or say something I can't take back, and right now I'm not sure which is worse.
"Please," she says. Quieter now.
I set the phone down. Look at her.
Bare feet. Silk robe. Hair loose over her shoulders. Expression that's half apology, half determination. She looks like a woman who's come to negotiate a ceasefire.
Too bad I'm not done with the war.
"I need to ask you something," I say, "and I need you to answer honestly."
She blinks. "Okay."
"Were you sent by your mother?"
The silence that follows is thick enough to cut.
"What?" she whispers.
"Gayle set up a deal. A deal that fucked us, by the way, but that's a separate conversation.
She engineered the whole thing: the marriage, the assets, the terms. Every piece of it was a play.
" I sit up straighter, watching her face the way I'd watch an asset during interrogation.
"So I need to know. Were you part of it? "
"Are you serious right now?"
"You said yes before I could even think of an alternative." My voice is flat. Clinical. The voice I use when I need the truth and don't care how it feels coming out. "Nobody does that, Elle. Nobody agrees to marry a stranger that fast unless they're running toward something or running a play."
Her face goes white. Not offended white. Hurt white.
"I was running toward something," she says, voice tight. "A door. A way out. That's all you were to me, Nikolai. A door. I'm sorry if that doesn't sound romantic, but it's the truth."
"And Natalia? You let her onto my property. My property, Elle. Where my son sleeps. Twenty-four hours after I confronted your mother, I'm supposed to believe that's coincidence? That your mother didn't send her?"
"You think I orchestrated that?" She stands, and now she's the one who's furious.
"You think I called up some woman I've never met and told her to show up screaming at our gate?
With what phone? Using what contacts? I didn't have a single friend until three weeks ago, Nikolai. I didn't even know how to flag a cab."
I watch her. Cataloging. Looking for the tell, the twitch, the rehearsed pause.
I don't find one.
"I grew up in a cage," she says, and her voice drops to something raw and scraped.
"The only plan I ever had was to get out.
That's it. That's the whole conspiracy. A girl who wanted to breathe.
" She swallows hard. "If you don't believe me by now, after everything, then I don't know what I'm doing here. "
She stands there. Shaking. Not with anger. With the effort of not crying in front of a man who's just accused her of being her mother's puppet.
Something in my chest cracks. Not breaks. Cracks. Like ice starting to give under pressure.
I was wrong. I knew it the moment she said it, but I needed to hear her say it. Needed to see her face when she did.
"Sit down," I say. Quieter now.
"No." She lifts her chin. "Not until you tell me you believe me."
I exhale. Look at her standing there in her bare feet and her silk robe, daring a Bratva enforcer to call her a liar.
This woman. This impossible, reckless, stubborn woman.
"I believe you," I say.
She holds my stare for three more seconds, making sure I mean it. Then she sits.
The silence stretches. Different now. Not the cold kind from before. The kind that comes after something breaks open and hasn't decided yet what grows in its place.
"I was wrong," I say. "About the club. About the setup. I should have said it sooner."
She nods. Doesn't say it's okay, because it isn't, and I respect that.
"Now," I say. "Natalia."
Elle straightens. "She's Pasha's mother. The details match. I didn't let her near him, I didn't tell her his name, and I had a guard with a weapon the entire time."
I rub a hand over my face. "You should have waited for me."
"You weren't here."
That lands.
"He deserves to know," she says softly. "If there's a chance she's real, Pasha deserves to decide for himself. I'll make sure she never gets near him without your say. Guest house, guards, background checks. But please don't make this decision for him."
"You think I want to be the guy who keeps a kid from his mother?"
"No. I think you're the guy who's terrified of giving anyone the power to hurt him again."
That hits like a body blow.
I stare at her. She's right. She's always right, and I hate it as much as I need it.
“I was thinking, why don’t we let her stay in the guest house.”
“No.”
“Nik, please. It keeps her close but at a distance. You control this property. You have guards that will keep her from doing anything. This is for Pasha. Not you. Not me. Not her. It’s for him.”
"She stays there. Doesn't cross into the main house without clearance. I talk to Pasha first. If he doesn't want to see her, it ends there."
Elle's shoulders drop with relief. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. If she does anything suspicious..."
"I'll help you throw her off the property myself."
"Good."
We sit in the quiet, the tension slowly draining like water after a storm. Her hand finds mine on the mattress. I don't pull away.
I look at her. The robe. The bare legs. The way her hair falls across the silk like something out of a painting I'd never admit to wanting.
She just shattered my suspicion, held her ground against my worst self, and didn't flinch. That does something to me that I'm not prepared for.
"You owe me," I say, and my voice comes out lower than I intend. Rougher.
Her eyes flick to mine. Not playful this time. Careful. Testing. "For what?"
"For making me admit I was wrong. I don't do that for anyone."
Something shifts in her expression. The caution melts into something darker. Hungrier. Like she's been holding this back behind the anger and now the dam is cracking.
"How would you like me to repay that debt?" she asks, and her voice drops to a register that goes straight through me.
"Get over here and find out."
She climbs onto me. Slowly. Deliberately. One leg over my hips, hands on my chest. Not rushing. Not joking. Just looking at me with those green eyes like she can see every wall I've ever built and has decided, one by one, to burn them down.
"You want to know what I was thinking the whole time you were yelling at me?" she whispers.
"Tell me."
She leans down until her breath ghosts across my mouth. "That I've never wanted anyone to shut up and kiss me more in my entire life."
I grab her jaw and pull her mouth to mine. And this kiss isn't playful. It's not a negotiation.
It's a surrender. Both of us. At the same time.