Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
KIRILL
Water runs over my face, my eyes shut, and she’s still there behind my lids like she never left, that blush creeping up her cheeks.
My hand slides down and wraps around my cock, stroking slowly while I remember how good it felt to hold her hand, the way her lips parted like she wanted more. The thoughts make me throb even more.
She’s always the one I think about when I’m alone. It’s her I’m chasing: her sweet cunt, her body, the round curve of her ass and the weight of those thick thighs I want locked around my neck while my tongue tastes her.
That text plays in my head over and over until the back of my head hits the tiles, my fingers squeezing the crown of my erection, needing her sliding on it.
No man has ever tasted her, and that knowledge pulls something possessive up from deep in me. Something I keep buried because once it’s loose, it won’t stop. Not with her.
“Blyat.”
Water beats down on my skin like it can burn her out of me, and it doesn’t even come close. My grip tightens around my length as I picture myself sinking my tongue inside her while she tugs on my hair, moaning my name.
I can’t stop seeing her. The way she would beg me to make her come while she dripped all over my mouth before I buried myself deep inside her. Stretching, filling her with every drop until it’s spilling out her. The way I’d watch our baby grow inside her.
My hand tightens, stroking hard, as the picture sharpens: her on my bed, her hands in my hair, the sound she tries to swallow turning into something she can’t hold back.
And the thought of having her legs open for me, letting me take what I want, makes my control snap. I stroke faster, chasing my release like I’m cursing myself for wanting her this much.
When it hits me, it hits rough, a full-body spasm. Her name slips out as I spill against the tile, proof of how much power she has over me without even knowing she’s holding it.
The second it’s over, the guilt hits hard. I shouldn’t be thinking about her like this. But even with my hand at my side and the water pouring down, she’s still there, vivid and lodged in my mind like she’s carved her way in.
Telling myself no doesn’t matter anymore. She’s all I see. And the need for her makes me violent, to the point that I almost convince myself to find her and bring her home with me.
But I won’t, no matter how badly I want to. No matter how much I crave her under me, looking into my eyes like she’s furious that she needs me the way I’m starting to need her.
The fact that she thinks she’s out of my league is crazy. My attraction to her is sinful, downright dirty and cruel. I’m held prisoner by the sheer force of it. One kiss and I’d be addicted, and I can’t let that happen.
She has no idea what kind of life I lead, what it takes from you, what it makes you become. Whatever she thinks she’s done, whatever she’s survived, it’s nothing compared to what it means to be mine.
Still, my mind won’t stop showing me the same image: Lev with a mother. A woman in the house who wants him, who brings softness where I never could. Someone who sits beside him and makes the world quieter when I can’t. And it almost feels possible.
Almost.
If I ever bring another woman into Lev’s life, I have to be sure she won’t leave him. I still see the way he cried for his mother, his little fingers twisted in her shirt like holding on tight enough would make her stay.
Suka. Bitch.
She looked him right in the eyes and told him she was going to the store. Said she’d be back just to get him to let go. He didn’t know it was goodbye.
After she left, he sat by the door for hours, waiting. Repeating that small, broken sound over and over—ma-ma-ma—tapping his forehead against the wall until I stepped in and stopped him.
But she was gone. I knew it.
And eventually, he did too.
He regressed after that. He had been starting to form words—not many, but “ma” was the first, and then it vanished days later, like he was mourning her in the only way he could.
I still don’t know if he remembers that day. Part of me hopes he doesn’t. The thought of him carrying that kind of rejection makes my chest go tight with a rage I have nowhere to put.
He was wanted. He is wanted. I want him more than anything. I always have. I just don’t know if that will ever be enough.
With a low grunt, I shove the memory of that woman out of my head. She doesn’t get space in our lives anymore. Not after what she did to my son.
Hours later, I’m still awake, staring into the dark while my mind refuses to shut off.
Lev’s room is down the hall. I know he is safe with all the cameras and my men who know what it means to fail. But none of that matters at two a.m. Not when the only thing louder than the quiet is the fear it brings.
I check his monitor, watching him sleep—hair a mess, blanket tangled around his legs.
My chest loosens just a little, then it tightens again as my thoughts spiral.
If something happens to me, he won’t be alone, I remind myself.
Konstantin will step in without question, and my other brothers would burn the world before letting anyone lay a hand on him.
Lev will be protected. That should be enough.
But it isn’t. Because it’s not just about keeping him safe tomorrow.
It’s about the years after that. The moments I’ll never see.
When he’s grown and I’m not here. When there’s no one left who knows him the way I do.
No one who understands what calms him, what sets him off, what he’s trying to say when he can’t find the words.
What happens then? Who stands beside him when life cracks open and he doesn’t know how to hold the pieces together? Who tells him he’s enough when I’m not here to say it? When my brothers aren’t either?
Lev has improved since the diagnosis, but I still don’t know where in life he will land.
I’ve watched him fight for every inch in ways most people never do.
With Lev, the smallest wins are the biggest ones.
A new word that appears out of nowhere. A routine that holds for a week. A new person he greets on his own.
But I don’t know what life will look like when he’s older. When expectations press harder. When the world stops being forgiving. When childhood slips away, leaving him with a body that’s grown and a mind that has its own rules.
The unknown is what haunts me.
He doesn’t have friends. He’s not even interested in other kids. Lev likes rules because rules make the world make sense. He isn’t interested in chasing other kids around and doing what comes easy to them. He’d rather read or sit with his uncles working on a puzzle.
I’m grateful he has them, grateful he has a circle who doesn’t judge him, who loves him exactly as he is.
But it still kills me that he doesn’t have what comes easily to other kids his age.
The casual belonging. The effortless “come play with us.” The way most kids can step into the world and the world steps back to make space.
For Lev, everything is different. When he was younger, delayed milestones didn’t scare me at first. Kids develop differently.
Some are late walkers. Some talk after three.
Some take their time. He was quiet, observant, locked into his own world, and I told myself he was simply behind, that he would catch up when he was ready.
Then he turned two and he still wasn’t walking or trying to talk. He liked toys that lit up and played music. Would stare at them or press them against his ears like it comforted him.
When I’d call his name, he would sometimes react and other times ignore me. But that’s kids, right? Or that’s what I told myself.
The pediatrician still was unsure it was autism, but then specialists came. Different opinions, different tests…
Then the genetic test, the whole exosome sequencing, was the one that gave me an answer. And the answer didn’t change who my son was, but it changed how I would handle it.
A mutation, they said. Something neither his mother nor I passed down. Something that happened only in him, rare enough that they told us to wait and see how he progresses. But they might as well have handed me a bomb and told me to put it under my pillow.
There were many sleepless nights, because an answer without a clear future is just another kind of uncertainty. Every time I tried to read about it, there was never enough information. I hated it. I can’t help him without answers or some fucking guidance. And if I can’t help, I’m useless.
His mother changed once we got the diagnosis. It was subtle at first. Less patience instead of more. Shorter tolerance. A tightness in her face when he groaned and screamed. Like she couldn’t be bothered now that there was something wrong.
There is nothing wrong with Lev. My son isn’t broken. He isn’t a tragedy. He is my child, and his mind works the way it works. The world can either learn to meet him where he is or I will force it to.
She didn’t see it like that. She looked at him like he’d ruined the life she wanted, like he was a burden she didn’t sign up for, and I watched the gap widen between them until it was a canyon. Every time she pulled away, I stepped closer—not because I’m noble, but because he needed me.
God help her if she ever shows her face.
The thought sits hot in my chest. Aleksei is right. I should’ve killed her.
I glance at the monitor one last time, eyes tracing the shape of his face, remembering the way he clung to Sloane like she was the only safe thing in the world.
Maybe I should ask her to be his nanny. I can behave, keep my hands to myself, if that’s what it takes to give him someone like her. Someone who sees him.
With a sigh, I set the monitor down on the nightstand and gape at the ceiling again like it might offer answers if I just look long enough.
Instead, my mind drifts somewhere I don’t like going. Back to when I was a kid. Back to the hell that passed for a childhood with a man who should’ve protected us.