Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
VIKTOR
The second I near the office, I know something’s off.
The air feels wrong. Too still. Too tense. Like that brittle silence before a storm bursts forth.
I round the corner and stop cold in the doorway.
Grigory’s there. He’s standing over Avelina.
He’s too close. His shoulders squared.
His voice is raised. I can’t make out the words, just the biting scorn behind them.
And Avelina—she’s backed into the filing cabinet. Both hands behind her like she’s bracing herself. Eyes wide with that kind of fear I know too damn well.
Then she flinches.
And a red haze blurs my entire vision.
“Grigory!” I snarl.
His head jerks toward me,
“Get away from her!”
His mouth opens. Probably to give some excuse.
I don’t give him the chance. “You want to square up to someone? Come stand that close to me—and see how long you stay fucking upright.”
Grigory glares at me like I’m the unreasonable one here. “She turned our office into a damn kindergarten, Viktor,” he hisses. “There are fucking toys everywhere—”
I cut in, my tone as frigid as the Arctic. “So, if you’ve got a problem, you fucking bring it to me.”
He scoffs with a harsh laugh.
I stride toward him. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”
His jaw is clenched hard. “This is a business operation, Viktor. We move high-value equipment, not fucking Lego.”
Avelina turns, eyes wide, mouth parting like she’s about to try to apologize again.
And something snaps in me. “I don’t need your approval, Grigory!”
Every muscle in my body is bunched tight, and Grigory glares at me as a vein throbs in his forehead. Avelina is still frozen in place, eyes wide like she’s watching a live bear brawl. Her lips tremble, just barely, and I feel something in my chest twist.
Grigory snorts. “Wow. You’ve really lost it.”
I step closer. “Say one more thing to her.”
He lifts his hands. “Fine. You want to play house, that’s on you. Just don’t think you can start taking naps on the Paw Patrol mat and ignoring your work. Business comes first always—just fucking remember that.”
He glances between Avelina and me. She hasn’t moved, still pressed to the cabinet, breathing like she’s trying to stay quiet enough not to be noticed.
I see it then. The shimmer in her eyes. She’s biting her lip so hard that it’s almost white. She looks small. Cornered. Defeated. And it makes my hands curl into tight fists. “You don’t get to make her feel unsafe,” I growl, low and sharp.
Grigory snorts. “I didn’t touch her.”
“You don’t have to touch someone to make them afraid,” I tell him.
He starts to argue. “Viktor, what the hell—”
I cut him off. “I don’t give a shit about your excuses. And I don’t give a rat’s ass about what you’re in a bad mood about. But what I do give a fuck about is that no one—absolutely no one—treats Avelina like this. And no one fucking speaks to my girl like this—ever.”
A stunned silence hangs over us. It’s not often I argue with Grigory like this, but I’m completely serious. I flick my gaze to Avelina. “Why don’t you go get yourself a coffee and check on the kids for ten minutes?” Although it’s not really a suggestion from me.
“S-sure,” she stutters. “I’ll just…” She squeezes past us and rushes out of the room.
Once she’s gone, I turn back to Grigory.
“I’ve put up with this woman and her kids for long enough. I’m not letting her wreck our business space as well.”
A low growl sounding in the back of my throat.
Grigory’s not letting this go though. “Oh no. No, no, no,” he mutters. “Is that a tent, Viktor? Why is there a fucking pink tent behind the filing cabinet? She can’t turn my office into a fucking campsite for toddlers!”
“Our office,” I grunt. “And it’s a Barbie-themed rocket ship.”
He narrows his eyes at me again. “Why exactly do we need a fucking rocket ship in our office? And a plastic tea set? Because I remember you saying something about giving that woman a job, but you never mentioned anything about stuffed toys and other stupid shit taking over our workspace.”
I sit down at my desk, telling myself to stay calm while I talk this out with him. I pick up and pretend to read a shipping manifest. “It’s for the kids.”
“The kids are gonna be in here all day long as well?” he practically yells.
“No.” I turn a page. “But they might visit. And if Avelina ever needs to bring the kids in here, they’ll need a place to sit that isn’t a desk piled with ammunition.”
Grigory squints like my last sentence was a complex statement. “Our arms-dealing HQ has been turned into a creche.” His tone is accusatory and still full of anger. “I just tripped over a bucket of dinosaurs,” he seethes.
“You’ll survive. For God’s sake, it’s a bucket of plastic toys, not a lethal bomb.”
Grigory waves toward the drinks cabinet. “And this? There’s a pink glitter step-stool in front of my liquor shelf. And juice cartons where my vodka should be. What the fuck?”
“It’s in case someone under three feet tall gets thirsty. Obviously.”
Grigory collapses into the chair at his desk, and his face twists as he sees the stuffed animals lined up on the opposite windowsill. “You can’t expect me to work in these conditions. It’s like I’ve suddenly got seventy-two fluffy stalkers!”
“It’s seventeen actually,” I correct him. “You are prone to exaggeration.”
He stands back up, his volume rising. “What’s she going to do next? Sprinkle some fairy dust on our files? Oh, I get it, you think offering her this job and childcare setup will get her to stay longer? More permanently?”
“No.” My denial is immediate.
“This is a gun-running operation, not a damn daycare. So, don’t get any ideas that we’ll be playing with plushies and Play-Doh during the arms deals, got it?”
That’s it. I fling the shipping documents to the side and shove back my chair.
But Grigory keeps going as I stand. “What’s next? Finger painting the financial reports? You want us to hold hands and sing If You’re Happy and You Know It while laundering our money, just to keep some woman sweet?”
“That’s enough!” I roar.
His eyebrows shoot up. “Excuse me?”
I step around my desk and square up. “She’s not responsible for these toys. I am. The play corner was my idea, and I bought the kids some new toys from the store yesterday.”
Grigory blinks. “You…bought the rocket ship?”
“Yes.”
“And those stupid stuffed toys?”
“Yes. I picked them out myself.”
“And that fucking glitter stool?”
“Yes.” I rub the back of my neck. “It was, er, on clearance.”
He stares like I’ve told him I’ve announced I’m giving up killing and am going to try and win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Then he hesitates. But only for a second.
“You’ve gone soft, Viktor. This is all to do with those dumb animals.
You were fine until you found that cat, and then you added the dog, and now you’re adding a woman and kids. Fuck me!”
“Why is this so hard for you to understand, Grigory?”
“How much does she know exactly about what we do?”
“Enough. Babulya said she asked a few questions and knows that we’re Bratva. But she also knows that she’s safer here with us, especially while we don’t know what Geliy’s gotten himself involved in.”
He grimaces again. “There’s a stuffed hippo on top of the gun safe,” he splutters. “Wearing my best silk tie!”
“Rhino,” I grit out.
“What?”
“It’s a rhino,” I say in a louder voice. “Hippos don’t have a fucking horn on their nose.”
A huff bursts out of him. “I don’t care if it’s a fucking hippo, a goddamn rhino, or a flying unicorn. Ever since that woman, Geliy, and their kids turned up here, there’s been nothing but disruption to our lives.”
“Yeah, disruption being the operative word.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“If I can fucking put up with this shit in our office, then so can you, Grigory.”
He stares at me. And he realizes that I mean it.
Really mean it. Because he knows how any sort of untidiness can mess with my head.
So, when he sees that I’m deadly serious about this, that I want Avelina to feel like she can bring the kids in here, he begrudgingly accepts how important this is to me—and how important Avelina is to me as well.
“I just hope you know what you’re getting yourself into,” he murmurs. “And you need to tell her to make sure those kids don’t leave any sticky fingerprints or crayon scribbles over my papers.”
“Say one more thing to her,” I say in a dangerous tone, “and I’ll replace your desk chair with a beanbag shaped like a ladybug.”
His mouth opens. Then snaps shut. “You’re not serious.”
“Fucking try me,” I growl. “I like having her here. I like seeing her smile. And I like the way she feels like sunshine.”
He mutters something very rude in Russian and stomps out, the door slamming so hard the rhino flops to the floor.
Silence. At fucking last. Now, I just need to check that Avelina is okay.
I find Babulya in the rec room. A big smile is on her face as she fusses around the children, feeding Leon and slipping candy to Sofia.
Avelina is nowhere to be seen, so I check the bedroom.
But when I also come up with a blank there, I head outside and finally find her sitting on the bench in the vegetable garden, nursing a cup of coffee.
Her eyes flick up to meet mine, then back down again.
I sit down beside here. “You okay?” I ask.
She nods quickly, but it’s not convincing.
I take a slow breath, fists still clenched in my lap. “You don’t have to take that. From anyone.”
She swallows. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”
“You didn’t.”
She hesitates. “But you’re mad.”
“I’m furious,” I mutter. “But not at you. Grigory cares deeply about his men, and he’s still upset about the two men we lost when the compound was attacked. But that’s absolutely no excuse for him to speak to you in the way he did.”
Side by side, we walk back to the house. And once we’re back in the air-conditioned comfort of the office, Avelina turns to face me. “You didn’t have to defend me.”