ROMAN
I wake before dawn with Lev’s face in my head.
Not the real one. Not exactly. Dreams never get faces right.
They pull pieces from memory and rot them a little.
In the dream he’s standing in the dark at the end of a long corridor, wearing the same coat I saw him in outside that hotel years ago, only now there’s blood down the front of it and he keeps saying something I can’t quite hear.
When I get close enough to understand him, he smiles.
Then I wake up.
My room is dark, cold, and silent except for my own breathing.
For a few seconds I lie there staring at the ceiling, annoyed more than shaken. I don’t waste time asking what dreams mean. Usually, they mean your brain is tired and your body remembers something it would rather not.
Still, Lev’s mouth in the dark stays with me longer than I like.
By seven, I’m dressed and in the office with coffee that tastes burnt because Elena isn’t here yet to replace whoever thought this pot was acceptable. Mikhail is already waiting with two folders open on the table, one on the terminal hit and one on the guest list from the council night.
He knows better than to comment on the hour.
He also knows better than to ask whether I slept.
“Yegor’s still moving,” he says. “We missed him in Queens by forty minutes.”
“That means somebody warned him.”
“Yes.”
“Savchenko?”
“Possible. Or the customs broker. Or one of our own leaks.”
I sit down and open the thinner folder first. Arkady Belov’s face looks just as slippery in a printed surveillance still as it did across a lunch table.
“Tell me about him again.”
Mikhail flips to the next page. “Hotels, gaming interests, some shipping, a lot of bad debt kept alive by older connections. Mostly he survives by attaching himself to stronger men and acting useful.”
“Useful to my father?”
“Maybe once. Hard to say now.”
I look at the page for another second.
“He knows something,” I say.
Mikhail nods. “I think so, too.”
“Then keep him close enough to sweat but not close enough to run.”
“You want full surveillance?”
“Yes. Phones, cars, women, lunch meetings, bar tabs, church candles, whatever he touches.”
Mikhail makes a note before clearing his throat. “Boss, can I ask why the sudden interest in Arkady?”
“Wasn’t I right?” I ask, pointing at the picture.
Mikhail remains silent for a few seconds before saying, “Arkady has money, but he’s still on a lower rung in the Bratva?”
“Does it matter?” I ask irritated. “Let’s call it sixth sense.”
Outside the window, the city is still gray from the early hour.
A dirty winter light over glass and traffic.
This city belongs to old families on paper, new money in public, and men like me in the spaces between.
That has always been the problem. I have power here.
Real power. Enough that rooms move when I walk into them.
Enough that judges answer, captains listen, and council men stop pretending not to be afraid.
And still, to some of them, I’m the outsider.
Mikhail flips to the next page. “He’s also suddenly very interested in a young woman.”
That gets my attention for a different reason.
“Who?”
Mikhail glances down at the file. “Katerina Markov.” He goes on, “She’s the one who—”
“I know who she is,” I cut in.
Mikhail looks up.
For a second, neither of us says anything.
Then he nods once and moves on. He knows when curiosity will cost more than it pays.
“I want to know who he called during the afternoon three days ago,” I say.
Mikhail raises a brow. “Why that specific day?”
“Because I had lunch with him,” I say simply.
Mikhail looks like he swallowed something bad. “You what?”
“That doesn’t matter,” I say.
He taps Katerina’s name on the page. “You reacted the second you saw her at the council event. Then you left a lunch to go sit at her table. Who is she?”
I look at the file for a second before answering.
“She’s the girl from Moscow.”
That gets his full attention. “You mean the one from the flight?”
“Yes.”
His face changes just slightly. Not surprise exactly. More like a new piece dropping into place. “When did you figure out who she was?”
“Later.”
“After Moscow went bad?”
“Yes.”
He nods slowly. “That explains a few things.”
“Not enough of them.”
Mikhail lets that pass. “So by the time you found out,” he says, “what? It was already too late?”
“Oleg had already blown half the city apart,” I say. “Lev was dead. My father had gone to ground. I had bigger problems than chasing a woman who’d already disappeared.”
Mikhail studies me for a second. “Didn’t stop being a problem.”
“No,” I say. “It didn’t.”
He looks back down at the file. “Belov’s interest in her doesn’t look personal,” he says. “It looks arranged.”
“I know.”
“Which means Sergei wants something.”
“Yes.”
“And Belov may know what.”
That’s the part that matters.
By the third day after the lunch by the pier, I have become unbearable even to myself.
Katerina is everywhere.
In the apartment, where she has never actually been.
In the car. In the scent of shampoo that isn’t hers but still manages to annoy me by trying.
In every quiet moment my mind gets for itself and immediately wastes on the memory of her mouth, her temper, her body opening under my hands like it remembers me too well.
I get into the shower because I need ten minutes of not thinking.
That lasts maybe twenty seconds.
Water runs hot over my shoulders, steam thick against the glass, and I close my eyes just long enough to picture her walking in. Not dressed for seduction. Worse. Barefoot. Curious. Angry already because she knows exactly what she does to me and resents it.
In my head she opens the shower door without asking.
“What are you doing?” she says.
I laugh and reach for her. “You came in here.”
“That doesn’t mean you get to look pleased with yourself.”
She’s not dressed for seduction. She never is. That’s part of the problem. I imagine her in one of those dresses she wears when she’s trying not to be noticed, or in nothing at all, hair loose, face set in that annoyed look she gets when she wants me and resents me for making it easy.
I kiss her again, deeper this time, backing her into the tile.
Water beats over both of us, running down her shoulders, her stomach, the soft, full curves of her body.
I get both hands on her, one at her waist, one sliding down over her hip and thigh, and she shivers when I touch her like that, like she’s been waiting for it too.
My mouth drops to her throat. I suck at the pulse there, bite lightly, and she gasps and arches into me. Her breasts drag against my chest, wet and warm, and I groan because I can feel how perfectly she fits there.
“Roman,” she says.
The way she says my name in here, with the water and the steam and her body opening under my hands makes me hard instantly.
She’s already wet.
I laugh once, low in my throat, and she flushes all over even under the heat of the water.
She moans against me.
I push one finger through her anyway, feeling how slick she’s for me, how easily she opens. Her eyes flutter shut. Her head tips back against the tile. I watch every second of it.
“You came in here like this?” I ask.
“You know why I came in here.”
I add a second finger and her hands tighten on my shoulders. Good. I want her holding on to me. I want her worked up and wet and furious that I know exactly what I’m doing to her.
I kiss her while I finger her, slow at first, then harder when I feel her body start to chase it. She moans into my mouth, soft but helpless, and I swallow the sound because the apartment is too quiet, and I want all of it for myself.
My hand leaves her long enough to lift one leg around my waist.
Then the other.
I pin her to the wall with my body, my cock dragging right where she’s most sensitive, and she cries out at the pressure. I’m so hard it hurts. She feels it, rolls her hips once, and that’s enough to make me lose what little control I had left.
“You keep doing that,” I say against her throat, “and this ends quickly.”
“Then maybe do it quicker,” she pants.
I laugh because that’s exactly like her, and then I get my hand between us and line myself up.
She feels the head of my cock press against her and goes still for one hot, suspended second.
I look at her.
Water runs over her lashes, her mouth, the hollow of her throat. She looks wrecked already and I haven’t even pushed in.
“Tell me to stop,” I say.
She grabs my face with both hands and kisses me instead.
I push inside her slowly, and we both groan at the same time.
She’s tight, hot, wet as hell, and the feel of her taking me after all the nights I’ve spent thinking about it nearly sends me over right there.
I stop halfway and press my forehead to hers, breathing hard, trying not to embarrass myself.
I bury myself the rest of the way and her whole body opens under me. Her mouth falls open. Her nails bite into my shoulders. The water keeps running over us, making everything slicker, hotter, louder.
Then I start moving.
The tile is cold under her back and the water is scorching and her body is wrapped around me so tightly I can’t think straight.
I fuck her against the shower wall, deep and hard, every thrust knocking another broken sound out of her.
She clings to me, legs tight around my waist, hips rising to meet mine with no shame left in her now.
“Roman,” she gasps.
I keep fucking her, keep one hand under her ass to hold her up, the other sliding between us to rub her clit because I want to feel her break like this, under the water, on my cock, with nowhere to go but into it.
When I open my eyes, I’m alone in the shower with my cock in my hand.
I take out my phone and open the picture from Moscow. Time to time I feel myself going back to it, though I always promise myself I never would.
Mikhail arrives an hour later with coffee that’s actually drinkable and the expression he wears when he’s already read three things that made his day worse.
“You look rested,” he says.
“I’ll kill you.”