Chapter 18 Stefan
STEFAN
I jolt awake, sweat-slicked and achingly hard. It takes me a few seconds to remember where I am. I look around my private jet, but the images of Olivia burned against the back of my eyelids don’t dissipate.
In my dream, she was bent over my desk again—just like yesterday—but this time, she was looking deep into my eyes, stroking my face with soft hands. Her amber eyes were seeing way too fucking much.
Her hair was untethered from its perfect bun, cascading down her back. I didn’t properly anticipate how much I’d like seeing the put-together doctor crumble around me.
I do like it, though.
I like it a lot.
I wrapped that hair around my fist and tugged, arching her back. Her blouse was torn open, shiny pearl buttons rolling across the acquisition documents on my desk. If she looked closer, she’d have seen Aster Fertility Solutions in the fine print. She’d have seen what I was truly planning.
But she was a little preoccupied.
Then the dream shifted. Suddenly, she was facing me, still perched on my desk, her legs wrapped around my waist. But her stomach was swollen with my child, her hands protectively curved around the bump.
“Is this enough for you?” she asked.
I jerked back into consciousness before I could answer, but the question remains.
Is it?
Reality blurs with fantasy as I stare at the ceiling of my jet. Something unfamiliar is churning in my gut.
Not regret—I don’t do regret—but something equally unwelcome. I’ve never second-guessed myself after sex before. I’ve snuck out of hotel rooms early in the morning and neglected to leave my number, but I’ve never fled the state.
Yet here I am, thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic, running from the echo of her gasps and the hint of her perfume on my skin that the hottest shower possible couldn’t burn away.
I run a hand over my face. The dream felt too real, too revealing.
When I bent her over that desk, taking her with a hunger that surprised even me, I told myself it was just part of the plan.
A way to secure my claim, to create an heir and bind her to me so no one would think twice when Aster Fertility Solutions is suddenly under the Safonov Holdings umbrella.
What I didn’t plan was how I would feel afterward: this strange hollowness, this… restlessness. Like I’ve sampled something addictive and now crave more, more, fucking more.
I don’t want a relationship. Never wanted what my parents pretended to have until it blew to fucking smithereens. I wanted an heir and nothing more.
This is supposed to be a give-and-take. Well, she’s supposed to give and I’m supposed to take. But the second I slipped inside of her, Olivia took something I didn’t expect.
As soon as she got dressed and left my office, I knew something was wrong. I wanted her to come back. Which is why I left.
Officially speaking, I left on business. That’s the lie I’m telling myself and everyone else who asks. The Miami deal needed my personal attention, which is why I revved up the private jet in the middle of the night and hopped on it before the sun was even up.
But the truth feels more like retreat. As if staying near her another moment would reveal something in me I’m not ready to face.
Mikayla materializes, pulling me from dangerous introspection as she drops news articles onto my lap.
“Morning reading,” she says, her tone lifeless as she hands me coffee exactly how I like it—black, scalding, strong enough to fuel the jet we’re on. “Someone’s running their mouth.”
My jaw clenches as I scan the headlines.
Boston Business Journal blares across the top: SAFONOV HOLDINGS UNDER SCRUTINY: FINANCIAL IRREGULARITIES RAISE RED FLAGS AS CEO DANCES WITH DOCTOR.
The article details suspicious patterns in my company’s acquisitions, citing “anonymous sources familiar with the matter.”
Someone’s talking. I have theories about who.
Iakov Zakharov.
But below the fold, a smaller article punches me in the gut. The headline calls me a “reclusive billionaire,” which is bullshit. I’m seen all over town; I just don’t tell the world who I’m fucking, which they hate.
That isn’t what bothers me, though.
What bothers me sits beneath the words, in grainy black and white. A photo from the gala. My hand is at Olivia’s waist, her face caught mid-laugh. Even in the poor print job, the camera captured something tangible between us.
The sight of her makes me want to parachute out of this fucking plane and find her immediately.
I fold the paper into a tight square, like that’ll keep the doctor boxed up and out of sight. This is exactly why I left. Distance provides clarity. Perspective. Control.
All things that are in short supply these days.
Mikayla watches me with that unreadable expression of hers. “I saw her when she came to the office looking for you. She’s pretty.”
I shoot her a warning glance. “Irrelevant.”
“Of course,” she agrees. “Should I have our lawyers contact the paper about this article?”
“Immediately. Tell them to focus on source confidentiality violations.”
Mikayla nods and retreats to the back of the plane to make the most of the in-flight WiFi.
When she’s gone, Taras leans forward from the row behind me. I didn’t even realize he was awake.
“Gotta be Iakov, yeah?” he mutters, rounding the row to drop into the seat across from me.
His perpetual five o’clock shadow is darker than usual.
Dark circles under his eyes tell me he hasn’t slept.
“The timing’s too perfect. Information starts leaking the same week he secures that waterfront deal? Not a coincidence.”
I nod in grim agreement.
There are too many things happening for it not to add up to something shady.
The FBI’s Financial Crimes unit has been circling our real estate holdings for months.
The SEC is scrutinizing our last three acquisitions.
A pair of undercover agents were spotted near our shipping operations in Dorchester.
I don’t like this shit. One wrong move, and the legitimate side of Safonov Holdings—the hotels, tech investments, and commercial properties I’ve spent a decade building—collapses like dominoes.
And if that happens, the Aster Fertility Solutions acquisition is over before it’s even begun.
Unless you call what happened in my office “the beginning…”
I force my thoughts away from her face, her scent, the way she’d felt beneath me.
This is business. It’s always been business.
Taking over her clinic gives me the legitimate front I need to clean specific cash flows.
The fact that I enjoy her company, her body, her stubborn defiance—that’s just a bonus. A pleasant diversion.
I’ll keep saying that until it fucking sticks.
“That mid-level guy from Accounting is still missing,” Taras informs me, lighting a cigarette despite the fact we’re in a fucking airplane. “Weird that I can’t find him. No electronic trail, no withdrawals, nada. It’s starting to make me think he had help.”
I consider my options. If my father were here, he’d say we’re being hasty, that evidence comes before punishment.
But my father’s sentimentality got him killed. I learned from his mistakes.
“Find him,” I order. “If he’s Iakov’s rat, I want to know before the feds do.”
I turn toward Mikayla, who looks up. “Intensify surveillance on the Accounting division,” I tell her. “I want every email, every phone call, every fucking bathroom break tracked. Someone has to know where the bastard is.”
After she nods and doubles down on her tasks, Taras’s expression shifts to something far too amused.
“So,” he says, leaning back in his seat. “The doctor came back to see you yesterday.”
My face reveals nothing. “You’re supposed to be tracking federal informants, not my visitors.”
“I’m multitasking.” He grins lazily. “Must’ve been some meeting. Security footage shows she was there for…” He checks his watch dramatically. “… forty-seven minutes. Impressive stamina.”
I pluck his cigarette out of his hand before he can take another drag and put it out on his jeans. “Shut up.”
He frowns at the hole in his pants. “Fine, keep it all to yourself. But I’m calling Nose Goes on any baby shower planning duties. That shit is going to be Mikayla’s responsibility. I don’t get paid for balloon arches.”
He rises out of his seat and ducks just in time to miss the empty glass I hurl at his head. It shatters against the cabin wall instead.
The sound is satisfying, but does nothing to defray the tension coiling in my chest. The thought of Olivia pregnant with my child shouldn’t affect me this way. It was the plan all along.
When did that change?
My father’s voice echoes in my memory: “Love makes fools of powerful men, Stefushka.”
He couldn’t take his own advice, but I could. I swore to never ignore the warning.
I don’t intend to start now.