Chapter 29 Stefan
STEFAN
I drum my fingers against the steering wheel as I cut through Boston’s morning traffic in my Maybach. I’m still too many things at once to figure out what’s fueling me.
I’m horny. I’m exhausted. I’m wary. I’m fucking pissed.
I’ve already texted Taras to set up an investor meeting for Olivia. I’m sure he had a lot more questions than he was asking, but he must’ve been able to tell I wasn’t in the mood to answer them.
I’m not sure I have answers anyway. I mean, what the fuck just happened?
I defended Olivia. Me—the man who plans to take everything from her.
The irony isn’t lost on me as I tug at the neck of my cashmere sweater. I plan to bring her to her knees—and not in the way I did last night.
I’m going to take everything from her.
But first, I’m going to give her all of it.
A dozen hours ago, that contradiction would’ve made me laugh. Now, though, all I feel is a sickening, churning nausea in the pit of my stomach.
“Focus,” I mutter to myself, gripping the wheel tighter. “This is just business.”
My mind flashes unbidden to my first major acquisition as CEO.
I remember months of work coalescing into a single moment.
I was supposed to feel proud as I stood and watched that geriatric old businessman sign over his life’s work with trembling hands.
I was supposed to feel like a fucking conqueror.
I had orchestrated everything perfectly: the shell companies, the leverage, the precise moment to strike. But as that man slid the papers across the table, I saw my father in his eyes—a weak, dying man with all the hope long since drained from his heart.
I went home and vomited for an hour afterward.
That’s how I feel now. I don’t do regrets. But until recently, I also didn’t do sleepovers with women.
Things are fucking changing.
I’ve never wanted a woman to cook me breakfast before. I’ve never wanted to stand in a kitchen doorway, watching the morning light play across someone’s skin, wishing time would stop.
I realize I’ve driven to my grandmother’s house only when the tires bump against the curb. I blink out of the memory and, for a moment, I consider putting the car in reverse, returning to the office. At least, up there, there are spreadsheets and acquisition plans—things that make sense.
Here is only more confusion.
I don’t leave, though. I kill the engine. Maybe this is what I need to clear my head.
The familiar scent of dill and garlic greets me before my babushka does. She must be cooking. I hear her mumbling something to herself before she opens the door.
“What brings you here on a Tuesday?” Babushka asks, eyebrow raised in a way that reminds me, uncomfortably, of myself.
On second thought, this was a bad idea.
“Security check.” It’s bullshit, and we both know it.
“I don’t see why. That handsome friend of yours was here just last night checking alarms.”
“Taras?” I didn’t ask him to do that. But he’s a professional, which means he probably knew where I was and knew I was occupied.
I’ll get shit about that later, but I won’t even be able to fire him because he was holding down the fort while I was having a sleepover.
She sighs wistfully. “Such a charming man. We had tea and he told me all about your plans to acquire a fertility clinic. I always knew you were a bleeding heart, but I didn’t think you’d ever show it to the world.”
My jaw clenches. “I’m not. Next time, Taras should do his job and cut the fucking socializing.”
Babushka takes a half-step back, not out of fear, but more of an attempt to gain a broader perspective. In all our years together, I’ve never spoken to her like that in her own home.
“Something’s wrong with you.”
I start to argue, but it’s not a question. She grabs my wrist and leads me to the kitchen without waiting for confirmation. Her slippered feet whisper against the hardwood floors.
“I’m fine,” I mutter, freeing my hand and running it through my hair. It’s eerily similar to what happened last night—Olivia stroking her fingers through my roots while I ate her out, scraping my scalp to draw me closer until I could feel her pulsing on my tongue as she—
“Of course you are,” my grandmother replies sarcastically. “That’s why you’re here instead of working. That’s why you look like you haven’t slept. Because you’re ‘fine.’”
“I slept,” I grumble. “… A little.”
Fantastically, actually. Better than I have in weeks. That’s one perk of fucking to the point of exhaustion: I didn’t have a choice but to crash.
The countertop is littered with ingredients and something is simmering on a pot on the stove. I take in the scene, but when I look back to her, she’s still watching me with narrowed eyes.
I scowl. “Babushka—”
“If you’re going to hover like a thundercloud, at least make yourself useful,” she interrupts, pointing me towards the cluttered island. “The pirozhki dough needs kneading.”
The familiar ritual calls to me. I wash my hands and then slip into the routine.
The first time I made these, I was sixteen.
I hid in the kitchen after my father’s funeral, too angry to put on a somber face for mourners.
I wanted to crush a throat in my hand, stomp out a life with my heel.
Babushka found me and wordlessly pushed me towards the pantry.
She was hurting, too, but she took care of me.
I work the dough, pressing and folding. I ground myself in my senses—the silky texture of flour between my fingers, the earthy scent of yeast activating, the steady rhythm of kneading.
My grandmother drifts around the kitchen, chopping onions and browning ground beef for the filling.
The sizzle and pop from the pan punctuate the silence between us.
She wants to know what’s wrong, but there’s nothing to say.
Or rather, there is plenty to say, but it’s all fucking humiliating.
I let a business deal get personal. I let an acquisition get under my skin. I crossed the line, allowing my cock to lead me across town and into Dr. Aster’s bed last night, and now, I need to reverse back to the safe side of this arrangement.
She’ll carry my child, I’ll acquire her company, and then we’ll never see each other again.
Simple as that.
“You’re using too much force.” She elbows me in the arm, and I realize I’m white-knuckled in the dough, pounding it for all it’s worth. “The dough needs gentleness, not punishment.”
I ease up. “I learned from you.”
“And yet you still knead like you’re strangling someone.” She shakes her head, sprinkling dill and garlic into the meat mixture. “Maybe you weren’t paying enough attention.”
She stirs the filling a few more times before I notice her fingers trembling. Her other hand reaches for the counter’s edge to steady herself.
“Sit,” I command. I move to take the wooden spoon from her. “I’ll finish.”
She lets me take the spoon and doesn’t argue. That’s a bad sign—my grandmother never surrenders her kitchen without a fight. She eases herself onto a stool with a soft exhale.
‘I’m fine,” she demurs when she sees me squinting at her. “Just these old bones needing rest.”
I frown, noting the pallor beneath her usually rosy cheeks. I should call her doctor, schedule another checkup. The thought of her health declining sends a cold spike of fear through me that I quickly bury.
I can control empires and enemies—but time remains the one opponent even I can’t beat.
My grandmother watches as I take over. Her eyes never miss a movement. I follow her lead exactly as she taught me, though our roles have reversed now—the student becoming the teacher.
“This woman who’s bothering you… is she special?” she finally asks.
“What the hell did Taras tell you?”
“Nothing your face didn’t scream as soon as I opened the door.”
I hesitate. The dough beneath my hands is smooth, elastic, soft to the touch. Pale, too, like Olivia’s—
“It’s business.”
“Ah,” she says with sad understanding. “That’s what your father called it, too, at first.”
A muscle in my jaw ticks as I fold the dough over itself again and again. “I’m nothing like him.”
That old mantra. No one believes it anymore, but I insist on repeating it.
Babushka’s laugh is soft. She rests her elbows on the counter. “I remember when he met your mother. He came to me afterward, pretended he needed advice about this or that, but he kept smiling like a fool. I knew instantly he was in love.” Her eyes sharpen on my face. “Just as I see it in you now.”
I set the dough aside. “He was wrong. She was his downfall.”
“And yet he loved her.”
“She was a parasite, not a partner,” I snap irritably.
“Two things can be true at once, Stefushka.”
Whether she’s right or not—she’s not; she can’t be—what I feel for Olivia isn’t love. It’s lust. It’s desire. It’s a hunger that has my insides twisting even now, wanting another taste of her, desperate to hear her cry out in surrender.
But it isn’t fucking love.
Her wrinkled hand reaches for my flour-covered one. “The things we love most can wound us deepest. It doesn’t make the love less real.”
I pull away under the pretense of shaping the dough into small rounds.
My hands move automatically while my mind races.
I don’t want to think about my father—about his weakness, his blind trust, his ruinous love.
I especially don’t want to draw parallels between his mistakes and whatever this thing with Olivia is becoming.
Because once I do, I’ll have to admit to myself that seeing Olivia, touching her, sleeping next to her…
It can’t continue.
I can’t make my father’s mistake. I won’t.
I swore a long time ago I’d never love like he did.