Chapter 22 - Keira
I knew something was different the moment Rodion came out of the study.
He'd been in there all morning with Yegor, the door closed, their voices too low to hear. I'd tried to distract myself—reading, reviewing notes from yesterday's session with Julia, staring out the window at a city that felt increasingly like a gilded cage. None of it worked.
When he finally emerged, his expression had that careful blankness I'd learned to recognize. The mask he wore when he was preparing for something dangerous.
"Tomorrow night," he said without preamble.
I set down my book. "The operation?"
"Yes."
The word landed in my chest like a stone. I'd known it was coming—we'd talked about it, planned around it, acknowledged its necessity. But knowing and feeling were different things.
"Tell me about it," I said. "The plan."
He hesitated, and I saw the debate play out behind his eyes. How much to share. How much to shield me from.
"Don't," I said before he could decide. "Don't protect me from the truth. I'd rather know."
He studied me for a moment, then nodded. "Cormac's been operating out of a bar in Queens. O'Malley's. He's there every night with six to eight men. We hit at midnight, when civilian presence is minimal."
"And Cormac?"
"He won't walk out."
The flatness of his voice should have disturbed me. This was my uncle, he was talking about—my father's brother, my own blood. But when I searched myself for grief or horror, I found only a hollow relief.
"Good," I said quietly.
Rodion's expression shifted—surprise, maybe, or reassessment. "You don't have to pretend this doesn't affect you."
"I'm not pretending. I'm being honest." I stood, moving to the window, my arms wrapped around myself. "He stood by while my father beat my mother to death. He tried to sell me to traffickers. Whatever happens to him tomorrow, he's earned it."
"That doesn't mean it's easy."
"No. But easy isn't the same as right." I turned to face him. "I stopped mourning my family a long time ago. The people who share my blood aren't my family. They never were."
He crossed the room and pulled me into his arms. I went willingly, pressing my face against his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of him.
"After tomorrow," he said against my hair, "it'll be over. At least this part of it."
"And the Petrovics?"
"One enemy at a time."
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to believe that tomorrow would bring an end to something, a beginning of something else. But I'd learned long ago that hope was a dangerous thing.
Still, I held onto him and let myself feel it anyway.
***
The rest of the day passed in a strange limbo.
Rodion was on the phone constantly—with Yegor, with his brothers, with people whose names I didn't recognize. I caught fragments of conversations: entry points, timing, contingencies. The language of violence, spoken with casual efficiency.
I overheard him talking to Demyan midafternoon, his voice carrying from the study.
"This is my territory. My operation. I have enough men."
A pause while Demyan responded.
"If I need help taking out a washed-up Irish captain with eight men, I don't deserve to run New York."
The confidence in his voice should have reassured me.
Instead, it made the knot in my stomach tighter.
This was his world—a world where men discussed killing other men with the same casual tone I used to discuss treatment plans with colleagues.
I'd spent twelve years running from this world, and now I was married to someone who lived at its center.
Later, I heard him on the phone with Kirill. The conversation was shorter, more clipped.
"I'm not underestimating anyone."
A pause.
"My head is fine. But I appreciate the concern."
Another pause, then: "I'll call you when it's done."
He hung up and stood in the doorway of the study, his eyes finding mine across the living room. Neither of us spoke. We didn't need to.
I tried to work. Pulled up my laptop, reviewed my session notes, prepared for tomorrow's appointment with Benjamin. But my concentration was fractured, my thoughts circling back to the same questions.
What if something went wrong? What if he didn't come back? What if I were left alone again, with nothing but a baby and a name that didn't belong to me?
The questions spiraled, each one darker than the last. I recognized the pattern—catastrophic thinking, a hallmark of anxiety. I'd helped dozens of patients work through the same spirals. But knowing the mechanism didn't stop it from happening.
By late afternoon, I gave up the pretense of productivity and wandered into the kitchen.
Cooking had always calmed me—the focus required, the transformation of raw ingredients into something nourishing.
I found flour and butter and began making biscuits, my hands moving through the familiar motions while my mind churned.
Aunt Hannah had taught me this recipe. Summer afternoons in her Vermont farmhouse, flour dusting the worn wooden counters, her voice calm and steady as she guided my hands through the steps.
"Baking is about patience," she'd said. "You can't rush it. You can't force it. You just have to trust the process and let it become what it's meant to be."
I'd been sixteen, still raw from my mother's death, still learning how to exist in a world that had become suddenly, terrifyingly unsafe. The biscuits had been a lifeline—something concrete and achievable when everything else felt impossible.
Now, standing in Rodion's gleaming kitchen with its marble counters and professional-grade appliances, I found myself reaching for that same anchor.
Trust the process. Let it become what it's meant to be.
If only life were as simple as biscuits.
Rodion found me there an hour later, flour dusted across the counter and a tray of golden biscuits cooling on the rack.
"You bake when you're stressed," he observed.
"I bake when I need to feel useful." I wiped my hands on a towel. "There's only so much waiting I can do."
"I know the feeling."
He leaned against the counter, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read. There was tension in his shoulders, a tightness around his eyes that betrayed the calm he was projecting. For all his confidence on the phone with his brothers, he was feeling it too. The weight of tomorrow.
"You're scared too," I said.
"I'm always scared before an operation. It keeps me sharp."
"That's not what I meant."
He was quiet for a moment. "No. It's not."
I moved closer, reaching up to touch his face. The stubble along his jaw was rough beneath my fingers, his skin warm. "Talk to me."
"About what?"
"About whatever you're not saying."
He caught my hand, pressed a kiss to my palm. "I'm not not saying anything. I'm just... thinking."
"About?"
"About what happens if I don't come back."
The words hit me like a physical blow. I'd been thinking the same thing all day—the fear I couldn't escape, the worst-case scenarios playing on a loop in my mind. But hearing him say it out loud made it suddenly, terribly real.
"Don't," I said. "Don't talk like that."
"It's not pessimism. It's planning." His eyes met mine, steady and serious. "If something happens to me, Yegor will get you out. Demyan will make sure you're protected. The baby—"
"Stop." I pressed my fingers to his lips. "I don't want to hear contingency plans for your death. I want you to come back."
"I'm going to come back."
"Then stop talking about what happens if you don't."
He pulled me closer, his arms wrapping around me, his chin resting on top of my head. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
"I'm already scared. I've been scared since you told me it was happening tomorrow." I burrowed into his chest, holding on tight. "I keep thinking about all the ways this could go wrong. All the things I should have said, should have done."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Something. Anything." I pulled back to look at him. "I've spent my whole life running from connections. Keeping people at arm's length so it wouldn't hurt when I lost them. And now—"
"Now?"
"Now I have something to lose. Someone." I swallowed hard. "And I don't know how to do this. How to care about someone who walks into danger like it's nothing."
"It's not nothing. It's never nothing." He cupped my face in his hands, his thumbs brushing away tears I hadn't realized were falling. "But it's necessary. Cormac won't stop. As long as he's alive, you're not safe. Our child isn't safe."
"I know. I know that. It doesn't make it easier."
"No. It doesn't."
We stood there for a long moment, holding each other in the fading light. Outside, the city was coming alive for the evening—lights flickering on, traffic humming, millions of people going about their lives without any idea of the violence being planned in their midst.
"Come on," Rodion said finally. "Let's make dinner. Something that takes a long time. Something complicated."
"You want to cook?"
"I want to do something with my hands that isn't planning an assault." He smiled, a small thing that didn't quite reach his eyes. "And I want to spend the evening with my wife. Is that allowed?"
My wife. The words sent a shiver through me, even now.
"That's allowed," I said.
***
We made pasta from scratch—the kind that required kneading and rolling and cutting, the kind that took hours and left flour everywhere. Rodion was patient, methodical, showing me techniques his mother had taught him decades ago.
"You fold it like this," he said, guiding my hands. "Then roll, then fold again. The layers are what make it tender."
"How many times?"
"At least ten. More if you want it perfect."
I laughed despite myself. "Who has time for perfect?"
"Tonight, we do."
We worked in companionable silence, the rhythm of the task soothing in a way I hadn't expected. Fold, roll, fold again. The dough transformed under our hands, becoming silky and smooth.
"I used to do this with my brothers," Rodion said. "When we were young. Before everything changed."
"All of you?"