Chapter 15 Merry Christmas
MERRY CHRISTMAS
DANI
Christmas morning.
The words alone used to make me think of cinnamon rolls on Instagram and other people’s happy family photos. Not… this.
My body pleasantly sore in all the ways that reminded me exactly how I’d spent my first night as Mrs. Zverev.
I slipped out of bed, grabbing one of his shirts from the floor.
It hung to mid-thigh on me, smelling like him—dark and clean and dangerous.
My bare feet hit cold marble as I padded toward the living room.
The big white-and-silver tree glowed softly in the corner, lights on a timer. There were a few boxes under it now that hadn’t been there before. Perfectly wrapped, of course. White paper, black ribbon, a stark, minimal massacre of whatever chaotic joy Christmas was supposed to have.
The smell of coffee drifted in from the kitchen, rich and dark and infinitely more appealing than standing here psychoanalyzing my life choices.
At least the coffee was consistent.
Unlike the man who made it.
He stood at the counter in dark pajama pants and a black T-shirt, bare feet, mug in hand, reading something on his phone. The domesticity of it almost made my brain short-circuit.
“Morning,” he said without looking up.
“Is it?” I muttered, heading straight for the other mug he’d set out. Hot coffee.
I poured, trying to ignore the way my hands shook just enough to make the liquid slosh. “So. Merry Christmas or whatever.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “Very festive, kotyonok.”
He nodded toward the tree. “There are things for you there.”
For a second, I honestly thought he was kidding. Then I realized he’d never bother.
I walked over slowly, like the boxes might explode.
There were three.
One small, one medium, one not for me—addressed in Cyrillic and tucked slightly back, like it had forgotten who it belonged to.
I avoided that one.
The smallest box had my name on it in his sharp handwriting. Dani.
Inside: a simple silver pendant on a chain. No tracker this time, just a tiny charm in the shape of a snowflake, delicate and intricate.
“It’s…pretty,” I said, because my vocabulary apparently went out for cigarettes when my emotions got complicated.
He’d noticed that the Christmas season mattered to me. Or that I’d been staring at the snow more than I realized. Or both.
The medium box was heavier. Inside: a set of professional-grade pencils and sketchbooks. The expensive kind I used to lust over and never buy because rent existed.
“You draw,” he said from behind me. Not a question.
“You stalk,” I shot back, fingers running over the smooth paper.
He didn’t deny it.
I hadn’t gotten him anything. Of course I hadn’t. Three days ago I was throwing lamps at his head and trying to break his windows.
Guilt twisted in my stomach in a way that had nothing to do with rich food or champagne.
Breakfast was awkwardly almost normal. Coffee. Toast. The kind of silence that wasn’t empty so much as crowded with too many unsaid things.
By afternoon, the walls started closing in again.
I walked from window to window, staring down at people hauling Christmas presents bags, kids showing off new bikes, a couple kissing under a tree wrapped in white lights. Car horns, distant carols, all of it sealed away behind bulletproof glass.
I’d spent days watching the world like some tragic princess in a tower. Today it was worse. Today, the world had glitter.
“I need air,” I burst out, storming into Konstantin’s office where he sat behind his desk, phone propped between his ear and shoulder. “Real air. Outside air. Not this recycled penthouse bullshit.”
He slid a look up at me over his screen. Those winter eyes took in the oversized shirt, bare legs, the way my hair was still a little wild from last night.
He finished whatever he was saying in Russian, hung up, and regarded me with unnerving calm.
“No,” he said.
Of course.
“I wasn’t asking for permission,” I said, crossing my arms. “I was informing you. There’s a difference.”
Something almost like amusement flashed over his mouth. “Is there?”
“Yes. One implies I give a shit about your opinion.”
He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled, looking every inch the corporate overlord from a prestige drama. Except instead of board votes and shareholder meetings, his calendar involved hits and bribes and my increasingly compromised sanity.
Behind him, snow drifted lazily past the glass, city softened into a postcard.
He studied me like he was adding numbers. My pacing. The tightness in my shoulders. The way my gaze kept darting to the door.
“Fine,” he said at last.
I blinked. “Fine?”
“You want air.” He stood with that smooth, predatory grace that made the room feel smaller. “You get air. But you take Yakov and Lenny with you.”
Babysitters. Of course.
“Who the hell are Yakov and Lenny?” I asked.
Right on cue, a wall of muscle appeared in the doorway. Yakov: tall, wide, perpetually unimpressed. Behind him, Lenny: leaner, sharp-eyed, looking like he’d stab a guy over the last doughnut.
“Your shadows,” Konstantin said. “They go where you go. They see what you see. They hear what you hear.”
Fantastic. I got to be a Disney princess with two murdery dwarfs.
“Fine,” I said, because I was desperate. “But I choose where we go.”
His smile was sharp enough to cut.
“Of course, kotyonok,” he said. “It’s your world. They’re just living in it.”
Sarcastic bastard. At least he was consistent.
Twenty minutes later, I walked down a real sidewalk under a real sky with snow flurries nipping at my cheeks.
Yakov and Lenny flanked me, hands in their coats but definitely not relaxed. Their gazes flicked over everything—alleys, doorways, reflections in shop windows the way Konstantin’s did.
Still. For the first time in days, there was no glass between me and the cold.
The city buzzed around us, subdued in that Christmas afternoon way.
Fewer cars. More people on foot. Kids dragging new sleds, carrying stuffed animals and remote-control cars.
A street vendor nearby sold roasted chestnuts, the smell warm and earthy in the frosty air.
Somewhere, a tiny speaker played a tinny “Jingle Bells.”
It felt…overwhelming. And painfully, achingly normal.
I watched a couple in ridiculous matching scarves laugh over two paper cups from the café on the corner, fingers intertwined, the woman’s nose red from the cold. A guy in a heavy coat yelled into his phone about year-end numbers, face flushed but free to be annoyed wherever he wanted.
A woman pushed a stroller piled with shopping bags and a yawning toddler in a tiny puffer jacket, talking to someone beside her about how hard it was to get her kid to nap with all the excitement.
They had no idea how lucky they were.
Their problems were real to them. But they weren’t men at poker tables deciding whether to shoot a girl under mistletoe.
“Ma’am?” Yakov’s gravelly voice cut through my voyeurism. “Where would you like to go?”
Anywhere. Everywhere. Mars, if they had good coffee and no Bratva.
“Café,” I said, pointing to a cozy place with fogged windows and a chalkboard sign advertising hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. “Somewhere without bulletproof glass.”
The café was perfect. Small, warm, and cluttered with mismatched chairs and real people. A sad little fake tree blinked multicolored lights in the corner, tinsel hanging lopsided. A speaker in the ceiling played a soft acoustic cover of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
I ordered the largest latte on the menu and sank into a corner table. Yakov positioned himself half a step behind me, Lenny took the seat across, facing the door.
My twin shadows. I wasn’t alone. Not really.
For a few sweet minutes, I let myself pretend.
This is what normal women do on Christmas. Sit in cafés. Drink overpriced coffee. Decide whether to tip fifteen or twenty percent and complain about their in-laws.
I was halfway through my drink when he appeared.
Mid-twenties maybe. Designer stubble. That easy, polished smile that said he was used to “hey, beautiful” working most of the time.
He approached with confident strides, eyes on me. Completely oblivious to the two walking red flags flanking my table.
“Excuse me,” he said, grin widening. “I couldn’t help but notice you sitting here alone—”
“She’s not alone,” Yakov rumbled without turning his head.
The guy’s smile flickered. His gaze tracked up to Yakov’s face, then over to Lenny’s unreadable stare. Awareness dawned.
“Right,” he said, taking a step back. “Didn’t realize…”
He retreated so fast he almost tripped over someone’s stroller. Smart boy.
The illusion shattered.
I wasn’t a normal woman grabbing a Christmas coffee on a stolen afternoon. I was a protected asset on a supervised field trip.
“This was unnecessary,” I muttered, draining the rest of my latte in a few big gulps. It was suddenly too sweet. Too much. “It was just coffee.”
“Boss’s orders,” Lenny said with a shrug. “No one talks to you without permission.”
No one talks to you. As if my vocal cords now had a clearance level.
The walk back to the car was shorter than I wanted it to be. The city swallowed us and spat us back out in front of a black SUV like we’d never left.
Konstantin leaned against the driver’s side door, dark jeans, black sweater, snow still melting in his hair. He looked…less like a crime lord and more like a particularly well-dressed civilian who might be on his way to dinner with friends.
Too human. Too handsome. Too much.
“Did you think I wouldn’t come for you?” he asked, straightening and opening the passenger door like this was a date and not a supervised extraction.
Come for me.
Like I’d been in actual danger and not just having feelings about normal people and their stupid scarves.
“I thought you were busy,” I said, sliding into the seat. “You know, doing whatever it is crime lords do on Christmas afternoon.”
He shut the door and rounded the hood, sliding behind the wheel with effortless competence. As he pulled into traffic, I caught a whiff of his cologne—warm and dark over clean cotton—and my traitorous body did that annoying flutter thing in my stomach.
“Enjoy your air?” he asked.
“Brief. Supervised. Not exactly freedom.”
More like a walking tour of my own leash.
“You sound disappointed.”
I turned my head, studying his profile. Sharp jaw, straight nose, the little line between his brows that appeared when he was thinking too hard.
“What did you expect?” I asked. “That I’d be grateful for an hour of chaperoned fresh air?”
That I’d thank you for letting me pretend to be human for fifteen minutes?
Something shifted in his expression. The eternally composed facade cracked, just a hair, showing something frayed underneath.
“I expected you to run,” he said quietly. “At least try.”
The honesty rocked me more than if he’d shouted.
This wasn’t the purely calculating killer from the lot or the ice-cold man at the altar. This was…something else. Something almost vulnerable.
“Would you have stopped me?” I asked, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be.
His hands tightened on the wheel. The snow kept falling outside, soft and indifferent.
“Yes,” he said.
Of course.
“Because I’m valuable leverage?” I pushed, because apparently I had a death wish.
“No.” The word came out rough. “Because I can’t let you go.”
Not won’t.
Can’t.
We both let that sit there, heavy and dangerous.
“I never wanted this life,” he said after a moment, eyes on the road. “The violence. The constant threat. The way everyone looks at me like I’m a monster they’re afraid to anger.”
There it was.
A crack in his armor. A sliver of something like regret.
“Then why choose it?” I asked, softer than before.
“Choice implies there were options,” he said, a bitter smile ghosting his mouth. “Some of us are born into hell and spend our lives trying to claw our way out.”
“Have you?” I asked. “Clawed your way out?”
He glanced at me. Just for a second. And in that split-second I saw something I shouldn’t have.
Pain. Regret. A deep, aching kind of longing for something he’d never thought he could have.
“I thought I had,” he said. “Until you.”
Until me.
What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
The rest of the drive passed in silence that didn’t feel empty. More…full. Of possibilities. Of threats. Of things neither of us knew how to name.
When we reached the building, he walked me to the private elevator like a gentleman, hand hovering at the small of my back. The lobby smelled like pine and polished stone, the giant wreath over the desk obnoxiously cheerful.
The ride up was quiet. Too aware.
Back in the penthouse, he didn’t say anything as I peeled off his shirt and slid into bed. He came in later, the mattress dipping as he lay down beside me.
No words. No touches.
Just his presence in the dark. Close enough that I could feel the heat from his body along my spine, hear his breathing settle into an even rhythm.
This was insane.
I shouldn’t want this. Shouldn’t crave the nearness of a man whose job description included “occasionally orders executions” and “owns the cops on speed dial.”
But I did.
Despite every logical neuron screaming at me, I wanted to roll over and press my face against his chest. Wanted to listen to his heartbeat instead of my own racing thoughts. Wanted to pretend, just for one night, that I was in bed with a man and not a monster.
Stop falling for your captor, I told myself.
Instead, I stayed on my side of the bed, staring at the ceiling until my eyes blurred. Listening to the snow-softened sounds of the city and the steady in-and-out of his breaths.
When sleep finally came, it wasn’t merciful.
I dreamed of him.
Of his hands in my hair, his voice whispering my name like a prayer instead of a warning. I dreamed of a world where I met him in a crowded café instead of a tree lot, where he didn’t have blood on his hands, and I didn’t have a tracker on my neck. Where we fell in love like normal people.
But those were just dreams.
Morning would come, the Christmas lights would turn off, and I’d still be in this glass cage with a man I shouldn’t love and couldn’t bring myself to hate.