Chapter 16 - Fiona
“What is this?” I ask, looking up at Boris, who has just come out of the shower. Classes are set to start in a week, and when I came down for breakfast this morning, there was a pamphlet and a few printed papers sitting in front of my place.
“Didn’t you read them?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Online classes?” I ask, skimming the paper again. “But I tried enrolling in online classes last term, and they told me I wasn’t eligible. That it was only for certain students.”
“Well,” Boris says, turning and pulling a carton of orange juice from the fridge. “I guess you’re eligible now.”
“What did you do?”
“What?”
“How did you get them to agree to this?” I ask, waving the paper. “Who did you kidnap? Or blackmail? Or torture?”
“You have me all wrong,” he says, pouring me a glass of juice and setting it in front of me. “I didn’t handle this like the Bratva boss, I just handled it like a rich man. I made a donation to the university, and they had to do whatever I wanted.”
“And if they hadn’t?”
“ Then I resort to kidnapping.”
I grin at him, then open the pamphlet and start looking through the available classes. I’d always wanted to do my courses online—it felt like they would be more manageable that way.
“Only if you want,” Boris says after draining his cup. “Don’t feel like you have to.”
“Do you have a degree?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And I’m assuming all your siblings do, too?”
“Well, all except Anya. She’s taking online courses as well.”
“It’s settled. I’m not going to be the least educated person in the room.”
Over the next few weeks, I choose my classes and meet with some administrators via video call. They all tell me they’re so happy to have me in the online and distance education track, and I struggle to keep from mentioning how I’d requested to join last year and was denied.
Boris orders me a new laptop with a camera so I can do my online classes, and though I get the notification that it’s delivered, I don’t see it on the porch, so I walk over to the other house with Ivan, who is still complaining about the heat, in tow.
As soon as we round the corner, I see the package on the porch, and I run up, leaning down to grab it right as Anya opens the door.
“Oh, hey!” she says, her eyes darting to the package. “Porch pirate!”
“Argh,” I say, hefting the box into my hands. “This is for my classes. They start in a few days, so I wanted to be ready.”
“No shit!” she says. “You’re taking online classes, too?”
Over the next few hours, Anya helped me navigate the digital classroom and gave me a thousand tips on avoiding bad professors and getting lecture recordings. Apparently, she’s been taking all her classes online.
“Boris conveniently failed to mention that,” I say, rolling my eyes. Though I’ve been sleeping in his bedroom, waiting for him to come home at night, he’s been notably absent the past few days. He says he’s dealing with a lot of business that fell to the side while he was recovering, but it feels like there’s more to it.
Despite everything—the connection between us, the sex, the deep conversations—I can’t forget that ultimately, Boris is a Bratva boss, and I’m just a woman he tried to kidnap. We’re not even legally married, technically, and he hasn’t asked me to be his girlfriend or partner. I don’t even know if we’re exclusive.
My blood boils at the idea of another woman putting her hands on Boris, and I have to take a deep breath to push the feeling away.
I love being in this world and spending time with his family, and I’d like to stay, but beyond enrolling me in classes and making it clear that he can’t “let me go,” Boris hasn’t done much to communicate that we’re together, or that, at the end of this thing with Mr. Allard, he intends to keep me around.
After talking to Anya, I head back to the main house, my mind reeling. If someone had told me a few weeks ago that I’d be getting ready for online classes and wondering what, exactly, my relationship with a Bratva boss meant, I wouldn’t have believed them.
When I step in the front door, Boris is in the entryway, talking to someone on the phone.
“Yes, cousin. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the invitation.”
“Who was that?”
Boris looks up from the phone call as if he didn’t realize anyone else was in the room. I raise an eyebrow at him—it’s very unlike him to be distracted like that.
“That was my cousin Kervyn,” Boris says, letting out a long breath. “Inviting us to the Milov Family reunion next weekend.
“Oh,” I say, trying to disguise how exciting that is to me. Growing up, the idea of a family reunion felt so foreign. My father was an only child, and both of his parents were only children, as well. It made for a long, straight family tree with no cousins or distant relatives. It meant that, by the time my grandparents and dad were all dead, I was marooned in the world without any kind of family—close or not—to anchor myself to.
“What,” Boris laughs, scrubbing a hand over his head, “you like family reunions?”
“I’ve never been to one,” I say, meeting his eyes.
“Oh,” he says, glancing down at his phone. “Well, how would you like to come along?”
I would really like that—my insides are practically jumping for joy at the thought—but I have to play it cool. I can’t let him know how much fun I would have observing his whole big family in the wild.
“I would love that,” I say, jumping into his arms. Apparently, it’s not so easy to keep my cool about something like this.
We stood like that for a second before, and after a moment of hesitation, Boris wrapped his arms around my lower back. He buried his face in my shoulder and took a deep breath.
“Oh, yuck,” someone says, and we jerk apart when Anton and Roman come barreling into the kitchen. They glance between Boris and me with wide eyes, then their focus narrows down to Boris.
“Hey, boss,” Roman says, grabbing an apple from the counter and taking a loud bite. “We got a situation over on the docks.”
With that, the three of them turn and leave in a flurry of activity, and I’m left standing in the middle of the kitchen. I’m conflicted—on one hand, I’ve secured an invitation to the family reunion, which can’t mean nothing— but on the other, it’s clear that Boris and his brothers don’t trust me with any information about their operations, despite how I’ve sworn off James Allard and even told Boris about my lack of faith in Olive.
I run my finger over my new laptop and wonder what I’ll have to do to gain their trust.
***
When I was in eighth grade, a friend of mine told me about her family reunions—every summer, her great-great-aunt would rent a pavilion in the state park, and all the cousins and aunts and distant relatives would flock to the event, bringing hot dogs and firecrackers. They’d play pick-up basketball and sneak down to the lake to take rides on the paddle boats. She said it was always sweaty and uncomfortable because the grills overheated the pavilion, and the aunts would insist on taking four thousand pictures before the day was done.
But the Milov family reunion is nothing like that. When I came down the stairs dressed in jean shorts and a t-shirt and saw the rest of the Milovs wearing formal wear, Anya had to hurry me back up the steps and curl my hair while I hurried to do my makeup. I came back down wearing a ruby red dress and matching lipstick, and Boris looked relieved.
Now, Boris and I are riding in a limousine to the place—which is just a further difference in my understanding of family reunions.
But it makes sense that the Milovs would do things differently. They’re not just a family, they’re a Family.
Next to me, in his custom suit, Boris is jigging his leg and looking out the window, his left thumb tapping rhythmically against the inside of his thigh.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, reaching over and putting my hand on his. He blinks and glances at me like he’s forgotten I was in the limo with him. It stings a little, but I also know that feeling. Sometimes, when things get too stressful, you have no choice but to disassociate right out of your body.
Boris takes a huge breath, then lets out all the air slowly.
“A Milov Family reunion isn’t just a chance for us to catch up with our dear cousins,” Boris says, “it’s also like the annual performance review. And I’m afraid my performance since taking over this role hasn’t been particularly stellar.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything I told you about—botching the arms deal, kidnapping the wrong girl, that attack on our community, and the fact that I haven’t managed to stop Allard yet—I just feel like a failure.”
“Well,” I say, taking a breath, “how is the money looking?”
“What?”
“I’m in business school, Boris,” I laugh. “I can tell you this—the most important thing is the money. What does that look like?”
“Well, our profits are up 3%,” he says, “and the new bean laundering thing has reduced loss to police stops by 42%.”
“So, that’s what you focus on. Of course, you’re going to have some failure, you know. If this cousin of yours fails to see that you’re doing your job well, then he’s an idiot. It’s a waste of time to expect perfection.”
“Oh my god,” Boris says, reaching forward and clamping his hand over my mouth. “You did not just call Kervyn stupid.”
“And I’d do it again,” I try to say, but his hand muffles the words. When my tongue catches the sensitive skin on his palm, his eyes darken, and I feel my pulse quicken.
When he pulls me into his lap, I glance over my shoulder at the partition.
“Trained for discretion,” Boris growls while pulling my dress down, his fingers pinching one of my nipples. The feeling shoots straight to my core, and I fumble with his belt, trying to get him out.
“How long do we have?” I breathe, tossing my hair over my shoulder to give him better access to my chest. His mouth closes around my nipple, and I gasp, finally getting his zipper down and pulling out his cock, which is already hard.
“Long enough,” he says, his voice so low it’s barely audible. When I give his cock a few pumps with my hand, he rumbles a sound of approval deep in his throat and grips my hips, positioning me where he wants me.
When he slides inside me, it’s all delicious pressure.
I bury him inside me, grinding desperately inside him. His hands come to my back, pulling me closer, closer until there’s not a single atom of space between our bodies.
As I ride him, he thrusts up with his hips so the head of his cock hits my G-spot, making black dots appear in my vision. I come apart in minutes, and the second my walls squeeze around him, Boris follows, panting as he releases his seed inside me.
We’ve just finished cleaning up when we pull up outside the huge historical building where the rest of the Milov clan are mingling and drinking, waiting for us to arrive.