Chapter 8
Ryder
When I was younger, I used to enjoy Miami at night.
It was a way to escape, and the clubs were safe, since my father owned half of them.
The streets were safe as well. During college, I decided to find a way to make myself so useful that my father couldn’t overlook me anymore.
After my late-night study sessions, I went on birria taco truck runs, drank cerveza, and shared endless laughter.
After graduation, I’ve spent the last few years walking the alleys and sticking to the shadows. I was learning the business that I assumed I would one day inherit.
Until Papa decided I was worth more as a bargaining chip than his lead security tech.
Tonight feels unsettling.
I’m suddenly visible in a way I haven’t ever wanted to be, and the city is alive around me.
The sidewalks glow faintly from embedded lights, the restaurants spill music onto the street, and the air smells like citrus, salt, and money. Even the palm trees look perfect, trimmed into silhouettes that sway like props on a stage.
It makes my skin itch.
This isn’t the Miami I grew up in, with corner stores and cramped offices above nightclubs and backroom deals scribbled onto napkins. This is the polished version meant for tourists and politician’s mistresses.
Which makes tonight feel exactly what it is.
A performance.
Liev walks beside me with his hand at the small of my back, guiding without forcing, steady as a shadow.
He’s in a dark suit that fits him like it were sewn onto his body.
No tie, collar open just enough to soften the severity of him.
He looks less like a businessman and more like a man who could buy the building and everyone inside it.
People move out of his way without realizing they’re doing it.
They stare at me openly.
The red dress was a mistake.
It’s strapless, sleek, hugging every curve. I’d bought it years ago for some gala Mamá insisted I attend, and now every pair of eyes on the street feels like a hand.
I fold my arms across my chest without meaning to.
“You look beautiful,” Liev says quietly. His voice is low, almost private, like the compliment is meant to stay between us.
It only makes my face heat up. “I look like bait,” I mutter.
His thumb presses lightly into my back. “No one here is stupid enough to touch you.”
The certainty in his tone should comfort me. After all, I may just have a Glock in a holster strapped to my thigh.
The restaurant opens onto a boardwalk; it’s the kind of place where the waiters glide instead of walk. We’re seated immediately, like they were waiting for us, and given a corner table with a perfect view of the water.
Too perfect. It looks like someone staged it.
I hate staged. Something in me sings with longing; I miss the mossy, cobbled streets of Savannah. The humidity and the towering oaks, the shadows where I could hide.
Dinner with Live, alone, still feels unreal.
Especially after that day in the office.
I haven’t stepped foot in that room again, not wanting to remember how I gave into him, let him play my body like it was something he already knew.
That was only a few days ago, and goosebumps still run up my thighs at the memory.
Maybe it’s too familiar, but how can that be? I’ve only let him touch me twice.
We’ve been in Miami for just shy of a week and the focus has been on setting down roots.
That means long phone calls, reading through property acquisition paperwork, shipping routes, and setting up the appropriate bank accounts.
He’s trusted me enough to give me jobs here and there, although it’s nothing as deep as what he’s involved in, but the distraction has been nice.
When he asked me to dinner, I was so caught off guard that I only nodded. I’d been living off fast food delivery and whatever Mama’s staff dropped off around meal times.
Now it’s just the two of us, candles flickering, the quiet thick enough to drown in.
He studies the wine list with calm focus. I study him.
Liev doesn’t belong here either. That triggers the plan I’d sparked at the beginning of this mess, right before we left Savannah.
Annoy him to death. Or rather, infuriate him to the point where he breaks things off and decides I’m not the right fit for a Russian mafia wife.
That shouldn’t be too hard.
The other men in the restaurant are overly polished, but look right at home. Liev is frustratingly handsome. His beard is trimmed close, and the silver at his temples catches the light. He looks like a businessman, but if you squint, it’s obvious that those hands have killed.
The same hands I’ve let travel my body and pull pleasure from every curve and hidden place.
That thought makes me shiver and hard to look away from him.
It pisses me off.
The sommelier arrives, all charm and accent, and Liev responds in smooth, precise French. Not clumsy or hesitant; fluent. His slight Russian accent disappears. The words roll off his tongue like he was born in France.
I blink.
That annoys me.
Which is ridiculous.
Still, something sharp and petty rises in my chest.
The sommelier nods approvingly and leaves.
I lean back in my chair, tilting my head. “Did you practice that in the mirror?”
Liev goes still. His blue-grey eyes rise to meet mine. The only giveaway that what I’ve said bothered him is the way his hands tighten on the menu.
“Practice what?”
“The French,” I say lightly. “You sounded very rehearsed. A little fake, if I’m being honest.” The smile on my lips feels bitter and sharp.
His eyes narrow. “It’s a language, not a magic trick.”
“Sure,” I shrug. “Just wondering if you stood in front of the bathroom sink going bonsoir and monsieur over and over.”
The air between us cools fast. I see it hit him.
Right where I aimed, in that old wound he pretends doesn’t exist; a street rat trying to look civilized. Money pretending to be class. It’s something I feel echoed in myself, not fitting this lifestyle, but playing house anyway.
For a second, I feel victorious.
His jaw tightens. “You think I’m pretending.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
“Well,” I say, pushing because I don’t know how to stop once I start, “this place doesn’t exactly scream ‘you,’ does it?” Nose turned up, I adjust the bodice of my dress, picking at it disdainfully.
“And what do you feel would be a better representation of me, Ryder?” he asks softly. There’s no volume to his words, just quiet steel. “Warehouses? Back rooms? Guns on tables?”
“Mmm, I was thinking more like table scraps and dirty alleys.”
His eyes darken.
I should stop.
Instead, I lean forward. “Is it hard trying to prove you fit in with all this? Like you’re one of us?”
For a long moment, he just looks at me. His brows are still knit, but his features are blank in a way that makes me nervous. I sit back, unconsciously trying to put space between us.
I’m suddenly seeing the man behind the perfectly tailored suit. The one who looked tired and powerful the night I was tied up on the boat; irritated and willing to suffocate me with his bare hands.
“I don’t need to fit in,” he says finally. “I buy places like this. They fit in with me.”
The confidence makes my stomach flip. Can people do that? Shape the world to accept them?
The food arrives. We eat in strained silence. I expect Liev to shut down or punish me with coldness. Instead, he surprises me.
“You’re observant,” he says abruptly.
I glance up. “What?”
“You clocked the exits when we walked in…both of them. And the kitchen door. You do that all the time.”
My fork pauses.
“You sit with your back to the wall without thinking about it,” he continues. “You watched the staff’s hands, not their faces. You also moved your chair so no one could approach you from behind.”
He meets my eyes.
“You’ve been uncomfortable in that dress and in this restaurant. Maybe you’ve been uncomfortable with me, but I’m observant, too, Ryder. I wouldn’t have agreed to this marriage if I didn’t think you’d be capable. Not as a trophy, but as a partner.”
He puts his knife and fork down, leveling me with his gaze. “The way you carry yourself is not like someone pretending to belong. You present yourself as someone built for this life, and if you hate restaurants like this, we won’t ever come here again.”
My throat tightens.
Those aren’t surface compliments.
Those are seeing me.
“You’re smarter than most of the men I work with,” he adds, voice rougher now. “And more dangerous. In fact, some of the team will be arriving in the next day or so. I’d like you to lead the setup of all surveillance systems—security, but also shipment tracking. Manifest reporting.”
I swallow. “You want me to run point? Got it. I can update you as each task is complete—”
“No. No oversight; you’re smart enough to handle it on your own. Unless it’s not something you’re interested in, in which case you can tell me where you’d like to get involved. And have full reign.”
Heat creeps up my neck. I don’t know what to do with that.
With him.
By the time we stand to leave, the tension feels like a wire pulled too tight between us.
Outside, as we walk toward the car, the night air hits my bare shoulders. Halfway down the sidewalk, he stops me gently with two fingers under my chin.
I look up, surprised by the way my body wants to lean into his touch.
His expression is unreadable.
“You enjoy pushing my buttons, don’t you?” he says.
The night breeze swirls the dress up my calves, and I can’t look away from him.
It feels like the people around us are slowing down to watch us.
It’s as if they can see the tension between us that has me folding toward him.
He towers over me, but the streetlights somehow make the lines on his face more attractive.
He’s exactly seventeen years older than me, and that should be a strike against him, but for some reason it only makes him more interesting.
“Maybe.”
His thumb brushes my jaw. “Be careful, kotyonok.”
“Kotyonok—you’ve called me that before.” I try not to think of the last time he called me that, but I can’t help it. I remember vividly how he had me laid out on the bed in the safe house, knuckle-deep in my pussy as it clenched around his fingers. “What does it mean?”
His lopsided smile makes my heart smile. “Mmm. Perhaps I’ll tell you someday. But not yet.”
Liev’s fingers fall away, and I hate the way my body sways forward, chasing after him. I hate the way I’m thinking about what I want to happen later tonight if I turn toward him.
“You and I,” he says quietly, his features settling back into the now familiar serious expression, “we have work to do here, Ryder. An empire to build. I’d like to propose a truce.”
“Why?” I ask, willing my brain to override my body and bury the want screaming through my veins.
“Because whether you like it or not,” he murmurs, “you’re my queen. I can’t do this without you.”
The way he says it doesn’t sound like romance, but it stirs a part of me I didn’t know existed until this very moment.