Zakhar
Pain wakes me before dawn.
Sharp, grinding pain that radiates down my arm and over my ribs. I keep my breathing steady, controlled, and take stock without opening my eyes.
Couch. Unfamiliar apartment. Smell of bread and antiseptic. Bandages tight around my torso.
Lily.
The woman who opened her door to a bleeding stranger. The former nurse who patched me up with steady hands and no questions.
The woman I should leave behind as soon as I'm strong enough to walk.
I open my eyes. The apartment is still dark, early morning grey filtering through thin curtains.
The space is small but clean. Worn furniture, mismatched but cared for.
Photos on the wall. Her in scrubs with other medical staff, her at a bakery opening with an older woman, a few pictures of a dog as a puppy, and then older.
No photos of men. No male shoes by the door.
She lives alone.
I file that information away.
My phone is still in my pocket, miraculously intact. I ease it out carefully, trying not to pull the bandages. Three missed calls from my brother Iosif. Two from my cousin, Vitali. One from the Pakhan himself.
Fuck.
I thumb open the messages.
Iosif: Where the fuck are you?
Iosif: Answer your phone.
Iosif: If you're dead, I'm going to kill you.
I allow myself a small smile despite the pain. Typical Iosif. All concern wrapped in threats.
Avros: Heard about the ambush. You good?
Pakhan: Report.
I should call them. Let them know I'm alive. But the moment I do, they'll want my location. They'll send men. They'll pull me back into the world I stumbled out of last night when those bullets tore through me.
Surprise floods me when I realize I don’t want to go back. Not yet.
I need time to heal. Time to think.
Time to figure out what the fuck I'm going to do about the Pakhan's order.
One year. Produce an heir.
The words echo in my head, have been echoing for weeks now. My brothers and cousins already scrambling, making plans, calling mistresses and models and socialites. Treating it like a game, like breeding is just another task to check off a long list of duties.
Idiots.
I've never wanted that. Marriage, children, the domestic trap that turns men soft. I'm a soldier. I do the work no one else wants to do. I bleed for the Bratva because that's what I'm good at.
I don't need complications.
But lying here on this stranger's couch, wrapped in bandages she applied with capable hands, I realize something has shifted.
I could have died last night. It probably won’t be long before I can’t outrun the things I used to chase.
Three men in an alley, guns drawn before I even registered the threat. Turf war bullshit, wrong place at the wrong time. I took two of them down before the bullets hit. The third ran.
I stumbled six blocks before I saw the lights of the bakery. Didn't even know what kind of place it was. Just knew it was lit, and I was bleeding, and my options were down to one.
Knock on that door or risk dying in the street.
I knocked.
And she opened it.
There was no slam of the door or screaming. She saw the blood and immediately shifted into something else. In control and efficient. Alone, she managed to get me inside, up the stairs, onto this couch. Then she treated my wounds like she'd been waiting for exactly this kind of emergency.
You’re a nurse, I'd said.
Was.
There's a story there. Pain in the way she said it. Something broke her away from that life, and now she's here, running a failing bakery in a rough neighborhood, living alone above the shop.
Struggling.
I saw the laptop as she dragged me by it. The spreadsheets. The numbers in red.
I know that look. I've seen it on men who know they're out of options, out of time, out of everything but the refusal to quit. She's drowning, and she doesn't even have the energy to panic anymore
Footsteps come up the stairs.
I close my eyes again, evening out my breathing. Pretending to sleep while I listen to her move through the small apartment. She pauses in the doorway. I feel her eyes on me, assessing. Checking to see if I'm still breathing, probably. Still alive.
Then she moves to the kitchen. Cabinet opens. Coffee machine gurgles to life. The smell hits me a moment later, rich and dark, exactly what I need.
I wait until I hear her pour a cup before I open my eyes.
"Morning," I say, voice rougher than I'd like.
She startles slightly, turns to face me. She's wearing loose sweatpants and an oversized sweater, hair pulled back in a messy bun. No makeup. Still beautiful in that understated way that sneaks up on you.
"You're awake," she says. "How do you feel?"
"Like I got shot. Twice."
Her mouth twitches. "Accurate assessment."
She crosses to me, coffee in hand, and sets it on the table beside the couch. Then she pulls on a pair of gloves from somewhere and reaches for my bandages.
"You slept right through the night. I checked on you twice. Let me check the dressings."
I let her. She's all business, unwrapping the gauze with careful fingers, examining the wounds with a critical eye. Her touch is impersonal, clinical. But I notice the way her breath catches slightly when her fingertips brush my bare skin. The way her pupils dilate just a fraction.
She feels it too. The pull.
"Healing okay," she says, rewrapping the shoulder wound with fresh gauze. "No signs of infection yet. You're lucky."
"So you keep saying."
"Because it's true." She moves to the wound at my side, repeating the process. "Most people who refuse hospitals end up with sepsis."
"I'm not most people."
"Clearly."
She finishes bandaging me and steps back, pulling off the gloves. "You need food. And more water. I'll make you something."
"You don't have to."
"You're in my home, bleeding on my couch. I'm not going to let you die of dehydration and low blood sugar on top of gunshot wounds. It would be inconvenient."
I almost laugh. "Inconvenient."
"Very." She disappears into the kitchen.
I reach for the coffee she left me and take a careful sip. It's good. Strong, no sugar, exactly how I'd make it if I were at my own place.
She returns with toast and eggs, simple but hot. Sets the plate on my lap without ceremony.
"Eat."
I eat. She watches, arms crossed, making sure I actually do it. Like I'm a child who might try to hide vegetables under the couch cushions.
"You didn't call anyone," she says after a moment. Her green eyes are narrowed on me, assessing.
I swallow a mouthful of eggs. "No."
"Why not?" she asks, dropping into the chair opposite.
I shrug. "It’s complicated."
"Everything about you seems complicated."
I meet her eyes. "Is that a problem?"
She considers this. "I don't know."
Honest. I like that.
"You said I could stay the night," I say carefully. "Does that offer extend?"
"For how long?"
"A few days. Maybe a week. Until I can move without ripping these wounds open."
She's quiet for a long moment. I can see her weighing it. The risk against... what? Compassion? Curiosity? That same instinct that made her open the door in the first place?
"One week," she says finally. "That's it. Then you go."
"Okay."
But we both know I'm lying.
She knows it too. I can see it in the way her jaw tightens, the way she looks away.
"I need to open the bakery," she says. "Will you be okay up here alone?"
"I'll try not to bleed on anything expensive."
"Everything in here is cheap. But try not to bleed on that, either."
She's already moving toward the door, grabbing keys from a hook on the wall.
"Lily,” I call out.
She pauses, looks back.
"Thank you."
Her expression softens slightly. "Don't thank me yet. You might still die of infection."
"You said that already."
"It bears repeating,” she calls from the top of the stairs.
Then she's gone, footsteps echoing down into the bakery.
I finish the eggs and lie back carefully, staring at the ceiling.
One week, she said.
One week to heal. To plan. To figure out what the hell I'm going to do about the Pakhan's order.
My phone buzzes. Iosif again.
Iosif: I'm going to assume you're alive since you left my messages on read.
Shit. Read receipts.
I type back slowly, one-handed so I don’t have to move my arm.
Me: Alive. Healing. Need a few days.
Iosif: Where are you?
Me: Safe.
Iosif: That's not an answer.
Me: It's the only one you're getting.
Three dots appear, then disappear. Then reappear.
Iosif: The Pakhan is asking questions.
Me: Tell him I'm working on it.
Iosif: Working on what?
I look around the apartment. At the photos on the wall. The worn furniture. The empty space where a man's things could be, but aren't.
Me: The heir situation.
Iosif: You're joking.
Me: Do I joke?
Iosif: No. Which is why this concerns me.
Me: Don't be concerned. I have it handled.
Iosif: Your last message to me said you got shot.
Me: Unrelated.
Iosif: Zakhar—
I close the messages and set the phone down.
Below me, I hear the bakery coming to life. Mixers being switched on. Pans clattering. The rhythm of someone who's done this a thousand times.
She saved my life.
In the old code, the one that still runs deep in Bratva blood despite all the modern trappings, that means something. A debt. An obligation.
A bond.
She doesn't know it yet. Doesn't understand that the moment she opened that door, the moment she pulled me inside and helped me, she tied herself to me in ways that can't be undone.
I close my eyes and let the meds she gave me pull me under. When I wake again, the sun is higher, and I can smell bread baking below.
I think about the Pakhan's order. About producing an heir within a year. About finding a woman who understands loyalty, who won't flinch at the life we lead.
My cousin, Vitali, he found Charlotte immediately.
Wrote up a contract and everything… Now they are married and well on their way to making that heir the Pakhan is all twisted up about.
Our uncle was always obsessed with legacy, but after meeting Jasmine, it ramped up considerably.
By the time their first baby was born, he was ordering us to do the same.
I think about Lily's steady hands. Her fearless competence. The way she didn't panic when a bleeding Bratva soldier collapsed on her doorstep.
And I think: She'll do.
More than that: She's perfect.
I just have to convince her. Or rather, I have to make it inevitable.
She said one week. That's all the time I need.