Chapter 14 - Anton
When Irina died, I hadn’t had to think about it—some part of me had just accepted, implicitly, that I’d never share a bed with a woman again.
It astonishes me in the worst way that having done so with another woman now didn’t keep me up at night.
I’d thought the peace of sharing another person’s body heat, the comfort of a solid presence beside yours, would never be a treat I could enjoy without being haunted.
That I would, at best, be drenched in guilt.
But I sleep like a fucking baby.
Darya and I don’t sleep clutching at each other like long-lost lovers.
It’s comfortable, instead: our bodies lie on our own sides of the bed, our backs to each other, close enough for heat radiating off one to seep into the other; still, Darya’s cold little toes pressed up against my calves all through the night.
It isn’t a shock to my system to wake up and be confronted by her face. If I’m stricken by anything, it’s by Darya being real. Being in my bed, relaxed enough by my side to let her body rest.
Without her makeup, an array of painfully pretty freckles is splattered across her nose and the apples of her cheeks. I helped her take off the makeup. In the bathtub, I’d joined her this time, and not just because she’d threatened to castrate me if I “abandoned her”.
As if I could’ve been strong enough to walk away from Darya, with her needy hands and her hungry eyes, telling me to condition her hair for her and find her a silk pillowcase for her curls.
I’d thought I knew what it was to be a husband, and that role was gone, irrespective of my current marital status. At least in that specific way, I’d occupied it. And that’s not untrue.
Being a husband to Darya, I find, is entirely different.
It includes doting on her. She isn’t one to allow herself to be taken care of, but she’s somehow antithetically one to demand it when she’s in the mood for it. And it includes being rewarded with the honor of that service when I make good on the word I give her.
Rewards such as her riding me in the backseat of the car, letting me take her apart with her back tucked against my chest, after I take her to the Bratva meeting where I’d asked for her astute observation to suss out anyone acting shady, and introduced her as “Darya Yuri-Zakharov”.
Different is the word I’ll go with.
I can’t stomach any other.
***
We’ve been back in Boston for a few days now.
To say that I’m disconcerted feels like a gross understatement at this point.
All that comes to mind to try to explain a seismic shift in the foundation of what I’ve grown accustomed to, in Darya and my dynamic, is flowery metaphors I’d rather be shot than voice aloud.
Still, in my mind, I think, Spring is on the horizon, two months early.
The thaw is undeniable.
Thankfully, the familiar comfort of our sparring isn’t a casualty of the change in season. An astonishing thaw has simply melted away the sharpness of stalactites, though they remain just as prone to falling in times of volatility.
If I awoke to that gone, I’d be losing a significant tether on my sanity.
I’m aware of this. I’m aware, too, that between the barbed exchanges—the barbed wire wrapped in the garnet-dark velvet of Darya’s humor—and more and more moments of easy quiet, between breakfasts trading sections of the newspaper and evenings in the library, Darya’s companionship is keeping me ruthlessly going through my soldiers, doubting the very men who I expect to give their lives for my Bratva.
The deeper I delve into my role as Pakhan, the more it costs me. Each soldier I suspect, that I corner, now that the witch-hunt is unavoidable, costs me a piece of pride. Every dead-end is another lash on my back.
In the aftermath of a grueling day, there’s her.
A gift I’d never have thought to ask for, let alone planned to have.
It doesn’t matter if I’d conspired to force her into arranging this marriage; having legal claim to Darya’s partnership and reaping the endlessly fruitful benefits of her companionship are very different experiences.
I don’t know how to thank her for it. No amount of etiquette classes from my childhood helps me put into words my appreciation for her unfiltered thoughts and her refusal to coddle.
She tells me the truth. Never in my life has it been more of a priority to me than it is now.
The only way I can think of to give back to her is to tell her the truth, too. For the most part, that’s become a nightly divulging of facts I’d consider largely unimportant. Darya, however, collects them like shiny objects for a magpie. I, at least, know better than to phrase it that way to her.
Besides, I’m not much different about the pieces she’ll sometimes dangle in my face in return.
If she stores away knowledge of my favorite subject at school as a kid—history, to no one’s surprise—my favorite color—blue, and no, that’s not a line about her otherworldly eyes—the animal I’m most afraid of—rabbits, because no creature ought to have red eyes, for fuck’s sake)—then I’m just as stingy about her favorite liquor—mezcal—but she’ll down any fun, fruity cocktail and regret it the morning after—her go-to bedtime story as a little girl—the Baba Yaga folklore, to no one’s surprise.
These exchanges feel as devoid of pressure as they are important. It drives home the uncomfortable realization that I’ve never known the latter without at least a tinge of the former being part of it.
Night after night, she chips away at walls she doesn’t need to be behind.
It may not be fair to want to have her, every part of her I can have, but to not relinquish too much of her.
Already, three weeks into this marriage, I’ve given up too much.
I’ve revealed too much—to her, yes, but also to myself, unveiling sides of myself, possessive and competitive and sickeningly selfish, that I never wanted to know.
It doesn’t help that every time I am certain the reins are in my hand, Darya simply holds out her lithe, pianist’s hand, and I hand them the fuck over. As if I have no control over the matter.
I’m almost grateful I’ve got little time to think with everything going on. Nothing good lies down that road. My gut screams about it any time I deign to tune into it, as if it’s done me a damn bit of fucking good before.
***
“I’ll be home late today,” Darya mentions in passing one morning. She doesn’t even look up from the Lifestyle section to say it. Just sips on her morning espresso, and adds, like an afterthought, “There’s a Skinner’s auction. I always find the most sensational items.”
I don’t have to question its appeal to her.
Darya simply harbors a soul-deep appreciation for beautiful things.
I’ve taken to teasing her about admitting as much, relating to how often I catch her studying my profile.
Sometimes, subconsciously, her fingers move, like she’s trying to sketch me out.
That isn’t what I do now, not during mornings that have become a somewhat sacred start of the day.
My mother and Anastasia deem them profoundly uneventful, deterred by the silence. I almost feel guilty, knowing I enjoy this time all the more because of the bubble it leaves me in with Darya.
It’s also advantageous. She doesn’t look up from the paper when I hum in the direction of my own. She turns a page. I turn a page. And there’s no one in the corner, watchfully eyeing every minute expression on my face, questioning the thought I’ve just had.
Then again, it’s probably what’s got me digging my grave.
What else can I call canceling a day of meetings at the beginning of the day, and telling Stasi I’ll be unavailable for the rest of the day?
She’d shot back a look that could’ve curdled milk.
I can’t blame her for it, either. We had two more soldiers to question today—one of the many men I’ve ruled over for years, now reduced to suspects.
The interrogations seem to be getting us nowhere.
Each dead-end is another demoralizing failure.
I’d told her it could wait until tomorrow.
Just to show up at the Skinner’s auction house on Park Plaza.
I’m not an impulsive man, not by any stretch of the imagination.
I’m the opposite, actually. I can say that because I’ve been condemned for it more than once.
But reminding myself of this fact while I’m standing outside of a building that I’d never step foot in if it weren’t for this maddening, divine woman means little because I’m going inside anyway.
All that I need to buoy me is the innate understanding that it will shock and delight Darya.
It’ll give me a rare chance to be present on Darya’s turf, since I understand that showing up at the atelier would cross a line in her mind.
I choose to walk through these doors, looking for her.
Who’s the magpie—her or me?
The answer declares itself when my eyes seek her out effortlessly, drawn to her by some inexplicable magnetism I’ll always wish I’d accepted sooner. I refuse to ponder again what would be different today if one thing had been different months ago. There’s no use in it.
Of course, it isn’t as if I try to search for proof before I am drawn to her, standing near the front of the room with a catalog in her hand. She’s speaking to a person in one of the staff vests, her shoulders set with an aura of authoritativeness Darya exudes when she’d like it to.
It’s eerie, though not as much as her ability to flick it off like a switch to serve her as she’d like.
Frankly, it doesn’t shock me that she turns heads every time she shifts. Her classic charcoal-grey turtleneck and the black, wide-legged trousers she wears aren’t flashy in any way. But her face? That fucking body? Even in this crowd, it’s the rings I’ve given her that sparkle on her finger.
I cut through the crowd, making my way to her.
She stills the second she sees me, tipping a look over her shoulder, as if she sensed me in the room. Fuck. I can’t even think about that without a hot buzz spreading across my body.
“What,” she says, all her eloquence shot to hell.
I grin down at her. “Good afternoon.”
“What—what are you doing here?” she forces out, like her shock is a lump in her throat. She looks overwhelmed. No matter what point on the spectrum of emotions she’s at, she manages to be fascinating. A sight worth never looking away from, if there ever was one.
“I was curious about your world,” I answer honestly.
I’ve learned that pushing or rushing her won’t achieve anything; I’ve learned, watching her process my presence here. Until finally, she says, “You realize you’re likely going to be bored out of your mind, right?”
I toss her a confident wink. “I’ll take that bet.”
I’d figured the wink would earn me a whack with the rolled-up catalog—but I still don’t step out of the way. Why would I, when it’s much more gratifying to use the contact to steal a hold around her wrist and tuck her hand into mine.
For as many ways as I’ve been buried to the hilt inside her pussy by now, one would assume there would be no novelty left to such little actions.
They would assume wrong. If my heart rate is prone to soaring when I get her bare skin beneath my hands, it also stammers as she relaxes her hand into my hold, lacing her fingers through mine, encouraging it.
It would be fucking embarrassing if it weren’t so busy being too much else.
But, fortunately or not, I’ve got no room for that juvenile sentiment.
My attention is otherwise occupied by how different Darya is here, in her element.
If there’s anything to be embarrassed about, it’s belittling her to being nothing more than a party planner.
What I’d mistaken for her performing Bratva princess at galas is just an extension of her personality.
But there’s no bravado with her. She preens and pivots as she’d like, because she can back it up.
Everywhere she goes in this building, she is known. She is perceived with respect. And it has, unlike with her brothers and me, nothing to do with her last name. It has everything to do with her.
And she doesn’t reduce me to a shadow as she basks in that spotlight.
She explains things to me without being asked to, sensing where I’d be lost. She enjoys sharing her thoughts on people and pieces alike. Meanwhile, I enjoy her passion and the sweet, husky timbre of her voice, often fanning breath just beneath my ear as she whispers secret intel to me.
To think, I’ve had her in ways that would make a lesser man feel unsteady.
Yet it’s this—the warm press of her palm against mine, in a room full of her peers, where I’m only an extension of her, and she’s inviting me to stay and be that—that feels more jarringly intimate than anything else we’ve shared thus far.
It makes me hungry to keep that thriving, delighted glint in her eyes every time they land on me anew.
That’s why I pay such close attention—and why, when a still life painting comes up next on the auction block, I can tell from the look on her face that this is what she came for.
Maybe not this exact piece, but the feeling it inspires in her.
While I may not get the nuances of the art world, I understand desire thoroughly. It is Darya’s desire to have this piece, to the point where her paddle goes up again and again—and it is my desire for her to have whatever her heart fucking desires.
I try to stay out of it. I watch her go back and forth with a man two rows behind us, hiking the price for the piece ludicrously high, until her hand is a white-knuckled fist around her paddle. Her face remains carefully neutral. She turns her face away from the piece.
When I’d been handed a paddle, I’d questioned why I’d need it. Auctions are hardly my style. But here I am, raising it, countering back and forth, tuning out the fierce dig of her nails into my forearm and glowering at the man until he forfeits.
The gavel comes down on my side.
On hers.
Because they are the same thing.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Darya rasps, her voice twisted in disbelief. At the sum I’ve just tossed at a painting I feel nothing for, probably. She’s stunned as the lot number is recorded, and the room moves on to the next item.
Eventually, accepting it’s all she can say, I have to shrug. “A rare thing, that,” I quip.
When she says nothing, my gut twists wretchedly. I have to make myself look at her, to search for whatever words aren’t making it to her lips. What I find is—
Something so fucking open and undefended and devastating, like a window’s been thrown all the way wide in a room that’s been sealed shut for years. I have no name for it. Tenderness?
Whatever it is, it crawls into my chest, curling into a ball beneath my sternum. It is as warm as her head when she rests it against me.
The rest of the auction roars on around us.