Chapter Twenty-Five - Janice
The phone vibrates in my pocket during dinner.
I feel it through the fabric of my dress, insistent and accusing. Dimitri is across from me, discussing something about permits and zoning with the kind of focused intensity he brings to everything. He doesn’t notice when I reach down to silence it, doesn’t see my hand shake.
Three messages. I check them in the bathroom after we finish eating, door locked, water running to cover any sound.
Friday night. This is your last opportunity. After this, we can’t protect you.
He’s leaving for the Volkov meeting at 7. You’ll have at least three hours. Get the drive or don’t bother responding again.
We’re not asking anymore. You’re either with us or you’ve chosen his side. There’s no neutral ground left.
The words blur together, pressure mounting with each line. Last chance. Final opportunity. Choose now or lose everything.
I delete the messages with shaking hands and splash cold water on my face. My reflection stares back—pale, uncertain, caught between versions of myself that can’t coexist.
The woman who came to New York seeking justice. The woman who married a monster. The woman who’s falling in love with the man underneath.
I can’t be all three. Tomorrow forces the choice.
When I return to the living room, Dimitri is on the couch with Misha sprawled across his lap. He looks up, and something in his expression softens.
“You were gone a while. Everything alright?”
“Fine. I needed a moment.”
He doesn’t push, but his gaze lingers. He knows something is wrong, can probably read the tension in my shoulders, the careful way I’m avoiding his eyes.
“Come here,” he says quietly.
I cross to him because refusing would raise more questions. I settle beside him, and Misha immediately climbs onto my lap, purring. The kitten’s weight grounds me, her trust absolute despite the limp we couldn’t fix.
“Talk to me,” Dimitri murmurs. “Whatever’s bothering you.”
“Just thinking about my father. What we discussed previously.” Not entirely a lie. “Wondering what he’d think of all this.”
“He’d hate me.”
“Probably.” I stroke Misha’s back, feeling her heartbeat flutter under my palm. “He’d hate that I understand you. That I see why you do what you do, even when I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Understanding and accepting are different things.”
“I know.” I finally meet his eyes. “Which one do you want from me?”
“Both. Neither. I don’t know anymore.” His hand finds mine. “I just want you to stay.”
The simplicity of it breaks something in my chest. Not possession or control or any of the things I expected. Just stay. Be here. Choose this.
Choose him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper.
His thumb traces circles on my wrist, and we sit like that until Misha falls asleep, until the city lights outside blur into streams of gold and white, until the phone in my pocket feels like it weighs nothing at all.
I’ve already decided. I just haven’t admitted it yet.
***
That night, I can’t sleep. Can’t stop replaying the messages, the ultimatum, the weight of tomorrow pressing down like physical force. Dimitri is beside me, breathing even and deep, one arm draped across my waist in sleep.
I ease out of bed carefully, grab my robe, and slip into the hallway. My feet carry me toward his study before I consciously decide to go there. The door is unlocked, and I push it open, moonlight streaming through the windows to illuminate the space where he spends so much of his time.
The desk is neat, organized, papers stacked with precision. The laptop sits in the bottom drawer, just like the messages said. The drive is still connected, still waiting.
I could take it now. He’s asleep. Security is lighter at night. Felix isn’t here to monitor.
I could end this tonight, send the messages saying it’s done, and let whatever happens next unfold without me having to actively participate in tomorrow’s choice.
Instead, I sink into his chair and just sit.
The leather still holds his warmth, his scent. I close my eyes and imagine him here—working late, making decisions that affect hundreds of lives, carrying the weight of an empire built on violence and money and the kind of control that keeps chaos at bay.
He’s a monster. I know that. Have always known it.
Except he’s also the man who saved a kitten because she was helpless. Who checks locks obsessively because his mother died when he couldn’t protect her. Who holds me at night like I’m the only thing keeping him tethered to something human.
The door opens quietly. I don’t startle; somehow, I expected this.
Dimitri leans against the frame, wearing only sleep pants, hair disheveled. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“No.”
“Thinking about tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
He crosses to the desk, and I expect interrogation. Demands. Questions about why I’m here, what I’m planning, whether I can be trusted.
Instead, he just settles on the edge of the desk, close enough to touch. “You know what’s in that drawer.”
“Yes,” I admit.
“You know what it represents. What someone could do with that information.”
“Yes.”
“You’re here anyway. Not taking it, sitting in my chair, thinking.”
I finally look up at him. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know who I am or what I want or how to reconcile the woman who wanted to destroy you with the woman who… ”
“Who what?”
“Who can’t imagine doing it.” The confession tears out of me. “Who looks at you and sees someone worth protecting instead of someone who deserves to fall. I don’t know when that changed, Dimitri. I don’t know how you got inside my defenses this deeply.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then he reaches down, pulling me to my feet, hands settling on my waist.
“I’m going to ask you something,” he says quietly. “I need complete honesty. Can you give me that?”
My heart hammers. “Yes.”
“Did someone approach you? Offer you a way out if you provided information about my operations?”
The question hangs between us. This is it. The moment where I either lie or confess everything.
“Yes,” I whisper. “At Damien’s event. Someone slipped a phone into my purse. They’ve been messaging me since, pushing me to take that drive, promising protection if I help them destroy you.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t pull away. “How long have you been considering it?”
“Weeks. Since the night you caught me in here the first time. I was going to do it then. I had the drawer open when you appeared.” Tears burn my eyes. “I’ve been lying to you. Planning behind your back. Being exactly the threat you should have eliminated.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t. Every time I got close, every time I convinced myself it was the right thing—” My voice breaks. “I’d see you with Misha. Or you’d tell me something real about your past. Or you’d hold me like I matter more than anything else. I couldn’t do it.”
“Who approached you?”
“I don’t know. The messages were anonymous. They claimed to have information that could take down your entire operation. They wanted the drive as proof.”
Dimitri’s hands tighten on my waist. “Tomorrow, when I’m at the Volkov meeting? Were you planning to take it then?”
“No.” The word comes out firm, certain. “I deleted their last message tonight. I’m done. I’m choosing—” I stop, throat tight.
“Choosing what?”
“You. This. Whatever we’re building that probably shouldn’t work but somehow does.” I meet his eyes. “I’m choosing you, Dimitri. Even though it terrifies me. Even though I don’t know if it’s Stockholm syndrome or actual feelings or some combination that makes me the biggest fool alive.”
The silence stretches. I watch emotions flicker across his face—anger, relief, something that might be love if I didn’t know better.
Then he’s kissing me, and it’s desperate and claiming and nothing like his usual control. His hands fist in my hair, tilting my head back, and I open for him immediately.
“You’re sure?” he breathes against my mouth. “Once you choose this, there’s no taking it back. You’re mine completely.”
“I’m sure.”
“Say it out loud. Say you’re choosing me over whatever freedom they offered.”
“I choose you.” The words feel like vows, binding and permanent. “I choose this marriage, this life, this cage that somehow became home.”
He lifts me onto the desk, papers scattering. His mouth moves to my throat, teeth grazing the pulse that hammers there.
“I knew,” he murmurs against my skin. “About the phone, about the messages. I’ve known for days.”
Shock freezes me. “You knew?”
“Felix uncovered the contact at Damien’s event. We’ve been monitoring the messages, tracking the source.” He pulls back to look at me. “I knew exactly what opportunity you’d have tomorrow. I was letting you choose.”
“You were testing me.”
“Yes.” No apology, no justification. Just honesty. “I needed to know if you’d take it. If weeks of understanding and proximity and whatever this is between us would be enough.”
Fury spikes through desire. “You manipulative ass!”
“I know.” He kisses me again, silencing the accusation. “I’m exactly what you’ve always known I am. Controlling. Manipulative. Willing to test even you to ensure loyalty.”
He’s right. God help me, he’s right.
I understand the paranoia that makes him test even those closest to him. Understand the need for certainty in a world where betrayal is currency. Understand that love—if that’s what this is—doesn’t exist without trust, and trust in his world must be earned and proven and tested until it holds.
“I passed your test,” I say. “What now?”
“Now I show you exactly what choosing me means.”
He strips the robe from my shoulders, baring me in the moonlight streaming through windows. His gaze rakes over me with an intensity that makes me shiver.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs. “And mine. Completely mine now.”
His mouth finds my breast, and I arch into him, anger dissolving into heat. He works me with deliberate focus—tongue circling my nipple until it’s tight and aching, teeth grazing just enough to sting, hand sliding between my thighs to find me already wet.
“Please,” I gasp.
“Please what?”
“Stop making me wait. Stop drawing this out.”
“I know what you need.” Two fingers slide inside me, and I cry out. “But you’re going to wait anyway. You’re going to let me take my time and prove exactly what you chose.”
He works me with ruthless precision, thumb circling my clit while his fingers curl to find that spot that makes my vision blur. The pleasure builds fast, too fast, and I’m climbing toward an edge I can’t control.
“That’s it,” he encourages. “Come for me first. Then I’ll give you the rest.”
I shatter, clenching around his fingers, and he doesn’t slow. Just works me through it until I’m trembling.
Then he’s sliding into me, and the stretch is perfect and overwhelming. He sets a rhythm that’s deliberately slow, each thrust deep enough to make me feel every inch.
“Tell me again,” he commands. “Tell me you choose this.”
“I choose this.” The words come out broken. “I choose you.”
“Why?”
“I love you.” The admission tears free, raw and unplanned. “God help me, I love you.”
He stills completely, buried deep, his eyes locked on mine. “Say it again.”
“I love you. I don’t want to, shouldn’t want to, but I do. I love you, Dimitri.”
Something in his expression cracks. He kisses me with a tenderness that steals my breath, and when he starts moving again, it’s different. Slower. Like he’s memorizing every sound I make, every way my body responds to his.
“I love you,” he says against my mouth. “I’ve been falling for months and trying to pretend it was just possession.”
The confession undoes me. I cling to him as he takes me apart piece by piece, pleasure building until I can’t separate where I end and he begins. When I come, it’s with his name on my lips. When he follows, it’s with mine.
Afterward, we stay tangled together on his desk, breathing hard, the weight of what just happened settling over us.
“Tomorrow,” I say quietly, “when you meet with the Volkovs. I’ll be here. Waiting.”
“I know.” He brushes hair from my face. “I’ve known since you refused to leave tonight. Since you sat in my chair and couldn’t bring yourself to betray me.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m yours.” He says it simply. “That’s far more terrifying than impossible.”