Chapter Twenty-Seven - Janice
I wake before dawn, Dimitri’s arm heavy across my waist, his breath warm against my neck.
The realization hits with uncomfortable clarity: I’m happy.
Not just content. Not just resigned to this marriage. Actually, genuinely happy in a way I haven’t been since before New York swallowed me whole the first time.
Dimitri shifts in his sleep, pulling me closer, and something in my chest tightens. When did this happen? When did the man who forced me into marriage, who caged me and controlled me and made every decision without my input, become the person I reach for in the dark?
When did I start craving the weight of his attention instead of resenting it?
The thought terrifies me more than the Volkovs ever did.
I slip out of bed carefully, not wanting to wake him. Morning light filters through windows we forgot to cover, painting gold across his bare shoulders, the lean muscle of his back. Scars I’ve mapped with my fingers, stories he’s told in fragments when sleep loosens his control.
He’s beautiful in a dangerous way. Always has been.
I pull on his discarded shirt from last night, the fabric soft and smelling like him, and pad to the kitchen. Coffee first, panic about feelings later.
Misha winds between my ankles, purring, demanding breakfast with the authority only cats possess. I feed her, watch her eat with single-minded focus, and try to remember what my life looked like before Dimitri Rudenko rearranged it.
I can’t.
Four months married, and the woman I was before feels like someone else entirely. That girl who published exposés and believed truth mattered more than survival wouldn’t recognize what I’ve become.
A Bratva wife who commands respect through proximity to power. Someone people defer to, listen to, fear in small but measurable ways.
Someone who’s starting to like it.
The coffee maker hisses and gurgles. I pour two cups, fixing Dimitri’s the way he takes it—black, one sugar, and hot enough to scald.
“You’re up early.”
I turn. He’s leaning against the doorframe, wearing nothing but sleep pants slung low on his hips, hair mussed, eyes still heavy lidded.
Gorgeous and deadly and mine.
The possessive thought should alarm me. Doesn’t.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say, handing him his coffee.
“Nightmares?”
“No. Just… thinking.”
He takes a sip, watching me over the rim with that unnerving focus. “About?”
“Nothing important.”
Dimitri sets his cup down, crosses to me, cups my face in his hands. “Liar.”
“It’s too early for interrogation.”
“It’s never too early for honesty.” His thumb traces my jaw. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
I could deflect. Change the subject. Kiss him until he forgets the question.
Instead, I say, “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“This. Us. How much I—” I stop, the words catching in my throat.
“How much you what?”
“How much I love you.” The admission costs me, leaves me vulnerable in ways I swore I’d never be again. Each time I say it, I feel the truth of it in whatever soul I have left. “About what happens if it all falls apart.”
Dimitri goes very still. His eyes search mine, looking for deception, for games.
He won’t find any. This is the truth, raw and terrifying.
“You think I’ll hurt you again,” he says quietly.
“I think you’re capable of it. I think if circumstances changed, if I became more liability than asset, you’d make the strategic choice.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.” He kisses me, soft and thorough and devastating. “You’re not an asset, Janice. You’re not strategy or leverage or any of the things I try to convince myself you are when I’m attempting to maintain control.” Another kiss, deeper this time. “You’re the woman I’m falling in love with.”
“Dimitri—”
“I have been, probably since I walked into that boardroom and you looked at me like I was something you’d scrape off your shoe.”
I laugh, the sound breaking on something that might be a sob. “That’s a terrible origin story.”
“It’s ours.”
He’s right. Our story is terrible—forced marriage, violence, betrayal on both sides. Nothing about this is romantic or healthy or remotely resembling functional.
I love him anyway.
“I love you too,” I whisper. “God help me, I do.”
***
The day unfolds with surprising normalcy.
Dimitri has meetings. I have coffee with Diana, who takes one look at my face and demands details I’m not ready to share. We talk around everything that matters, the way we’ve learned to do since my marriage made certain topics dangerous.
She knows I’m happy. Can see it written across my features, hear it in the way I talk about Dimitri without the edge of resentment that used to sharpen every mention of his name.
“You’re glowing,” she observes over her second latte.
“I’m wearing makeup.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She leans forward, voice dropping. “You’re in love with him.”
“Diana, please.”
“You’ve smiled more in the last hour than you did in the entire first month of this marriage.”
I don’t have a good counter-argument. “It’s complicated,” I say instead.
“Love usually is.” Diana sits back, studying me. “Just… be careful. Men like him don’t love the way normal people do.”
“I know.”
“Do you? You look like someone who’s forgotten why you were angry in the first place.”
The observation lands uncomfortably close to truth. I have forgotten, or at least stopped caring about the reasons I should hate Dimitri Rudenko.
Revenge feels like someone else’s motivation. The exposé, the firing, the forced marriage—all of it has faded into background noise against the reality of who we are now.
Maybe that makes me weak. Maybe it makes me complicit in my own captivity.
I don’t care anymore.
We part ways outside the café. Diana hugs me longer than usual, and I wonder if she senses something I don’t. Some approaching storm that will test exactly how solid this foundation we’ve built actually is.
The thought dissipates when my phone buzzes.
Dinner tonight. Somewhere public. I want to show off my wife. - D
I smile at the screen, type back: Possessive much?
Always. 7 PM. Wear something that will make every man in the restaurant jealous.
***
The restaurant is exactly the kind of place Dimitri would choose—expensive, exclusive, the sort of establishment where reservations book months in advance and the dress code is enforced with polite ruthlessness.
I wear midnight blue silk that clings to every curve, hair swept up to expose my neck and the diamond necklace Dimitri gave me last week. No occasion. Just because he could.
His eyes heat when he sees me step out of the car.
“You’re trying to start a war,” he murmurs, hand settling possessively at my waist as we enter.
“You asked for jealousy.”
“I’m regretting that now.”
The ma?tre d’ leads us to a corner table with perfect sight lines—Dimitri never sits with his back to a room. Old habits from a life I’m only beginning to understand the full scope of.
Dinner is perfect. The food, the wine, the easy conversation that flows between us now that we’ve stopped fighting every interaction. Dimitri tells me about the Williamsburg project moving forward, asks my opinion on community outreach strategies I’ve been developing.
He listens when I talk. Actually listens, incorporating my suggestions, treating my insights as valuable rather than decorative.
It’s intoxicating.
I’m mid-sentence, explaining why the neighborhood council needs more direct engagement, when Dimitri’s expression changes.
The shift is subtle—a slight tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes track movement behind me with predatory focus.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing. Keep talking.”
His hand has moved to his waist, where I know he keeps a gun in a holster I’m not supposed to acknowledge exists.
The gunshot shatters the moment. Everything happens too fast.
Glass explodes. People scream. Dimitri is moving before my brain processes the sound, lunging across the table, covering my body with his.
The impact knocks us both to the floor. I’m screaming his name, don’t remember starting, can’t stop. Another shot. Then another.
Return fire from somewhere—Felix, maybe, or Oleg, security I didn’t know was present. The restaurant dissolves into chaos. Tables overturning, patrons fleeing, the sharp smell of gunpowder mixing with expensive wine soaking into carpet.
Dimitri’s weight pins me down. Too heavy. Too still.
“Dimitri?” My hands find his back, come away red. “Dimitri!”
He makes a sound—pain and effort and something that might be my name.
Then Felix is there, hauling Dimitri off me with surprising strength for someone so lean. Blood. There’s so much blood.
“Get her out,” Dimitri manages, voice rough. “Now.”
“Not without you!”
Felix ignores me, already coordinating with security I hadn’t noticed flanking our table. They move as a unit—practiced, efficient, executing a plan they’ve clearly rehearsed.
Dimitri is on his feet somehow, leaning heavily on Oleg, face ashen but eyes still sharp. Scanning for threats. Protecting me even as blood soaks through his shirt.
We’re moving out a back exit, into an alley where cars wait with engines running. Felix shoves me into the back seat. Dimitri follows, or maybe falls, collapsing against me with a grunt of pain.
“Drive!” Felix barks.
The car peels out. I’m cradling Dimitri’s head in my lap, hands pressed uselessly against the wound in his side, trying to stem bleeding I don’t know how to stop.
“Stay with me.” My voice breaks. “Please, stay with me.”
His hand finds mine, grip weak but present. “I’m fine.”
“You’re shot!”
“I’ve had worse.”
The absurdity of the statement might make me laugh if I weren’t so terrified. Blood keeps pumping between my fingers, warm and too much, and Dimitri’s skin is getting colder under my touch.
“Who was it?” I demand, looking at Felix in the rearview mirror.
“Zullo men. At least three shooters.” His voice is clinical, detached. “They’ve been planning this.”
“How did you know?”
“Didn’t. Just got lucky with positioning.”
Lucky. Right. This feels anything but lucky.
The car screams through traffic, running lights, weaving between vehicles with precision that suggests the driver has done this before. Probably has. This is Dimitri’s world—violence lurking under every expensive dinner, every moment of normalcy.
I knew that. Understood it intellectually.
Understanding doesn’t prepare you for the reality of the man you love bleeding out in your lap.
“Hospital,” I say. “We need to get him to a hospital.”
“No hospitals.” Dimitri’s voice, stronger than it should be given the blood loss. “Too many questions. Felix knows where to go.”
“You need a doctor!”
“We’re getting one. Just not… publicly.”
His eyes flutter closed, and panic spikes sharp and immediate.
“Dimitri. Stay awake. Look at me.” I cup his face, forcing him to meet my gaze. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to make me fall in love with you and then die in some random alley.”
His mouth curves slightly. “This is barely an inconvenience.”
“This isn’t funny!”
“Little bit funny.”
I want to hit him. Want to shake him until he understands the terror clawing through my chest, the way my entire world has narrowed to his pulse under my fingers and the rise and fall of his chest.
The car stops. We’re somewhere industrial, nondescript—the kind of building that asks no questions and keeps no records.
Hands reach in, lifting Dimitri with practiced care. I follow, refusing to let go, clutching his hand like it’s the only thing keeping both of us tethered to reality.
Inside is cleaner than I expected. Medical equipment. A woman in scrubs who takes one look at Dimitri and starts issuing orders in rapid Russian.
They pry my hand from his. Someone—Felix, maybe—pulls me back as they transfer Dimitri to a table that’s definitely seen trauma before.
“We need to let them work,” Felix says, voice gentle.
“I’m not leaving him.”
“I’m not asking you to leave. Just give them space.”
The woman cuts away Dimitri’s shirt, exposing the wound. Bullet entry, right side, below his ribs. Could have hit organs. Could be bleeding internally. Could kill him while I stand here useless and terrified.
Dimitri’s hand reaches out, seeking mine even as they prep him for whatever comes next.
I take it. Squeeze hard enough to hurt.
“Don’t you dare,” I whisper. “Don’t you dare leave me.”
His eyes meet mine. Clear despite the pain, despite everything.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises.