Chapter 4 Zakhar
ZAKHAR
Maksim devours his steak like a wolf finally allowed to hunt.
I watch from across the table, fighting the urge to smile.
He's cutting into the meat with focused precision, each bite deliberate, his expression somewhere between relief and vindication.
The booth we occupy is tucked into the corner of Zolotoy Medved—the Golden Bear—one of our restaurants where the lighting is low amber, the vodka is Russian, and nobody asks questions.
The place smells like oak smoke and aged leather. Expensive cigars. Money. The kind of establishment where business happens in low voices and the staff knows not to remember faces.
"Didn't you already have lunch?" I ask, keeping my tone neutral. "With Victoria. At that place."
Maksim doesn't look up from his plate. "That wasn't lunch. That was performance art disguised as food." He spears another piece of steak, and the tension in his shoulders eases as he chews. "I was starving."
"That bad?"
"Worse." He reaches for his vodka, takes a measured sip. "The whole place was odd. All women. Staff, customers, everyone. Except me and one other couple who looked like he'd been dragged there against his will."
I consider this. Process it the way I process most information. Methodically, looking for threat assessment, strategic value, anything worth noting.
But I come up blank because I wasn't paying attention to the restaurant. I was too busy trying not to stare at Victoria Ainsley as she walked past me on the sidewalk, all cream silk and calculated grace, leaving a trail of sandalwood and vanilla that made my mouth go dry.
The scent hit me first. Sandalwood and vanilla, warm and expensive, the kind of perfume that lingers in elevators long after a woman's gone. My throat went dry. My chest tightened, ribs constricting like someone had wrapped steel bands around my lungs and started cranking them tighter.
Then she looked at me.
Slow. Assessing. Like she was deciding whether I was worth her time or just another obstacle to navigate around.
"Do you always look this tense, or is it just me?"
Her voice, honey over gravel, teasing in a way that made my jaw lock and my hands curl into fists at my sides. Made other parts of me respond too, which was the real problem.
I don't get distracted. Distraction gets you killed. I've built my entire life on discipline, on being the one who sees everything, anticipates everything, stays three steps ahead of disaster.
But Victoria Ainsley walked past me, and for those few seconds, my breathing pattern became shallow, irregular, the kind of autonomic failure I haven't experienced since I was a teenager with no control over my own biology.
I can't explain why she affects me this way.
She's beautiful, yes. Dark hair, dark eyes, a body that would make saints reconsider their vows. But I've seen beautiful women before. Worked with them, protected them, fucked a few when the situation allowed.
This is different.
Maybe it's the way she interacts with me. Bold. Unafraid. Saying things most people wouldn't dare, pushing boundaries I've spent years establishing as untouchable.
In Arthur Ainsley's office, she told me I was using the fig leaf position. Said it made me look insecure. Intimidated.
She was wrong.
I wasn't intimidated by her. I was hard. Instantly, painfully hard from the moment she walked into that office in her wet red bikini, water dripping down her throat, pooling in her cleavage, that sheer white cover-up clinging to every curve like a second skin designed specifically to torture men.
The response was immediate. Primal. My cock thickening behind my clasped hands while I stood there trying to maintain professional composure, hoping nobody noticed the situation I was desperately trying to conceal.
I wanted to walk over there. Peel that wet fabric off her skin. Taste the chlorine on her neck. Feel her gasp against my mouth.
Instead, I stood by the door with my hands positioned strategically, pulse hammering, while she dismantled me with a single observation about body language.
She saw right through me. Read my attempt at control as weakness, called it out in front of everyone, and I couldn't do a fucking thing about it because she was absolutely right.
That mouth of hers is going to be a problem.
Those lips. Full. The way she smiles like she knows exactly what she's doing to every man in the room and enjoys watching us struggle.
The fantasy hits before I can stop it: her on her knees, those dark eyes looking up at me while I fist my hand in her hair and guide that smart mouth exactly where I need it. Watch her lips stretch around my cock. Feel her tongue—
"You good?"
Alexei's voice cuts through the fantasy like a blade. I look up to find him sliding into the booth beside me, grinning in that feral way that means he's caught me thinking about something I shouldn't.
"Fine." The word comes out rougher than I intended.
"You look like you're about to murder someone." His grin widens. "Or fuck them. Hard to tell which."
Maksim glances between us, one eyebrow raised.
My twin. The chaos to my control. The fire to my ice. Thirty-seven years of reading each other's tells, and he knows exactly where my mind just went.
Alexei turns his attention to Maksim. "Weren't you supposed to be having lunch with the future Mrs. Severyn?"
"Long story." Maksim sets down his fork, leans back against the leather booth. The low amber light turns him remote, unreachable, the Pakhan in full command. "How did your meeting with the Albanians go?"
Alexei's grin fades into something more serious. He reaches for the vodka bottle on the table, pours himself two fingers. "They weren't happy. Ramiz Krasniqi looked like he wanted to put a bullet in my head and dance on my corpse."
"But they agreed?" Maksim's voice carries that particular edge that means he's calculating, strategizing, already three moves ahead.
"Reluctantly." Alexei tosses back the vodka, grimaces. "They'll give Arthur Ainsley more time to pay his debts. Whether they actually honor that agreement remains to be seen."
"Your assessment?" I ask.
Alexei shrugs, that restless energy humming beneath his skin even when he's sitting still. "With the Krasniqi family, it could go either way. I'll keep monitoring. Watch for signs they're planning something stupid."
"Good." Maksim nods once. Decisive. Final.
"One more thing." Alexei leans forward, elbows on the table.
The muted jazz in the background shifts to something slower, darker.
"The Albanians were in a particularly foul mood because one of their warehouses got hit last night.
Someone broke in, took several hundred thousand dollars worth of contraband, and got out clean. No witnesses. No footage. Nothing."
The implications click into place immediately. The Albanians operate with brutal efficiency, but they're not invincible. Someone bold enough to steal from them is either extremely skilled or extremely stupid.
Probably both.
"Any leads on who did it?" Maksim asks.
"Word on the street says it was Eryan Nis."
The name drops into the conversation like a stone into dark water.
Eryan Nis.
For the past four years, that name has surfaced in connection with high-profile heists targeting criminal organizations. Always clean. Always precise. Nobody's ever seen him or his crew. No faces. No identities. Just a name whispered in certain circles, half myth, half menace.
Some say he's Irish. Connected to the old families. Others claim he's a ghost, a story criminals tell each other to explain their failures.
What's not in question is the pattern. Each job is cleaner than the last. More sophisticated. Bolder.
Dangerous.
"He hasn't touched us," I say, thinking through the variables, calculating probabilities. "Yet."
"Yet." Alexei echoes the word, lets it hang heavy between us. "But he's getting bolder. Eventually, our paths will cross."
I look at Maksim. "While Alexei monitors the Albanians, I'll dig into Eryan Nis. See what I can find. If he's planning to expand operations, I want to know before he shows up at our door."
Maksim nods his agreement, then reaches for his vodka. Takes a slow sip. Sets the glass down with deliberate care. The kind of controlled motion that means he's about to deliver news nobody's going to like.
"On that note," he says, voice dropping into that particular register of absolute command, "I've informed Victoria that she needs to move in. She'll be living with us after the wedding."
The words hit like a physical blow. My chest constricts, ribs tightening.
"You made that decision without consulting us." The statement comes out harder than I intend, edges sharper than professional disagreement.
"Plans change." Maksim's expression doesn't shift.
Cold. Logical. The man who rebuilt himself from ash and blood into something that doesn't flinch at hard decisions.
"The Albanians are suspicious. They need to believe the marriage is legitimate.
That means Victoria lives with us. Plays the role convincingly. "
"She's moving in with all three of us." I hear the edge in my voice, feel the iron control starting to fracture at the seams. "We should have been consulted."
"I'm informing you now."
"After you already told her." The distinction matters. We operate as a unit. Three parts of one organism. Decisions like this should be made together, not handed down like edicts.
But Maksim is the Pakhan. What he says goes, even when it guts the careful structure we've built.
"Does she know?" I ask. "That she's moving in with all three of us?"
"She'll know soon enough." Maksim's mouth curves slightly, not quite a smile, something colder. "The wedding is in three weeks."
Three weeks.
Victoria Ainsley in our home. In our orbit. Close enough to touch, to smell, to—
No. I shut down that line of thinking before it takes root.