Chapter 15 Victoria
VICTORIA
The SUV feels too small.
Leather seats creak every time I shift position.
The air is thick with my perfume mixing with Maksim's cologne until I can't tell where his scent ends and mine begins.
The space presses in from all sides, claustrophobic despite the luxury, the tinted windows, the careful distance we're maintaining on opposite sides of the back seat.
Behind us, another armored SUV follows at precise intervals. Zakhar and Alexei inside, part of the security detail, part of the show of strength we're bringing to Ramiz Krasniqi's door.
The space between Maksim and me hums with tension that has nothing to do with where we're going and everything to do with what's happened. What's still happening in the dangerous silence neither of us knows how to break.
I replay Alexei's kiss for the hundredth time since it happened this afternoon.
The heat of his mouth. The way his hands framed my face like I was precious and dangerous at once. The roughness in his voice when he said that word I can't stop thinking about.
Share.
My thighs clench involuntarily. Heat coils low in my belly, unwelcome and undeniable.
This is insane. I'm losing control in ways I can't afford.
I've spent years perfecting the art of emotional distance. Learned how to flirt without wanting, how to weaponize attraction while remaining completely unmoved by it. That skill kept me safe when nothing else could. Kept me functional when trauma tried to shut me down entirely.
The Severyns demolished that defense in weeks.
Maksim kissed me at the altar and I forgot to breathe.
My body responded before my mind could intervene, yielding to his mouth, wanting more even as I knew it was performance.
Except it didn't feel like performance. Not when his hand slid into my hair.
Not when his tongue swept against mine and pressure built in my chest I couldn't name.
Alexei kissed me this afternoon in the pilates studio and I forgot why I was supposed to resist. Forgot every rule I'd built about keeping distance, maintaining control, never letting desire override strategy.
His kiss tasted like sunlight and recklessness and the particular freedom of someone who's survived enough to stop caring about consequences.
And Zakhar with his dark quiet energy. I find myself thinking about him. Wondering what it would feel like to have that controlled intensity focused entirely on me.
I'm married to one of them.
The thought surfaces like an accusation.
Granted, Maksim and I agreed from the beginning that as long as we're discreet, we can have affairs.
After all, this is a marriage only on paper.
A contract with an expiration date stamped months from now.
A business arrangement that ends the moment I've served my purpose and he's achieved his goals.
But getting involved with men my husband sees as brothers? Men who live in the same house, share the same loyalties, bleed for each other without hesitation?
That crosses lines I didn't even know existed.
And then there's the other problem. The bigger problem that keeps surfacing every time I let myself think too clearly.
What does this attraction mean for my operations? For Eryan Nis? For the women depending on me to stay focused and functional?
I can't afford distractions. Can't afford to let desire compromise judgment. Can't afford to care about three men who live in a world built on violence I'm trying to dismantle one stolen shipment at a time.
Except I do care.
That's the terrifying part. The part that wakes me up at night with my heart racing and my hands shaking. I care what happens to them. Care if they're safe. Care in ways that make my carefully constructed emotional armor feel like tissue paper.
Share.
The image materializes before I can stop it.
All three of them. Hands on my skin, mouths tasting, bodies pressed close.
Being the center of their combined attention, their desire, their focus.
Maksim's controlled precision. Zakhar's quiet intensity.
Alexei's reckless heat. All of it directed at me, surrounding me, consuming me until I can't tell where I end and they begin.
My pulse accelerates. My skin feels too hot despite the SUV's climate control.
"We're going into foreign territory tonight."
Maksim's voice cuts through my thoughts. Sharp. Precise. Demanding attention.
I turn to look at him. He's staring straight ahead, jaw tight, expression unreadable in the flash of passing streetlights. The city slides by beyond tinted windows. Chicago at night, all neons and shadows.
"What do you mean?" I ask, though I know exactly where we're going.
Ramiz Krasniqi's house. Albanian Mafia. My father's creditor. The man whose debt started this entire arrangement, who holds enough leverage to make the Severyns negotiate instead of simply eliminating the problem.
"This isn't one of your society dinners," Maksim says, and there's an edge to his voice I don't like. Condescension wrapped in concern. "You need to be more cautious tonight. Don't be your usual self."
The words land wrong. Sharp and patronizing, like he's talking to a child who doesn't understand danger.
I bristle instantly, every defense mechanism snapping to attention.
"What exactly do you mean by that?"
He finally looks at me. His blue eyes are cold in the dim light. Calculating. The warmth I sometimes glimpse buried deep beneath the ice is completely absent tonight, replaced by the particular expression he wears when he's three moves ahead in a game I don't realize we're playing.
"Ramiz Krasniqi is old-fashioned," Maksim says, each word deliberate.
"A misogynist who believes women are ornamental.
To be seen, not heard. Decoration, not participants.
When we arrive, the men will gather to conduct business.
The women will—" He pauses, makes air quotes with his fingers, mockery dripping from the gesture. "gossip."
The air quotes make my teeth clench.
"If he's such a horrible man," I say, keeping my voice level despite the anger building in my chest, "why does the Severyn Bratva have business with him at all?"
"We don't." His tone is clipped. Final. The verbal equivalent of a door slamming shut.
"Your dear father did. And that's why we're in this predicament.
Ramiz sees our interference in your father's debt as overreach.
As the Severyns stepping into Albanian territory without permission or cause.
He's not pleased. And when Ramiz isn't pleased, there are ripples through Chicago's underground ecosystem that need to be carefully managed before they become waves. "
I let a smile curve my lips. Sharp. Cutting. The kind of smile I use when I want to draw blood without lifting a weapon.
"So the mighty Severyn Bratva isn't powerful enough to stand up to one barbarian?"
Maksim moves fast.
His hand shoots out, grabs my chin. Not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to demand my complete attention.
His fingers are warm against my skin, and I feel the contact like electricity racing down my spine.
Forces me to look directly at him, to meet blue eyes that have gone from cold to blazing in the space of a heartbeat.
"Take my warning seriously," he says, voice dropping to danger. To the register that makes my pulse race and my thighs clench despite the fury rising in my throat. "This is not a game, Victoria."
He releases my chin as abruptly as he grabbed it, but we keep staring at each other. The air between us crackles with tension that's part anger, part desire neither of us wants to acknowledge.
His gaze drops to my mouth for half a second before snapping back up.
"You've lived a sheltered life," he continues, and each word lands like an accusation wrapped in pity.
"Protected. Spared from real hardship. But if you'd lived my life, or my brothers' lives, you'd understand why you do everything possible to avoid bloodbath battles.
Because once you're in one, the only way out is to survive by killing everyone else.
Every single person becomes an enemy or a corpse.
There's no middle ground. No negotiation.
Just blood and bodies until one side stops breathing. "
He leans closer, and I can smell his cologne mixed with tension and controlled violence.
"Do you understand what I'm telling you?" he asks. "Are you prepared for that? For watching people die because you couldn't control your tongue for one evening?"
Silent fury rises in my throat, bitter and hot.
He has no idea. No concept of what I've lived through, what I've survived, what I've built from the ashes of violation and abandonment. No understanding of the battles I've fought in silence and shadow while he was building his empire on violence he admits to openly.
"You know nothing about me," I say, voice low and precise. Each word a blade "Nothing about my life or the battles I've had to fight. So don't presume to lecture me about hardship, cupcake."
The endearment is deliberate. Mocking.
His jaw clenches. Fury flashes in his eyes. Or desire, or both tangled together until they're indistinguishable.
The SUV slows. We've arrived.
The tension between us is thick enough to choke on, heavy enough to collapse the space between the leather seats.
The vehicle stops completely. Through tinted windows, I see Ramiz Krasniqi's house.
A sprawling estate that screams new money and old violence.
All ostentatious columns and unnecessary balconies, the kind of architecture that costs a fortune and still looks cheap because it's trying too hard.
Lights blaze from every window. Music pulses faintly through the walls, bass vibrating the ground.
The driver opens Maksim's door first. He exits without looking at me, without acknowledging the bomb that just went off between us, his movements controlled and precise like nothing happened.