Gennady
The night air bites as soon as we step outside.
She stumbles once on the gravel drive, barefoot, shock finally catching up with her body. I don’t slow. One of my men opens the rear door of the car and I guide her inside with a hand at her elbow. She folds into the seat like someone who hasn’t yet decided whether she’s allowed to take up space.
Only when the door shuts and the engine turns over do I really look at her.
Matilda Lazovski smells faintly of bergamot and fear. Her hair is loose, dark and tangled from sleep, her skin is pale from the events of the night, and she’s shaking. The kind of shiver that comes from being dragged out of your life and dropped somewhere unfamiliar.
I reach into the front seat and take my jacket, draping it over her shoulders without comment.
She startles, eyes flicking to me, then down to the heavy wool settling around her like a shield. She pulls it closed with both hands. The movement draws my attention to the nightdress she’s wearing.
Cotton. Thin. An old-fashioned style with a frill at the neckline that’s torn just enough to make it indecent. It clings to her curves in a way that feels unintentional, almost accidental, like she never expected to be seen in it by anyone other than herself.
It suits her.
I force myself to look away.
The car pulls off the drive, tyres crunching over gravel, the Lazovski house shrinking in the rear window. I don’t watch it disappear. I’ve burned down enough homes, literal and otherwise, to know better than to linger.
Instead, I think.
Matilda negotiated with me.
There was no begging or pleading or lying, like her parents. She negotiated. In front of her family. In front of my men. She offered me information in exchange for extraction, knowing full well I might kill her brother and leave her there anyway.
Knowing full well I might kill her too.
Most women raised Bratva know the rules. They cling to them. Hide behind fathers and brothers and the illusion of protection. They don’t choose a stranger who is willing to pull a trigger over the devil they already know.
That tells me more about Matilda Lazovski than anything she said.
It tells me she’s been pushed too far by the men who were supposed to protect her.
The car hums as we move onto the main road. Streetlights wash her pale face in amber, then shadow. Her lashes are dark crescents against skin drained of colour. Shock, adrenaline, cold. She looks breakable.
Even though I know she isn’t.
"Is your sister okay?"
Her voice is quiet. Steady. Carefully controlled. She is looking at me with genuine concern.
The question catches me off guard.
I turn my head slowly. "She will be."
Mila, my youngest sister, and a beacon of light in an otherwise overcast world, came to me last night, tears streaming quietly down her freshly bruised face.
Sergei had promised her a future and marriage, and she had fallen for his charms. When he made advances, and Mila refused because she wanted my blessing for the marriage first, he lost his temper.
Smacked her. Started to tear at her clothes.
She managed to fight him off, which makes him a lucky bastard, because if he had raped my sister I would have done more than have one of my men shoot him in the head.
Matilda nods once, accepting it without probing further. Then after a pause, she says, "I’m sorry."
I almost laugh.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," I tell her. "Your father is lucky he’s still breathing. He raised Sergei wrong. Shielded him. Excused him. That kind of failure deserves the pain he will feel at knowing that ultimately, he is the reason for his son’s death."
Her fingers tighten in the fabric of my jacket. "It won’t teach him anything."
I glance at her. There’s no bitterness in her tone. Just certainty.
"Men like my father don’t learn. They just demand and expect and resent."
Interesting.
Silence fills the space between us again, and I let myself think about what comes next.
I don’t negotiate lightly. I brought her with me. That means responsibility. It also means deciding what happens next.
She’s been raised Bratva. Knows the rules, the language, the violence beneath the polish. She’s likely untouched. Men like her father guard their daughters’ purity and treat it like currency. She would understand obedience and structure. The shadows and the darkness.
She would understand me.
The thought sharpens something low and unwelcome in my gut.
Admiration, I name it, maybe even curiosity. But nothing more.
Anything resembling attraction is a liability. I press it down, bury it beneath the familiar weight of command and consequence. The truth is I’ve never felt attracted enough to any woman before to make her anything more than one night. Then even that got boring.
I wasn’t expecting Matilda to be anything more than a bratty daughter to a dysfunctional family. I didn’t expect her to show such tenderness to her sister, to show such indifference to her brother. I didn’t expect her to have enough backbone to stand up to her entire family.
"What happened to you?" I finally ask, because people don’t become like that overnight.
She turns to me slightly and shrugs her shoulders slowly.
"Actions have consequences. I suppose I’d just had too many consequences for Sergei’s actions, and I think I’d had enough." She drags her bottom lip between her teeth and worries it.
"I don’t remember him ever being anything other than bad.
Always up to mischief and nastiness, always plotting and conniving.
He thought he was invincible and I thought he needed to be taught a lesson.
That lesson could have been anything, at any point, but it never came.
Not until he messed with you and the consequence was death. "
It’s dark in the car. Dark enough that I can only make out the shape of her pale face and the puddle of her nightdress over her knees.
"You came with nothing but what you’re wearing." It’s an observation. I don’t know why I even said it out loud.
"I don’t want anything from that life. From now on, I want to build my life on my terms. I’ll work hard, around the house maybe, or even in the business, if you think there’s anything I could help with…" she trails off, worrying her bottom lip again.
I reach up and press my thumb against her chin, pulling down until she releases her lip. A dark smear blooms on the pale pink flesh.
"You're bleeding," I say, leaning forward.
Before I can think better of it, I hook a finger under her chin and pull her towards me, drawing her wounded lip between my own and sucking gently. The taste of copper tantalizes my tongue. Her breath catches, body going completely still.
I know I should stop, but I can’t.
When I finally release her, I stay close enough that our breath mingles in the darkness of the car. Her eyes are wide, stunned.
"You don't know what you've done," I tell her quietly, the words coming from somewhere deeper than I’ve ever known. "You're mine now."
She blinks, confusion and something that looks dangerously like heat, flickers across her face.
I sit back, breaking the moment before I do something I'll regret. Or something I won't regret enough.
The estate gates come into view, iron rising out of the darkness like something permanent and unyielding. She watches them open, her breath catching just slightly. I wonder what arrangement she thinks she’s made with me. I wonder what I’m going to turn her into.
The car rolls forward, carrying us both into whatever this is going to become.