Chapter Six
Dmitri
The boardroom on the penthouse’s private floor was colder than anywhere else in the building, and not by accident.
It was designed that way years ago, stripped of the excess that ran through every other room the Golovin name touched.
It was just dark wood, a bank of security monitors along one wall, and enough silence that a man could hear his own pulse if he sat still long enough.
Down on the casino floors, we sold people the illusion that money bought warmth.
Up here, we dealt in the truth underneath that illusion, which was considerably colder.
I hadn’t slept more than three hours since the call broke off whatever had been building between Val and me in that private lounge. So I walked into the meeting already short on patience, which wasn’t a good place to start when the subject on the table was her.
I’d spent most of the elevator ride up rehearsing what I already knew this meeting would demand of me—patience I didn’t currently have, distance from her I wasn’t sure I could manufacture convincingly, the discipline to sit at that table and discuss Valentina as a security problem rather than a woman I felt compelled to protect.
I hadn’t managed to talk myself into any of it by the time the doors opened.
Roman stood near the back wall, half his attention on a tablet feeding him security updates, half on the room itself— present, useful, careful never to sit at the table unless someone asked him to.
None of our right-hand men were usually invited to meetings like these, but Roman was invited because the issue at hand involved my area of the Golovin empire, of which Roman was a primary member.
Nikolai, my cousin, sat with his own tablet, scrolling through something with an unhurried precision that made him terrifying in negotiations.
Mikhail, my brother, occupied the head of the table the way he occupied most rooms. He was the Pakhan, after all.
Viktor sat to his left, arms crossed, already wearing an expression that was always difficult to interpret.
Alexei sat across from Mikhail, quiet, watching everything with a stillness that told me he was running calculations in his head already.
Varley sat near the end of the table, hands folded, his expression concerned.
Something about him sitting there annoyed me more than it should have. I couldn’t explain why, only that every time I looked at him lately something in the back of my skull itched in a way I didn’t like.
Nikolai started without preamble, which was not new for him.
“Employee credentials assigned to Valentina Cruz were used to access internal shift schedules and restricted game information in the hours before the raid. Security timestamps place the access directly inside our systems. Encrypted communications tied to the federal movement upstairs originated from terminals near the VIP lounge, the same terminals her login has access to.”
He turned the tablet so the rest of us could see the timeline laid out clearly even though I’d already seen it all on Roman’s tablet. Dates and access points were stacked in neat rows that made the story look simple even though nothing about the last six days had been simple at all.
“Objectively,” Nikolai continued, “this looks bad.”
“It looks exactly like what it is,” Viktor pointed out, not bothering to soften it. “Whether she did it herself or someone used her credentials without her knowledge, we can’t rule out infiltration. We’ve survived this long by eliminating threats early instead of sentimentally.”
I felt my jaw tighten. Of course, Viktor wasn’t wrong. Cruelty wasn’t the point for him; efficiency was. But it didn’t make it easier to sit there and listen to her being discussed like an item that needed resolving.
“The evidence is too clean,” Alexei said before I had to say anything myself.
He hadn’t looked up from his own notes yet, still sorting something out privately before he offered it to the room.
“Whoever coordinated a raid sophisticated enough to hit both our legal floor and the private game in the same ten minutes isn’t the kind of person who leaves their fingerprints sitting in plain sight a week later.
This is either sloppy, or it’s meant to look exactly this obvious. ”
“A frame,” Nikolai said, considering it. “Possible. It doesn’t change the political exposure, though. Whether she’s guilty or was set up, her name is attached to a leak inside our operation. Partners will ask questions regardless of what actually happened.”
Varley leaned forward slightly, voice smooth as he opined, “The safest path might be isolating her. A full interrogation, until we understand precisely what she does and doesn’t know. Better to be thorough now than exposed later.”
Something ugly rose up behind my ribs, faster than I expected, fast enough that I heard my own voice before I’d finished deciding what I wanted to say.
“No.”
The word landed harder in that room than I’d meant it to. Every head turned toward me, even Viktor’s, who rarely bothered to react to anything.
“She didn’t betray us.” I kept my voice level, though I suspected it was too late. “Whatever this is, it isn’t her.”
Mikhail studied me for a long moment, the kind of look that measured more than the words I’d just said. “How can you be certain?”
“Instinct.”
Viktor made a short, disbelieving sound. “Instinct isn’t evidence.”
“No, it isn’t. But I’ve spent my entire life around liars, Viktor.
Cheats, manipulators, men who could smile at you while planning exactly how they’d cut your throat.
I know what that looks like up close. Val isn’t that.
She’s terrified half the time just by standing in the same room as us.
She barely understood the scope of what this family does before that raid happened.
She’s not sophisticated enough to run a double game against us, and she’s certainly not cold enough for it. ”
I heard how much conviction I’d put behind those words, more than I’d ever used defending anyone outside my blood, and understood exactly how that must have sounded to men who’d known me my entire life.
Nikolai broke the silence first, setting his tablet down.
“Whether or not she’s innocent, the perception problem remains.
If other partners believe we’re protecting a potential leak out of sentiment rather than certainty, it signals weakness.
Weakness spreads through an organization like this faster than almost anything else. ”
“I’ll marry her.”
The silence that followed made Nikolai’s earlier quiet sound like conversation. Even Roman, standing at the back wall with his tablet still glowing in one hand, looked up sharply enough that I caught the motion out of the corner of my eye.
“You’ll what?” Viktor practically barked.
“Marry her,” I said again, steadier this time, the logic settling into place faster than my nerves could keep up with it.
“If she’s my wife, she’s family. Not an employee under suspicion, not an outside liability the organization needs to manage or interrogate.
Family. Investigating her publicly at that point means investigating one of our own, which no partner in their right mind is going to push for.
Marriage signals exactly the opposite of division.
It shields her, and it tells everyone watching that I stand behind her completely. ”
“That’s reckless,” Viktor said immediately, with no hint of hesitation. “You’ve known this woman for what, six months? A year?”
Instead of correcting my brother, I said, “I’m aware of the timeline, Viktor.”
“Then you’re aware of how insane this sounds.”
Alexei hadn’t said anything yet, which told me more than anything Viktor was saying. He sat there quiet, clearly working through it.
“Marriage inside this family was never just about affection,” Alexei said slowly. “It’s protection. Allegiance. A declaration to everyone watching about where loyalty sits.”
“You’re defending this?” Viktor queried, turning to face Alexei.
“I’m saying I understand what he’s doing, which isn’t the same thing as saying it’s comfortable.” Alexei looked at me directly for the first time since the meeting started. “Are you certain?”
I felt every eye at that table land on me at once, waiting. Then and there, I understood that whatever I said next would settle something permanently, one way or another.
“Yes.”
I said it without the pause I thought I would need.
The certainty surprised me more than the question had.
Underneath every calculation about optics, politics, and protecting the family’s position, one plain fact remained: the idea of Val sitting in a locked room somewhere in this building, frightened and alone, being questioned by men who’d already decided her guilt before they started, was intolerable to me in a way that had nothing to do with strategy.
Mikhail watched me for a long moment, the head of the family weighing something none of the rest of us could fully see from where we sat. Then, finally, he nodded, slow and deliberate.
“Agreed.”
Viktor exhaled hard through his nose, clearly unconvinced but seeing he had no reason to oppose because it was more unexpected than bad.
Nikolai returned to his tablet without comment; I suspected he was already considering the logistics of how quickly something like this could be arranged and announced without looking like the emergency measure it was.
Alexei held my gaze a second longer, something unreadable behind it that I didn’t have the patience to decode just then.
Varley said nothing at all.
I caught him watching me as the meeting broke apart.
Something crossed his expression for half a second before it smoothed back into the professional concern he wore.
I didn’t have the energy to chase down what it meant.
My mind was already three floors up, fixed entirely on the woman who had no idea her entire life was about to change.
Roman caught me in the hallway outside, falling into step beside me with the caution he used whenever he wanted to say something I probably wouldn’t like.
“You want to tell me what that was, boss?”
I didn’t miss the humorless sarcasm in how he called me by my title, something he usually only did when we were joking, considering I’d insisted on him calling me by name several years ago.
“You heard the meeting.”
“I heard you volunteer to marry a hostess you’ve known for months in front of your entire family, minutes after Mr. Varley suggested locking her in a room and interrogating her.
” Roman kept his voice low, meaning he was more worried than he was willing to let on.
“I’ve known you a long time, Dmitri. I’ve never seen you decide anything that fast.”
“Some decisions don’t need time.”
“Or you’re not thinking clearly because you haven’t slept, and because watching a man die in front of her hit you harder than you’re willing to admit.”
I stopped walking long enough to look at him properly. Roman didn’t often push this hard, and the fact that he was doing it now told me he genuinely believed what he was saying.
“Maybe both things are true,” I said finally. “Doesn’t change what I’m doing.”
He studied me a moment longer, then nodded. “Then I’ll start making arrangements. Quietly, until you’re ready to make it public.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Thank me once we’ve confirmed whether that evidence against her was a frame or the real thing. Marrying her doesn’t make the question disappear, Dmitri. It just changes who’s allowed to ask it out loud.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Are you? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you made a decision about the rest of your life in under a minute.”
“I know exactly what I did in there.”
Roman studied me a moment, his tone even lower as he said, “I’ve watched you walk away from every serious relationship you’ve had in ten years the second it started requiring anything real of you.
I’m not judging, you know that. But this is the first time I’ve watched you run straight toward something instead of away from it. ”
“Noted,” I said instead of whatever he was expecting.
Of course, he was probably right.
But as I took the elevator up alone, watching the numbers climb, all I had in my head was how to explain this to her.