Chapter 19 - Avit
With a bouquet of white roses in my hand, I headed straight for the office the moment I stepped through the front door.
I knew that’s where I’d find Sienna. She sat curled up in her chair, legs tucked to her chest, a teacup cradled between her fingers.
Her eyes were on the laptop, but she looked a hundred miles away.
“Hey,” I said softly as I approached.
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. It didn’t light up her face the way it used to.
“Hey.”
I handed her the flowers. A spark flickered in her eyes, then disappeared just as fast.
“Thank you. How was your day?”
“It’s better now that I’ve seen you.”
She blushed, but even that felt muted.
“How are classes?” I asked, sitting beside her and powering on my laptop.
“Same ole, same ole.”
The last two weeks had turned our conversations into routines. Short answers. Little interest. Silence filling spaces that used to be easy and warm. What gutted me most was the absence of that soft sigh she made after I kissed her each morning. Now…nothing.
I kept telling myself her distance was stress—school, research, and now the endless hours she’d poured into cracking Oskar’s damn memory card.
So I made sure she took breaks. Once her classes ended early, I picked her up and got her out of the house—dinners, a picnic at the park, even a visit to Ninel one afternoon. And I tried to spoil the exhaustion out of her: perfumes, creams, jewelry, hoodies, the latest tech gadgets.
But no matter how much I gave her, she still felt like she was slipping further away.
And then it dawned on me. She’d never be her old self until this was over.
“I can’t wait until you crack whatever’s on that card…and I can finally end this,” I said, trying to inject some excitement, hoping it would lift the mood.
“End what?” she asked, looking at me, her eyes blank.
“End the theft, recover the faction’s losses. Once it’s done, we can get a divorce. You’d be free to live the life you’ve always wanted.”
Even as the words left my mouth, my heart cracked a bit more with each one. But, she needed to hear it, needed to know I wouldn’t go back on our agreement, no matter how much I wanted her to stay.
I wanted a real marriage: waking up next to her, falling asleep with her in my arms, seeing her cross the stage in a few months, baking a cake and watching The Sound of Music every year on her mother’s birthday. But keeping her for myself wouldn’t be fair, not after everything she’d sacrificed.
“And your life would go back to the way it was,” she said flatly.
“So would yours.” I forced a smile. “You’d hang out with Mandy whenever you wanted, go to parties, focus fully on your masters.”
I knew she longed for her old life—friends, freedom, no constant shadows; her dreams she’d had long before I entered her world. Without me, she could reclaim them.
A sharp pang shot through my chest, but I swallowed it. No matter how I felt, I couldn’t be selfish. I needed to let her go.
Sienna spent another two hours in the office before finally saying goodnight and heading to bed. I had hoped our conversation would lift her spirits at least a little, maybe bring back a fraction of the defiant, stubborn vixen she’d been when she first arrived, but it didn’t.
As more days passed, she had stopped coming down for breakfast, retreating to her room to obsess over the memory card. More often than not, the only thing I saw was her back as she walked away and slipped into her room.
“Avit, if you don't stop clicking that damn pen, I swear I’ll stab you with it,” Pyotr’s voice cut through my thoughts.
I slammed the pen down on the conference table and leaned back in my chair, glaring at nothing. Jaroslav and Lev weren’t here yet, and we were waiting for them to start the meeting.
“How are things at home with Sienna?” Marten asked from beside me.
“Of course, as soon as something’s wrong, it has to involve Sienna,” I snapped. “Would you have asked that if I weren’t married?”
“So things aren’t going well at home?” Pyotr pressed.
“Fuck you!”
“Avit,” Marten said quietly. “When I first got married to Kira, I almost ruined our marriage. Honestly, I may still not have the perfect advice, but I can listen.”
Right then, Lev and Jaroslav arrived, and I gave Marten a curt nod. I knew he meant well, but what the hell was I supposed to tell him? That I was on the verge of losing the only woman I’d ever truly cared about outside of family? That nothing would ever be the same once she left?
The meeting began, and Lev sent us the files, which we opened on our laptops, but the words blurred.
My mind kept drifting to Sienna: why was she pulling away?
I realized I was trying to fix a problem I didn’t fully understand.
Talking to her could help…but would I be ready for the answer?
And with the separation looming, should I even ask?
My eyes darkened.
It was better to let her be. Any conversation would just make another bond, one that would be broken in the end. What I needed was distance. I had to detach. Hard. Or I’d be destroyed by the time she finally left.
I rose from the chair, oblivious to the strange looks my brothers shot me. At the mini bar, I poured two fingers of vodka and tossed it back, then another and another. The fourth was stopped by a firm hand…Marten’s.
“What the fuck do you think you're doing?” Marten asked.
I yanked my hand away.
“You do realize that I'm a fucking adult, right?”
“And you do realize that as your brother, it's well within my right to stop you from doing anything that could potentially harm you.”
I slammed the glass on the bar, the drink spilling over it.
“If it were anyone else here, would you have stopped them? See, there's a reason things like fucking feelings aren't shared, because eventually the people you share them with turn them against you. Now I can't even take a fucking drink in peace!”
“Fine,” Marten said, stepping back. “You want to drink? You want to fucking throw away everything you've worked your ass off for? Go ahead! You do that, and you'd be the irresponsible man you always feared Dad thought you were.”
I swung at Marten, but even though he was shorter and more muscular, he was faster. He grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my back, and shoved me against the wall.
“Don't fucking forget who taught you how to fight,” Marten growled.
I struggled for a few seconds before he let me go. I turned to face him, glaring, my fingers digging into my palms. Marten’s cold glare dared me to try swinging again. I stalked out of the conference room and headed to my office, slamming the door behind me.
“Take it easy, Avit,” I muttered to myself as I dropped into the chair behind my desk. “It’s just part of the deal.”
The problem was, every deal I’d ever made gave me something in return. That damn deal I struck with Sienna on a fucking whim? It benefited her, not me. I should’ve used my fucking head and kept my emotions out of it.
I needed to go back to the man I was before Sienna, sooner rather than later. Calculated. Detailed. Unreadable. Undeniably fucking Bratva. With Sienna, I’d gotten soft. Vulnerable. She’d become my fucking weakness. So while she’d reclaim her freedom through the divorce, I’d reclaim my strength.
I changed into gym clothes. If anything could put my head straight, it was training.
I left the taste of vodka on my tongue, letting it burn, letting it remind me exactly what losing control would cost me.
What she could cost me. I let that fire fuel me for the next two hours as I worked out and sparred with the men, every hit a release, every strike a warning.
When I finally headed back to my office to shower, my phone buzzed. It was an email from Sienna.
A humorless laugh escaped me as I opened it. She finally cracked the encryption…and instead of waiting for me to get home to share it, she sent a damn e-mail?
So that’s how badly she didn’t want to talk to me?
Once I got back to the office, I took a quick shower and sat down to read Sienna’s findings. The deeper I read, the harder my shock hit.
Fucking Oskar Mosav wasn’t just some business tycoon; he was Bratva. A full-blown bastard of the underworld. His real name was Rasko Vosam. He’d legally changed it, then wiped out anyone who knew the truth.
He’d had ties to the Italian mob, protected under Rinaldi himself, and before that, he’d worked with the Albanian mafia, the Romanian mafia, and even the fucking Triads.
But he’d been outsmarted, betrayed, and forced to flee Russia with the only family he had left: a younger sister, barely fifteen at the time.
Fucking hell.
Without Rinaldi, Oskar was a sitting duck, even if the old photo Sienna sent—thin, different hair color—barely resembled the Oskar I knew now.
Her e-mail also included a list of all his operations, everything from racehorses to drugs, plus a roster of his men. No note on wives or children, though.
Still, this was the leverage I needed.
I’d threaten Oskar. Make him pay us every cent he owed, or I’d make it known that he and his sister were living on US soil. His enemies could handle the rest.
Hopefully, that would be enough to make him stop buying our stolen goods.
His sister was innocent, and I had no intention of hurting her; I just needed Oskar to believe I would.
There was a knock on my door, and Marten walked in, dropping down onto the sofa across from my desk.
“You good now? I saw you in the gym.”
I nodded. “I am. And look, I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have swung at you. I was wrong, and I apologize.”
“Yeah,” he snorted, “because next time you try that shit, I will knock you the fuck out. Anyway, you need to call Lev and smooth things over. That meeting was supposed to clarify a few things in a contract he just headed off to with Jaroslav.”
“I will. It shouldn’t have gotten to the point where I walked out. I owe you and the others an apology for that, too.”
“You do.” Marten leaned back. “Now let me fill you in on what you missed.”
Over the next forty-five minutes, Marten caught me up, and once he left, I finally refocused on Oskar.
But before I could dive back into the files, my phone rang. It was one of the men I had watching Jasper.
“Speak,” I barked.
“Mr. Safin, sir…Jasper Romonoff is dead.”
Fuck.