Chapter 2 Leonid #2
When I come home that evening, there are shopping bags on the bed. Clothes in her size—soft sweaters, comfortable pants, underwear, pajamas. Nothing ostentatious. Just... things she needs.
She's standing in the doorway of the bedroom, staring at the bags like they might bite her.
"I don't understand," she says.
"You needed clothes."
"But this is—" She touches one of the sweaters, pulls her hand back like it burned her. "This is too much. I can't accept—"
"You have nothing." I keep my voice matter-of-fact. "Now you have this."
"Leonid—"
"It's not a gift. It's a necessity." I move past her, start unpacking the bags, putting things in the empty dresser I've never used. "You can't wear my shirts forever."
She's quiet for a long moment. Then, softly: "No one's ever... bought me things before. Not like this. Not because they noticed I needed them."
Something twists in my chest. "Get used to it."
She doesn't argue. Just watches me fill the dresser with her new things, tears tracking silently down her cheeks.
That night, she wears the new pajamas to bed. Soft cotton, pale blue. She looks younger in them. Softer.
But the next morning, I find her in the kitchen wearing one of my shirts again. Making coffee.
She catches me looking. Blushes. "The pajamas are nice. But your shirts are... they smell like you. They make me feel safe."
I don't have words for what that does to me.
During the days, I work. Handle the cleanup from the senator's death. Field questions from Dimitri about why I executed a sitting U.S. senator in my own penthouse.
"He was trafficking children," I tell him.
Dimitri studies me across his desk. "And the girl?"
"What about her?"
"You kept her."
"She had nowhere to go."
He doesn't push. Dimitri understands possession. Understands that some things, once claimed, can't be unclaimed.
I come home each evening to find small changes. One night, she's made soup—simple, from whatever she found in my neglected kitchen. The smell hits me when I walk through the door, and something in my chest cracks open.
"You cooked," I say.
She whirls around, startled. Then relaxes when she sees it's me. "I needed something to do. I hope that's okay."
"It's okay."
"I'm not great at it," she admits, fidgeting with her hands. "But I can do basic things. Mrs. Henderson made me cook for them, so I learned."
Mrs. Henderson. The foster mother who sold her.
I file that away. Add it to the list of people who will pay.
We eat together. She tells me about her life—the group homes, the foster families who never kept her, the Hendersons who pretended to care. I listen. Ask questions. Learn the shape of her wounds.
"She said they were going to help me find a job," Lily says, staring at her soup. "She wouldn't even look at me when she said it."
"I'll find them," I say. "The Hendersons."
Her head snaps up. "What?"
"They sold you. They'll pay for that."
"Leonid, you don't have to—"
"I want to." I hold her gaze. "No one hurts what's mine."
The words hang between us. Heavy. Possessive. True.
She should be afraid. Instead, she looks at me with something that might be wonder.
"You mean that," she says softly.
"I always mean what I say."
The days develop a rhythm.
I leave for work. She stays. When I come back, there's food—each attempt more ambitious than the last. Pasta with garlic and butter.
Roasted chicken that's slightly overdone but made with such obvious effort that I eat every bite.
Scrambled eggs in the morning because she noticed I don't eat breakfast and decided that was unacceptable.
She's nesting. Making space for herself in my life, one meal at a time.
I should stop it. Should maintain distance, keep the walls intact, remember that attachments are weakness.
Instead, I find myself looking forward to coming home. To the smell of food. To the sight of her in my kitchen, wearing my shirts, humming under her breath while she stirs something on the stove.
Dangerous.
The word has become a refrain. A warning I keep ignoring.
One evening, I come home to find her curled up on the couch, completely absorbed in the phone I gave her a few days ago.
She'd never had one before. The Hendersons wouldn't allow it—too expensive, they said, though they had no problem spending money on their own habits. The traffickers certainly didn't give her one. When I handed it to her, she'd stared at it like I'd given her a foreign object.
"Two rules," I'd told her. "Don't post your location. Keep your accounts private. No photos that show the building or the view. That's it."
She'd nodded, still staring at the phone. "That's... reasonable."
"I'm not trying to control you. But there are people who would use you to get to me. To the Bratva. Your safety depends on discretion."
"I understand."
Now she's on it constantly. Not posting—just looking. Saving things. Building something.
"What are you doing?" I ask, settling into the chair across from her.
She startles, tries to hide the screen. "Nothing."
"Lily."
Her cheeks flush pink. "It's stupid."
"Show me."
She hesitates. Then, slowly, turns the phone toward me.
It's Instagram. She's made a private account—no posts, no followers, just a collection of saved images organized into folders. I lean closer to look.
Dream home. Photos of cozy living rooms with warm lighting. Kitchens with big windows. Nurseries painted soft colors—yellow, green, cream.
Family. Images of mothers holding babies. Fathers carrying toddlers on their shoulders. Holiday dinners with full tables. Birthday parties with too many candles.
Someday. Wedding dresses. Flower arrangements. A photo of an older couple holding hands, still in love after decades.
She's building a vision board. Collecting pieces of the life she wants.
"It's silly," she says quietly, pulling the phone back. "I know it's never going to—"
"It's not silly."
"It's a fantasy. I'm saving pictures of nurseries like I'm ever going to—" She stops. Swallows. "Forget it."
But I can't forget it. The images burn in my mind—the nurseries, the babies, the family dinners. Things I've never wanted. Things I've spent fifty years convincing myself I didn't need.
A family. Someone who wants me.
"Leonid?"
I blink. She's watching me, phone clutched to her chest, expression uncertain.
"Go to bed." I stand abruptly. Put distance between us before I say something I can't take back. "It's late."
She looks at me for a long moment. Then nods. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
I watch her disappear down the hall. Think about those saved photos—the nurseries, the babies, the someday she doesn't believe she'll ever have.
The nurseries.
The thought snags in my mind and won't let go. Images of her in one of those soft-lit rooms, belly swollen, hand resting on the curve of it. My baby inside her. My child growing in her body.
Heat pools low in my stomach. My cock stirs—thickens against my thigh.
What the fuck.
I shift in my chair, trying to will it away. It doesn't work. The images keep coming. Her, naked and round with my child. Her, underneath me, crying out as I fill her. Her, soft and warm in our bed, belly growing bigger each month because I put that there. Because I bred her.
I'm fully hard now. Aching. My hand moves toward my belt before I catch myself.
She's nineteen. Traumatized. In my care.
And you're sitting here with a hard-on thinking about putting a baby in her.
I force myself up. Cross to the bar. Pour vodka with hands that aren't quite steady and drain it in one swallow. The burn does nothing to cool the heat in my blood.
This is insanity. I'm fifty years old. I've never wanted children. Never wanted a wife. Never wanted anything except solitude and control.
But I can still see it. Her body changing. Growing. Swelling with my child. Her looking up at me with those green eyes while I pump her full of my cum, again and again, until it takes.
Mine.
The possessiveness of the thought shocks me. The want behind it. The way my cock throbs at the image of her pregnant with my baby.
I pour another drink. Drain it.
She wants babies, something whispers in the back of my mind. She saved pictures of nurseries. Of mothers and fathers and children.
She wants a family.
You could give her that.
I set the glass down hard enough that it cracks. Stare out at the harbor lights, breathing through the need clawing at my insides.
I'm going to give her everything she's ever wanted.