Chapter 5
Laszlo
Viktor Rusanov just offered me his daughter in exchange for Baron not starting a war that will do all he said and more.
This isn’t about the club; that is merely a building that could change hands and be done with it.
This is about aligning our two families together to make sure that Baron can never start a war.
That tells me more about what Rusanov wants with that corridor than if he had said it outright.
I know this falls on me, and not just because I’m standing here. I am the weapon Baron keeps sharp and pointed at whatever problem needs solving.
I am the problem solver.
And Galina Rusanova is the problem.
Which is exactly why Baron chose me. Men like him don’t hand difficult things to gentle hands. They hand them to men willing to close a fist and keep it closed.
I look at her. She’s sitting with her legs crossed, her spine straight, and her face arranged into something so perfectly composed it has to be costing her everything.
Green eyes. Dark hair pulled up in a way that exposes the line of her neck.
A mouth that hasn’t smiled once since we walked in.
She’s furious. I can see it in the way her fingers rest on her knee—too still, too controlled, the kind of stillness that takes effort.
She was expecting this. Maybe not in this way exactly, but she is a Bratva daughter. And a damn good one by the looks of it.
She’s also beautiful in a way that’s going to make this significantly harder than it needs to be.
Baron hasn’t answered yet. He’s letting the silence do its work, and the silence is doing a spectacular fucking job.
The room feels like a held breath. Grigor is statue-still by the door.
Viktor is watching Baron with the patience of a man who has already calculated every possible outcome and decided he wins in most of them.
I hate that he might be right.
“You’re proposing a marriage,” Baron says finally, and the word lands like a blade on marble.
“I’m proposing an alliance,” Viktor corrects. “Marriage is simply the mechanism.”
“Marriage to my nephew.”
“Unless you have someone more suitable.”
Baron turns his head just enough to look at me. It’s not a question. It’s an assessment. He’s measuring whether I’ll crack, argue, or do what I always do—absorb the blow and keep standing.
I don’t let him down.
Baron sits again and this time picks up the brandy and downs it with one swallow before slamming the glass back down. “Do you have some Beluga? Brandy makes me sneeze.”
And that, is that.
Deal done.
My sacrifice, my life, has been filed neatly under M for marriage to a rival Bratva family daughter who I’ve known for all of fifteen minutes and have wanted to fuck for every single one of them.
Viktor pours the Beluga himself. Two glasses. He slides one across to Baron, and they drink together like old friends celebrating a business merger and not two men who were threatening to gut each other five minutes ago.
I haven’t moved. I’m not sure I can without doing something I’ll regret.
My hands stay at my sides, my pulse stays even, and my brain is running calculations so fast it could power half of Canary Wharf.
I look at Galina again. She hasn’t moved either.
We are two people frozen in the wreckage of a deal neither of us was consulted on, and the only thing keeping us upright is the shared understanding that showing weakness now is the same as bleeding in shark-infested water.
Her eyes meet mine. Something flickers. Not surrender. Not even close. It’s anger, hot and bright, wrapped in so much control it could pass for indifference to anyone who isn’t paying attention.
I’m paying attention.
“The terms,” Baron says, setting his glass down. “I want them in writing.”
Viktor nods. “Naturally.”
“The club transfers to Laszlo on the day of the wedding. Not before. Title, deeds, operational control—all of it.”
Viktor glances at Galina. She doesn’t look at him. She’s looking at me. I hold her gaze because it’s the only honest thing happening in this room right now.
“Agreed,” Viktor says.
“And the marriage happens within the month.”
A month. Baron wants this locked down before anyone on either side has time to think, object, or orchestrate something stupid. It’s smart. It’s brutal. It’s exactly what I’d do if I were him, and I hate him a little for it.
“Two weeks,” Viktor counters.
Baron’s eyebrow lifts a fraction. “You’re in a hurry.”
“I’m efficient. The longer this sits open, the more room for interference. You know that as well as I do.”
Baron considers this. His silence does more than words. It’s the way it always is—methodical, unhurried, giving nothing away until he’s ready. Then he nods once.
“Two weeks.”
Acceptance settles in before my brain has given it permission.
Sacrifice.
Viktor extends his hand across the desk. Baron takes it. The handshake is firm, brief, and loaded with enough mutual distrust to sink a battleship. But it’s done.
“Galina,” Viktor says, and his tone shifts. Softer. “Show our guests out.”
She rises and doesn’t look at her father as she moves toward the door. She doesn’t look at Baron. She brushes past me close enough that I catch her scent—something dark, floral, expensive—and for one fraction of a second, her arm grazes mine.
She doesn’t flinch. Neither do I. But the contact registers somewhere deep, somewhere I don’t have time to examine.
I follow her out of the study. Baron and Grigor are behind me. The hallway feels longer than it did on the way in, the flowers more suffocating, the parquet floors too polished, too clean for a house built on blood.
Galina walks ahead of me, spine a steel blade beneath black silk.
Her heels puncture the silence like bullets.
I watch the sway of her hips, the grace of a woman who knows exactly how many ways she could kill a man with those Louboutins.
The curve where her waist narrows makes my fingers itch to possess it, to mark the territory I’ve just been granted.
She doesn’t tremble. Doesn’t falter. Just moves like a queen who’s been sold to the executioner but plans to take his head instead.
I’m, very likely, fucked.
But there isn’t a single part of me that isn’t going to enjoy it.
She is going to fight me. I can see that already. Good. I have never wanted anything easy.
She reaches the front door and opens it herself before the man in the suit can get there. She holds it wide and stands to one side, chin lifted, green eyes locked on some middle distance that doesn’t include any of us.
I pause, letting Baron pass her first. “Miss Rusanova,” he says, and it’s neither a compliment nor a dismissal. It’s an acknowledgement that she now exists on his radar in a way she didn’t before. She gives him a nod. Nothing more.
Grigor follows without a word, which is his entire personality distilled into a single action.
I move in front of her. Close enough that she has to tilt her head up to meet my eyes. She’s small. Smaller than I expected. The heels give her height, but not much. The thought does something to me that I won’t examine in her father’s doorway.
“Galina,” I say, because I want to hear how her name sounds in my mouth.
Her jaw tightens. Those green eyes blaze up at me with enough fury to melt glass. “Laszlo.”
I reach out and grip her chin. She tenses, but doesn’t pull back. Leaning down, I brush my lips over hers, and feel her breath catch against my skin.
“Two weeks,” I murmur against her mouth, and then I straighten and walk away without looking back.
The Mercedes door is open. I slide in beside Baron. Grigor in the front. I close the door, and the car pulls away from the curb in silence.
I count to five before Baron speaks.
“You’re angry.”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m processing.”
He adjusts his cufflink again. That same precise, infuriating movement. “You told me war was overkill. I found another way.”
“You found a wife.”
“I found a solution. The wife is incidental.”
I turn my head and stare at him. “Incidental. You’ve just traded me for a nightclub and a shipping lane, and you’re calling it incidental.”
“The club is… worth more than all of this thrown together. He knows it. It’s why he used it as leverage. Besides, he is right, as much as I hate to admit it. This alliance keeps Moscow from asking questions neither of us wants to answer. This is not incidental. The marriage is.”
“Not to me.”
The words come out before I can stop them, which is rare. I am not a man who speaks without thinking. I am a man who thinks so fast it looks like impulse, but this—this slipped out raw and unfiltered, and Baron catches it like a knife thrown at his face.
He doesn’t react. Not visibly. But the quality of his silence changes. It goes from tactical to something almost paternal, which is worse.
“You’ll survive,” he says.
“I always do. That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
I look out the window. London passes in its usual blur of wealth and rot. “The point is that you could have warned me.”
“How was I meant to know this is what was going to happen?” He sounds genuinely pissed off, which puts my mind at ease that this wasn’t one big set-up. But it doesn’t make it any better.
“She is beautiful,” he says.
“I’m telling Auntie you said that.”
He grunts. “Do what you like, you know you didn’t exactly get a rough deal here. It could be worse. She could look like the back end of a boar.”
I growl, a hot possessive flash striking me in the gut. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell the truth? This is a highly lucrative asset that you managed to secure by not refusing Rusanov’s offer.”