Chapter 10
Galina
The dress is perfect. Sleek white silk, fitted through the body, the open back indecent in a way I can appreciate, the neckline elegant instead of fussy. It looks expensive, severe, and bridal without turning me into a meringue.
The assistant reappears with a careful smile and a card machine.
Laszlo taps his PIN into it without even asking for the amount.
I stare at his hand for a second after he finishes, black card between two tattooed fingers, expression bored, as if buying me a wedding dress is no more significant than paying for petrol.
There is something distinctly sexy about it.
The assistant is quick to undo the buttons and remove the dress from my body so she can package it before Laszlo changes his mind. I step off the platform, gathering my clothes from the chair before I disappear behind the curtain of the fitting space.
He follows.
“Do you mind?”
“No, go ahead,” he says.
“That wasn’t an invitation to answer honestly.”
He shuts the curtain behind him and fills the little space with heat, cologne and arrogance. “You liked it.”
I hate that he sounds pleased. I hate more that he is right. “It will do.”
His eyes drop to the lace on my bra, then back to my face. “Liar.”
“You don’t get to choose every part of this,” I say quietly.
“Watch me.”
I lift my chin and meet his eyes in the mirror behind me. “I’d love to.”
His mouth curves, but it isn’t soft. Nothing about him is soft when he looks at me like this. He steps in behind me until the heat of him presses at my back without quite touching, one hand braced beside my head against the fitting room wall, trapping me between silk, skin and sheer male arrogance.
“You think this is about winning,” he murmurs.
“It is about not letting you bulldoze me into whatever fantasy you’ve built in your head.”
“My fantasy,” he says, gaze dropping again to my underwear, “already walked into it.”
The words should feel like a threat. Instead, they slide under my skin like something hotter, and that is its own kind of warning.
I turn, meaning to put space between us, but there isn’t enough of it in here.
My hip brushes against him. His hand moves, quick enough to catch my wrist before I can step around him.
“Let go.”
“No.”
I laugh once, sharp and humourless. “You really have one answer for everything, don’t you?”
“When it’s the right answer, yes.”
His fingers slide lower, from my wrist to my hand, and then he turns my palm upward. His thumb brushes over the emerald on my finger. The gesture is far too intimate for a man I barely know. It bothers me that my pulse reacts anyway.
“Get dressed, Galina. We need to move.” His tone has gone colder, and he steps back, letting me get dressed in peace.
I consider taking my time, but his eyes warned me not to. Wherever he needs to be, it is important.
Dressing quickly, I grab my bag and sunglasses and fall into step with him.
His hand rests on my lower back, herding me out of the boutique door without a look back.
One of his men is loading the dress into the other car as Laszlo opens the passenger door for me.
This time I let him. He is in a hurry, and slowing him down just to be a bitch isn’t really who I want to be.
“Where are we going?” I ask when he climbs in and fires up the engine.
He doesn’t reply as he launches away from the kerb like a rocket.
“Somewhere important,” he says and glances at his watch. He grimaces and accelerates. I grip the seatbelt with my right hand as we take a corner so fast that it’s only by the grace of good engineering that we don’t end up in someone’s hedge.
He enters Belgravia and pulls up in front of an enormous house with iron gates. They slide open automatically, and he drives at a slower pace into the driveway.
“Where are we?” I ask again.
“Baron Voronov’s house.”
“Oh.” I chew the inside of my lip. “I’ll wait here.”
“No, you will come inside with me.”
“I’d rather wait here.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“It’s okay, I have my phone.”
“Galina…” He pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s the first time I’ve seen him distressed. “I have exactly two minutes before I’m officially not early anymore. I’m not about to break a record. Get out of the car. Please.”
It takes a second to sink in, but the please gets to me.
“He has manners,” I mutter as I push open the car door.
“Thank you,” he says, not rising to the bait.
The door is already open as we cross the driveway. Pakhan Voronov’s security man steps aside to let us in. Laszlo gives him a nod. I stare straight in front.
I hear the front door shut behind us, and that sound lands in my spine harder than it should. Laszlo moves beside me with purpose, one hand briefly brushing the small of my back before dropping away. It feels deliberate. Reassuring, if I were the sort of woman who enjoyed being reassured.
I am not.
Usually.
The security man leads us through the house without a word.
We reach the study, and the man opens the door.
Baron Voronov stands by the window, hands behind his back. He turns when we enter. His gaze lands on me first. Not Laszlo. Me.
That tells me more than I’d like.
“Miss Rusanova,” he says.
“Pakhan Voronov.”
Laszlo steps forward. “Do you have the paperwork?”
“I do.” His pale eyes flick over both of us. “I was not expecting you to bring her.”
“Her? Her name is Galina,” Laszlo says, and I gulp. This is precisely why I wanted to stay in the car.
“Of course,” Voronov says. “Perhaps, Miss Rusanova would prefer to have a cup of tea while we go over these.”
“That would be lovely,” I say before Laszlo can tie me to his side while they go over my dowry. I’m assuming that’s what this is, anyway. Their terms.
A woman appears almost instantly, as if summoned by the word tea alone, and gestures for me to follow her. I do, because standing here while two Voronovs discuss the terms of my sale would be worse.
I feel Laszlo’s gaze on me as I leave. I don’t turn around.
The woman leads me into a sitting room at the front of the house.
It is elegant in a cold, expensive way. Pale walls.
Low cream sofas. A grand piano in one corner that nobody here probably touches unless they are threatening to close the lid on someone’s hands.
Fresh white roses sit on a side table. The whole room feels curated for appearances. Civilised. Refined.
Dangerous.
“Tea, Miss Rusanova?” she asks.
“Yes, please.”
She inclines her head and disappears.
I stand for a moment instead of sitting.
My skin still feels too tight from the drive over.
From Laszlo’s hurry. From the please that slipped out of his mouth like a crack in his shield.
It unsettles me more than his arrogance ever has.
But it is enlightening. He wants to please his uncle.
Not just because he is pakhan, but because he loves him and wants his approval.
It makes me smile softly to see that there is something underneath the hot, tattooed, arrogant exterior.
I move to the window and look out over the garden while I wait, hoping this ends quickly so I can go home and attempt to relax after a fraught morning.
A cup of tea later, Laszlo appears and gestures with his head for me to move. I place the cup down gently and rise from the sofa, moving with ease across the marble floor.
“Everything to your liking?” I ask with a bit of snark to try to diffuse the tension.
He glares at me, then sees what I’m trying to do, and he smiles. “It’s all in order.”
I don’t speak again as he leads me out of the house to the Lamborghini, and I wait for him to open the door for me this time.
He looks like he has been churned through an old mangle, and he really doesn’t need my snark right now.
I’m too tired to fight every second of the day, but that doesn’t mean I’m done fighting.
It means I need to choose the moments that matter.
Hard women didn’t survive by baring their teeth at everything.
They survived by learning exactly where to bite.
I can’t spend a lifetime being that way. It will kill me.
The realisation lifts a small weight from my shoulders, and I find myself relaxing on the short drive home.
Laszlo doesn’t say a word as we get out of the car and enter the house, stepping past Leonid, who gives me a curt nod, then turns to Laszlo.
“Sir, there is a potential threat in the garden—”
“Oh, my packages have arrived,” I say, striding forward with Laszlo leaping forward to catch me up as I step through the sliding doors into the garden. “I’ll take those—”
“Get back,” one of Laszlo’s men growls at me, raising his arm and slamming it into my chest to stop my progress. I gasp at the impact.
Laszlo moves faster than anyone else. He grips the man’s arm and twists it away from me, up behind the man’s back, with an audible crack that makes my stomach churn.
“Don’t touch her,” Laszlo growls.
“Sir,” the man rasps. “The package hasn’t been checked yet.”
“It’s bedding!” I exclaim. “I ordered it last night!”
Laszlo’s cold blue eyes land on me, and I’m not sure if he wants to spank me or shoot me.
He lets the man go with a shove that sends him stumbling back across the paving.
The rest of the security team freezes where they stand, all of them suddenly discovering the value of silence.
“How do you know it’s what you ordered?”
“I ordered it from the shop that is printed on the side of the box,” I stammer, realising my mistake. I should’ve told someone. I didn’t think. At home—at my dad’s—all my packages were scanned before I even knew they’d arrived.
“Open it,” Laszlo snaps to one of the men, who moves forward with a Stanley knife and a grimace that says he drew the short straw.
Laszlo pulls me back and stands in front of me as the box is opened and cleared. He turns to me with a look I can’t quite place.
“I’m sorry. I won’t order anything again,” I blurt out, feeling like a naughty child.
He frowns. “Order what you want, just tell Leonid.”
“No, it’s fine,” I stammer.
Laszlo rubs his hand over his face. “Galina, order whatever the fuck you want, bedding, a car, I don’t give a fuck. Just tell Leonid about it, okay?”
“Oh-okay,” I murmur as the security guard hands me the box of Egyptian cotton. I grip it tightly and scamper off up the stairs before anyone can say anything else.
In the bedroom, I kick off my shoes and unpack the new bedding. A thousand-thread-count Egyptian white cotton. Cool, clean and gorgeous.
And unused.
I get to work stripping the sheets off the bed and dumping them in a pile in the corner. I catch movement in the corner of my eye and ignore him as I tug the fitted sheet into place.
“Bedding,” he says, leaning against the door frame.
“You told me I could order whatever bedding made me comfortable,” I say, not looking at him.
“I did.”
“You can burn those sheets,” I say with a vague gesture to the pile.
“Burn them? That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”
“I will not lie on sheets that you have fucked other women on. Washed or not. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d chop this bed into firewood and burn that too.” I would not inherit another woman’s place. If I took up space in this bed, it would be because I had made it mine.
“You are a jealous little thing, aren’t you?” he murmurs, moving closer.
I sniff as I stuff a pillow into a case and shake it out. “I will be your wife. I deserve that respect.”
“You do,” he agrees. “I can assure you that if I were forced to lie on a bed where you fucked whoever it was that you can’t get out of your head, I’d do more than burn the bed, I’d burn the fucking house down around it.”
“There is no one in my head,” I state, vigorously plumping the pillows.
“I disagree. You used this man as a weapon against me last night. I will find out his name, and I will remove him from the board completely.”
“Don’t be absurd,” I snap, reaching for the duvet cover. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he says, taking the duvet cover from me and snapping the duvet inside it like a fucking pro. I tell myself he has a height and strength advantage, but in reality, it’s just him. Competent. Capable.
I stare at him as he smooths the cotton flat with those tattooed hands, like he hasn’t broken someone’s arm in the garden in the last ten minutes just because they touched me to stop me from getting too close to a box of bedding.
His mouth twitches. “I contain multitudes.”
“I didn’t say anything, although I would be remiss not to point out that arrogance is one of them.”
“Jealousy is one of yours.”
I yank the other side of the duvet into place and glare at him. “Possessiveness is not jealousy.”
“It is when you want me all to yourself.”
I hate the heat that crawls up my neck. “I want basic hygiene.”
He gives me a look that says he doesn’t believe me for a second. “If you really want to get rid of the bed, I’ll get Leonid to—”
“No,” I say, shaking my head, feeling foolish. “Please don’t. I’m happy with the new bedding.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Anything you want, Galina, you will get,” he says, his gaze penetrating mine in a way that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Then he smirks. “Within reason.”
“Way to ruin a beautiful sentence.”
“If you think you can ask to bring lover boy here for a threesome, that is unacceptable and will be met with extreme hostility.” He is trying not to laugh, so I try not to kick him in the nuts.
“Noted.”
He blinks, like he expects more. Expects denial again that there is no one else. Darkness floods his eyes when he doesn’t get it. “I mean it, Galina. Anyone else touches you, even thinks about touching you, a broken arm will seem like a picnic.”
“There is no one else, Laszlo. Even if there were, it would be over. I’m not a hypocrite. I’m a dutiful Bratva daughter, soon-to-be wife. You have nothing to worry about.”
His stare stays on me for a long second, weighing the words, testing them for weakness, for lies, for anything he can drag out and kill.
Then he nods once.
“Good,” he says.
The word shouldn’t affect me.
It does.