Chapter 11
Laszlo
Ileave her to fuss over the bed because if I stay in that room much longer, I’ll either pin her to the fresh Egyptian cotton and make a liar out of myself, or I’ll say something honest enough to scare us both.
Neither appeals.
Downstairs, my men are assembled, Petyr with his arm in a sling and looking grim-faced.
“If we need to have this conversation again, I’m going to start a game of Russian Roulette with each and every one of you,” I state.
“You do not touch her. You do not look at her. You do not even breathe in her direction. You secure the perimeter, you secure the area around her. There is no need to come within three feet of her. If she is unsafe in the space that you pridurki were meant to secure, that means you have failed. If a threat reaches her, close enough that someone needs to put their hands on her to move her out of harm’s way, you have failed in the one job that you have.
Do I make myself perfectly clear this time? ”
“Yes, sir,” they answer in a rough chorus.
“Good,” I say. “Because if I have to explain basic fucking boundaries again, I’ll assume none of you is fit to secure a pot plant, and you will be eliminated accordingly.”
I dismiss them with a flick of my hand, and they scatter fast, back to their posts, grateful to still be breathing. Leonid stands nearby with a folder and that expression of private disapproval he wears like a second skin.
“You enjoy team building,” he says.
“I enjoy competence. I get very little of it.”
He holds out the folder. “Antwerp revisions.”
I take it. “Thanks.” I start to walk away but then pause. “Next time, get the package opened the second it arrives. Don’t stand around like fucking idiots waiting for it to explode. Or not as was the case today.”
“Today was a lesson learned,” he says calmly.
“Contact Sergei the carpenter,” I add. “Put in an order for a new bed, I’ll pay him triple if he can have it in record time and find a mattress shop that can deliver a new one today.”
“Sir,” he says, inclining his head.
“If she asks for anything. I don’t care if it’s a bottle of water or a fucking Bugatti Tourbillon, she gets it. Clear?”
“Clear,” Leonid says.
I look past him toward the stairs. “And get someone to move the old sheets out of her sight before she decides to set fire to the laundry basket.”
“That would be inconvenient.”
“That would be on brand.”
“Indeed.”
I head for the study before he can say anything else irritatingly sensible. I shut the door and drop into the chair behind the desk, opening the Antwerp file and staring at numbers that mean absolutely nothing to me for a full minute.
My brain is upstairs, watching Galina pull fresh sheets over my—our—bed with that stubborn little crease between her brows.
It is becoming a problem.
I toss the folder down, drag a hand through my hair, and turn in my chair to stare out of the window.
“Sir,” Leonid’s voice says from behind me.
“What is it now?”
“Sergei says he can have a new frame here by the end of next week.”
I spin, eyebrow raised. “That quick?”
“Money is a great motivator,” he murmurs.
“Hmm, sure.” I roll my eyes. I know Sergei too well. He probably has one already mostly done for his showroom and has decided to pass it off for triple the price to the man who will buy his new fiancée whatever she fucking asks for. Including a new fucking bed. “Mattress?”
“Here in the next hour,” Leonid says.
“Fabulous,” I mutter and pull my head back to my work and away from the woman who makes my cock hard and my head spin.
I’m not sure how much time has passed, but I’m guessing around an hour when I hear Galina’s voice cut through the silence with a sharp, “What the fuck is this?”
I’m out of the chair and at the door before the echo dies. I stride into the hall and take the stairs two at a time.
By the time I hit the hallway, I can hear men moving in the bedroom, heavy footfalls, muttered apologies, the scrape of something being manoeuvred through a doorway.
I step into the room and find chaos.
The bed has been stripped completely. The mattress is halfway off the frame, two delivery men wrestling with it while one of my security detail hovers near the door, trying not to get in the way, or within three feet of Galina.
Galina stands off to the side, barefoot in leggings and a tight vest top, hair a dark spill down her back, staring at the scene like she might start stabbing people with a coat hanger.
A brand-new mattress, still wrapped in plastic, waits, propped up against the wardrobes.
Her head snaps toward me. “Why are there strangers in our bedroom?”
Our bedroom.
That lands in a deeply inconvenient place.
I keep my face straight. “Because you wanted a new bed.”
Her eyes narrow. “I wanted new sheets.”
“Yes.”
“This—” she gestures at the men hauling the old mattress free with all the grace of drunk oxen “—is not sheets.”
“If I were you,” I say to the deliverymen, “I’d hurry the fuck up.”
The poor bastards nearly dislocate themselves getting the thing out.
Galina folds her arms. “This is deranged.”
“No,” I say. “This is responsive to your needs.”
Her eyes flash, and I see the pleasure behind the annoyance. “It is excessive.”
“You wanted the bed cleansed by fire.”
“I said if I thought I could get away with it.”
“And I’m helping you get away with it. The new bed frame will be here end of next week.”
Her mouth opens, then shuts again when one of the delivery men bumps the doorframe and mutters, “Sorry, sir.”
“Less talking,” I say. “More moving.”
They get the old super king mattress into the hallway with a lot of swearing under their breath and one near miss with the wall. The new one is stripped out of the plastic and placed, dumped, into place with an audible heave.
Galina watches all of it with an expression that says she’s deciding whether I’ve lost my mind entirely, or only partially. “Why are you doing this? Really?”
“I already answered that question. If you need me to repeat it, fine. If you hate something in this house, I’ll get rid of it and replace it with something you don’t hate.”
She opens her mouth, and I know what she’s going to say before the shots are fired.
“Not me,” I grit out.
She closes her mouth, trying not to laugh.
One of the delivery men makes the mistake of snorting.
I turn my head slowly.
He goes white. “Sorry, sir.”
“Get out.”
They do. Fast. My security man follows. The silence drops back into place around me and Galina and the brand-new mattress sitting on the frame with its corners still not quite aligned.
She looks at me for a long moment, then at the bed. Then back at me. “You are insane.”
“I’m efficient.”
“You are not efficient. You are unhinged with access to money.”
I smile. “And yet the problem is solved.”
“Thank you,” she says quietly, seriously. “I appreciate it.”
I move in closer and let my hand rest around her throat. Her breath hitches. “I told you that whatever you want, you get. I meant it.”
She swallows, and I feel it under my hand. “Will you help me with the bedding again?”
“Of course.” I drop my hand and move to pick up the fitted sheet.
She is quiet for a moment before she clears her throat and says, “You are doing all the heavy lifting.”
“I’m stronger than you, and taller. It’s fine.”
“I mean with us.” Her voice has gone quiet, too quiet. I look up from pulling the sheet over the corner of the mattress to see her standing there, looking small and terrified.
I go still.
That confession hits harder than any insult she has thrown at me so far.
I straighten slowly. She has gone pale. Not weak. Not fragile. Just stripped of whatever armour she usually keeps between her body and the world.
“With us,” I repeat, because I want to make sure I heard her right.
She nods once, then folds her arms as if she hates that she said it out loud.
“You keep fixing things before I even know they can be fixed. You keep deciding, moving, arranging, protecting. And I just…” She exhales sharply.
“I’m just existing around you.” She watches me with that tense, ready look, as if she expects me to turn this into another fight.
Maybe she wants me to. Maybe that would be easier for both of us than this.
I walk over to her, slowly enough that she has time to step back if she wants.
She doesn’t.
“In the Bratva, incompetence, complacency get you killed. Gets other people killed. The boys learn very quickly—before they become men—how to react, respond, adjust, improvise.”
“I don’t think it’s just that. Not with you,” she whispers. “You are capable in a way that is rare.”
“Capable. Is that meant to be a compliment?”
“It is. I grew up as a pakhan’s daughter. I’ve seen things I wish I hadn’t. I was taught to always be on the front foot, but it’s exhausting, Laszlo.”
I cup her face and draw her closer. “I know.”
Tears prick her eyes, and it makes something dark and feral unfurl inside me that wants to protect her, even from me. “I don’t want to fight anymore,” she says, her lower lip trembling.
“Neither do I.”
“But?” she says, knowing I’m not quite finished.
“But you need to understand that I am not a regular man, Galina. I’m not even regular Bratva.
I’m nephew to the most powerful pakhan in London, maybe even the south of England.
I have a seat at the table that is usually reserved for sons.
You may consider my actions extreme, but that is how shit gets done the way I need it to get done.
That’s how you stay alive. Do you understand? ”
“This isn’t about the bed anymore, is it?”
I smile. “No. I know you were upset about what happened in the garden earlier.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“It doesn’t matter. You saw me, the man you are going to marry, do something you find distasteful, but that’s not even the end of it. I will do much worse before you say your vows and tie your life to mine. Can you live with it, moya zhena? Can you live with knowing your husband is a monster?”