Chapter 16
Galina
Ihold his gaze and understand, with sudden cold clarity, that this is the first real test of what kind of marriage we were building. Not the bed. Not the ring. This.
The answer was in my head before I even thought about it. It’s always been in my head. For the past three years, since I saw Yelena dragged, physically up the aisle by her father, my uncle, to marry a man four times her age.
“Save Yelena,” I say, holding his gaze even as heat burns behind my eyes.
I know exactly what I’m asking. This is not a plea for kindness.
This is me naming terms. I know what it will cost him, what it will cost me.
That is the point. If Laszlo wants something real from me, then this is the price of it.
“Yelena?” he asks slowly. “Your cousin?”
I nod, unable to speak.
He closes his eyes for one second, debating if this is worth it. When they snap open again, he says, “That is a big ask.”
“So is getting my dad to talk business with me when he never has before.”
“Fair,” he says quietly. “I can’t promise—”
“Then neither can I.”
“Fuck,” he mutters and takes a long sip of his water. “Who is her husband?”
“Anton Petrov.”
“Jesus,” he mutters and scrubs his face. “Tell me you mean the grandson.”
“You know I don’t.”
“I cannot take the wife of a man like Anton Petrov and expect to live to see the dawn.”
“I’m still asking. If you want something real from me, this is the price of it.”
“How many children?”
“Three.”
He shuts his eyes briefly. “So you’re asking me to take a young woman and three small children from Anton Petrov.”
“Imagine what he does to her.” It’s low. But I’ve seen the cuts, the bruises she excuses away.
“Fuck, Galina.” He rises and moves to the drinks cabinet, where he doesn’t even bother pouring out a glass of vodka; he simply raises it to his mouth and gulps it back.
Leonid chooses that moment to arrive with dinner, and the silence is awkward as it is laid out.
I’m not backing down. He has asked me to choose where my loyalty falls. Fine. This is where he proves what my side is worth to him.
“Nothing else?” he asks, lowering the bottle, letting it hang loosely at his side. “A castle in the south of France? A yacht the size of a small island?”
I shake my head. “Yelena.” I keep saying her name so he will know she is a person, a real human and not some abstract concept or bargaining chip. He stares at me for a long time.
The bottle hangs from Laszlo’s fingers. His jaw is tight. He is running the numbers, the risk, the fallout. I can see it happening behind his eyes.
“She has three children,” he says again. Not a question. Processing.
“Two girls and a boy. Three, two and one.”
Horror moves across his face before it’s gone. That alone tells him part of the story. She is a broodmare, nothing more.
“I have watched her for three years. Every family dinner, every occasion where we are all in the same room. She flinches when he moves too fast. She laughs at the right moments, says the right things, but her eyes are completely dead.” My throat tightens.
“She is covered in cuts and bruises she tries to hide. She has a couple of weeks to recover from childbirth before he forces her to breed again. She is twenty-fucking-two.”
“Why does your father not handle this?”
“My mother’s niece. Not his business.” I clip out. We have had more fights over this than anything else.
Laszlo sets the bottle down on the cabinet carefully, and that tells me he is controlling something. He turns and looks at me across the table, and his expression is the one I have started to recognise as him actually thinking rather than performing.
“Taking another man’s wife,” he says slowly, “is a declaration of war. Taking Anton Petrov’s wife and children is a declaration of war against a man who does not follow the rules of engagement. He does not sit down at a table. He does not negotiate. He burns things. People. Buildings.”
“Yes.”
“And you are still asking me.”
“I am.”
“This is the cost of you finding out what your father is moving?”
“Yes.”
“You are a hardarse, Galina. Don’t let anyone ever tell you differently.”
That is probably the best compliment anyone has thrown my way.
He stares at me for a long moment, and I hold his gaze without flinching because I have come too far in this conversation to blink now.
Then he exhales through his nose, a short, controlled sound, and pulls out the chair across from me and sits back down. He picks up his fork, cuts into his roast chicken, and chews once before he speaks.
“I need a week,” he says.
“For what?”
“To work out how to do this without getting both of us killed in the first month of marriage.” He points his fork at me. “Don’t push for faster. I mean it.”
“A week,” I agree.
“I’ll need to know where she is. Where he keeps her. Whether she has any freedom of movement at all.”
“I can get that.”
“Without tipping anyone off.”
I nod. “I’ll get you enough that you aren’t walking in blind.”
He nods once, slowly, like he is filing that away somewhere. Then he says, “The children complicate it.”
“I know.”
“Three kids under four is not a covert extraction. That is a logistical nightmare.”
“I know,” I say again, and this time he looks at me differently. Like he is recalibrating something. “They cannot stay with him.”
“You’ve thought about this for a while.”
“Three years.”
“And you waited until now.”
“I didn’t have you until now.” Honesty isn’t weakness. Truth isn’t defeat. Access. Power. A husband worth using was still worth having.
Something moves across his face that I can’t name. Not softness exactly. More like the recognition of a thing he wasn’t expecting to find.
He sets his fork down and leans back in his chair, watching me with those blue eyes that miss nothing. “Would you have asked me this if I didn’t want something in exchange?”
“Yes. Eventually. When I could trust you.”
“Good,” he says.
I blink. “Good?”
“You should use every resource available to you. That includes me. That is the Bratva way.” His jaw tightens. “I just need you to understand that this will not be clean. There will be fallout. Petrov will come looking, and when he does, it will be loud and ugly and dangerous.”
“I know. But he has to discover who took her first. That buys us time.”
He nods slowly. “Eat. You have been running on fumes all day, and it’s been long and exhausting.”
I pick up my fork, knowing not to keep pushing or talking about it. He says he needs time, and I’ll give it to him. “One thing?”
“What?”
“If I put this in your hands,” I ask quietly, “am I putting it in my husband’s hands or just another man’s?”
“Your husband’s.”
“If I get you the information about the package before you move Yelena, you will still do this?”
“I said you could trust me, and I meant it. I always pay my debts.”
“Debts.”
“What do you want me to say? That I will do anything for my wife? That she just has to look at me with those big green eyes, and I’ll promise her the world?”
I frown. “No, I don’t expect—”
“Because I will.”
“Laszlo,” I murmur, getting hit in the heart with all the feelings that I never dared to hope for. “You don’t need to say things like that.”
“Even if it’s true?”
“You don’t know me.”
“No, I won’t insult you by saying something lazy like I know you enough. Let’s call it what it is. I’m stuck with you, as you are with me. We can make it work, or we can hate each other and be miserable for the rest of our lives.”
“Or cause a war and walk away from each other.”
“I know which one I’m choosing.”
“So, we do have options,” I say with a small smile.
“Always, moya zhena. We make our own and be happy.”
“I want to be happy.”
“Do you think you can with me?”
“Yes,” I answer truthfully. “Can you with me?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s a start.”
“It’s a great start. More than a lot of people get in this world.”
“More than Yelena got.”
He nods. “We have a lot to plan, a lot to do. Find a way to get your father to talk, and I’ll work on this.”
“Will you tell your uncle? Your pakhan?”
He inhales deeply and then exhales slowly. “They are not always one and the same. But he will protect Voronov interests first.”
“So that’s a no.”
“It’s an I’ll have to see.”
I accept his judgement on that. I shovel mashed potato into my mouth, so I don’t keep pestering him, even though it’s clawing at me. He doesn’t have anything to give me yet. It’s up to me to provide that information in the best way I can and then go to my father and find out what he’s moving.
We finish eating in relative silence. I finish my glass of water and then stand. “I’m going to bed.”
He nods. “Good. Left side.”
“Hmm?” I ask, half turned away.
“Left side.”
I smile and turn to face him, bending down on impulse to give him a brief kiss. “Thank you.”
“I told you I’d give you whatever you want.”
“You are sticking to your word. But the thing I want most is the one thing that is the hardest to achieve.”
“It will be done. Good night, Galina. Get some rest.”
I leave him and head upstairs, stripping off quickly and changing into a pair of silk short pyjamas before crawling into bed.
On the right side.