Chapter 36 Lidiya
Lidiya
And yet…
Why is he so reasonable even when he has been such a dick to me? Why does he agree to my terms and know that I haven’t forgiven him? Why did he like it when I insulted him?
But I know the answers. It’s because he isn’t pretending anymore. He took the knives I threw and pressed them to his own throat, and something in me recognises the way he wears guilt and decides to carry some of the weight for him without asking. I’m an idiot.
“I don’t understand you,” I say at last, my gaze on the rim of the water bottle turning my fingertips cold. “You’re infuriating and… decent. Sometimes. When I least expect it.”
“Decent is generous,” he says softly.
“Don’t get used to it.”
His mouth curves up, then flattens, like he’s caught himself wanting to be pleased and doesn’t trust it. The silence settles, not hostile this time. Just… tired.
“Why did you like it?” I say. “When I insulted you.”
He doesn’t flinch. “I deserved them, but also, I like edges. Pain with purpose. Yours had purpose.”
“Punishment.”
“Penance,” he corrects, then grimaces. “Close enough.”
The honesty lands in my chest and sits there, hot and heavy and far too intimate. I sip water I don’t want because he told me to, and that annoys me enough to drink the rest.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “I need you to be you, not this version you give to me.”
His eyes narrow. “What does that mean, solnyshko?”
“Exactly that. I want the Bratva man. The Pakhan’s son, who thrives on violence and gets away with it. I don’t want you going soft because you think I will look at you differently or be disgusted, or whatever…” I pick at the label on the water bottle. “Be the arsehole cunt I know you can be.”
“You have no idea how much that turns me on,” he murmurs, inching closer.
My pussy is a traitor and goes damp at his proximity. I’m about to forget all my anger and crawl into his lap when I’m saved by the bell.
Literally.
The buzzer goes, and he leaps off the sofa like it was on fire. “Wait here,” he says, moving to the end table drawer and pulling out a gun. Does he have them stashed everywhere?
He strides to the door and glares at the screen. Moments later, he sighs and opens the door before I can ask who it is.
I don’t need telling when a second later, a man so majestic sweeps into the house like he is God and we are all his minions.
His cold blue gaze lands on me, and I flinch. That is the look of a man who has zero fucks left to give. If he ever had any to start with.
“Miss Kareva,” he says. “You know who I am?”
“I can take a wild guess, Pakhan Voronov.”
He gives me an appraising once-over like he is eyeing up prize cattle. “You, Devochka, are causing quite a stir.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I say defiantly and then slam my mouth closed. This man is not Damien. He won’t find my disobedience endearing. Quite the opposite. I rise carefully, realising I’m not exactly wearing an outfit to meet the man who fleeced my family dry. “Sir.”
He raises his eyebrow. “Manners. They’re in short supply these days.” He fires a look at Damien, who smirks.
The pakhan’s presence changes the temperature in the room. The air tightens, like it has to work harder to get past him. Damien doesn’t flinch. He steps between us without making a show of it, a subtle shift that says mine even with his father standing two metres away.
“You caused noise in Mayfair. Vans through red lights, sirens, a mess outside Belgravia. Discretion was the first rule I taught you.”
Damien’s mouth tilts, but his eyes stay cold. “They hit us.”
“I am aware,” he replies, moving further in as if the house rearranges to accommodate him. “I am also aware of Regina Orlov’s fingerprints all over it, and of the name you shook out of her.”
My stomach twists. “You know about him.”
“Everyone worth breathing knows that name,” he says mildly. “Fewer know he still breathes.”
I grip the back of the sofa to hide the tremor.
Damien’s dad studies me, then lifts a hand.
“You understand who hunts you?”
“According to Madam Orlov? A ghost with a wallet and a missing granddaughter.”
“Not a ghost,” he says. “A man who outlived three regimes by being the one holding the purse when the lights went out. He pretended to die, and the world believed him. Useful trick.”
“Is he my grandfather?” My voice wavers on the last word. I hate it, but it’s out.
Baron studies me. It isn’t lecherous or kind. It’s an assessment. “If you are the child they lost, then yes. If not, then you are an expensive coincidence.”
“And Orlov?” I ask.
“Regina is an old problem wrapped in new clothes,” he says. “She sells legitimacy to men who need it and appetite to men who want it. She also steals. Names. Girls. Time. She thinks patience makes her untouchable.”
“Does it?” I hear the challenge in my own voice.
The pakhan turns to Damien. “It does not. But the one who touches her first must be prepared to hold what falls after.”
“I’ll hold it,” Damien says. “Did you know Gorbachev was alive?”
“That is not your concern.”
I stiffen. “It is my concern if men ram vans into me and stab your son’s man because of this man, who is supposedly my grandfather.”
Damien’s dad’s gaze returns to me, cool as marble. “You’re brave.”
“I’m tired.”
Damien shifts a fraction, placing his body more fully between us. “Answer the question.”
His dad ignores him. “Go to Orlov. Shake loose what you will. The fallout is on you.”
I wonder if that is code for “you’re on your own”.
Probably.
“We’re going tomorrow,” Damien says. “Anything you want to add since you’re here, or was this a friendly drop by?”
“This was a visit to lay eyes on the woman who has caused my son to become so protective.”
I’m not sure which way to take that, so I stay quiet.
“And?” Damien asks, in a way that sounds like he cares about the answer.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
I blink. Tomorrow? That sounds like a promise and a threat stitched together by a man who has other people carry consequences for him.
Damien shifts so that half the room disappears behind the wall of his back. I don’t need the protection, not from a look, but I take it anyway. It helps.
“What happens tomorrow?” I ask.
Pakhan Voronov steps to the side so he can stare at me around Damien. “We find out what kind of storm you are.”
“I’d rather be a quiet drizzle.”
“That option left the building when you were born.” He turns to Damien. “Control your noise.”
Damien’s jaw clicks. “Understood.”
He inclines his head once, an acknowledgement, and then he goes. The front door closes on the weight of him, and the house exhales.
Damien is already at the control panel by the hall, pressing codes, arming steel and glass as if will alone can thicken them. “You should be in bed,” he says without looking back.
“You should be less you,” I say, too tired to sand down the edges. “But here we are.”
He huffs, the ghost of a laugh that never makes it near his mouth. “Can you walk up, or do you need me?”
The answer is unspooling before my pride can catch it. “I’m hungry. Can we order some food?”
He nods instantly. “I’ll have Anton pick something up.”
“Not from that fancy restaurant. I want comfort food.”
He hesitates this time. “Comfort food?”
“You know. Greasy pizza. Maybe a kebab. Fries. All of the above.”
“A kebab,” he murmurs as if he has never eaten one.
Granted, it is a rarity for me, but sometimes the kind Turkish takeaway owner near my flat would give me one as I was passing by.
“And pizza and fries. Lots of cheese. Pepperoni as well.”
“Pepperoni,” he mutters and pulls out his phone.
He scrolls through contacts like he’s defusing a bomb, then puts the phone to his ear.
“Anton. Kebab. Pizza. Fries. Pepperoni. Extra cheese.” A pause.
“Yes, now. Get two of everything. And something sweet.” Another pause.
“No, not that. Normal sweet. Cake. Biscuits. Whatever mortals eat. Go somewhere in the opposite direction from here. At least forty minutes away. Choose at random.” He hangs up and gives me a blank look. “Sorted.”
“Mortals?” I arch a brow. “You’re a menace.”
“Only to those who deserve it.”
“Why forty minutes away? I’m starving.”
“We need somewhere that isn’t compromised.”
I blink and take that on board. “It’ll be cold when it gets back.”
“I have a microwave.”
“Do you have an answer for everything?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have an answer for what tomorrow will bring?”
“A reckoning,” he states and moves to the open-plan kitchen.
I sit on one of the stools at the island while he clatters around like he’s trying to convince himself this is normal.
Plates, glasses, napkins folded with the kind of tidy precision you only see at wakes and weddings.
He opens drawers, shuts them, then opens the same ones again, like they might have changed their minds about their contents since he last checked.
“Do you ever eat,” I ask, “or do you just terrify food into nourishing you by osmosis?”
He flicks me a look. “I ingest adequate calories.”
“Vodka and coffee don’t have calories.”
“Are you worried about me, solnyshko?”
I splutter, my cheeks going hot at his heated look. “No.”
He turns away, but not before I saw the half-smile.
Arsehole.
“Why did your dad really come?” I ask quietly.
“To measure the blast radius,” he says without flinching.
“Of me?”
“Of me with you.”
That lands and sits between us, hot and dangerous. I wrap my hands around the glass to steady the shake that threatens.
“Will he help or hinder?”
“Neither. He’ll let me handle it and judge the result.”
“And if the result is messy?”
His smile is thin. “He’ll decide if the mess was worth the outcome.”
“Comforting.”
He takes the stool opposite mine. “See why being my wife would’ve made everything so much easier?”
“Did you really just say that?”
His bold blue gaze meets mine. “I did.”
Unfortunately for me, I kind of do. Untouchable was the word he used. Even from his dad. “Too late to change my mind?” I say, my lips twisting into a half-smile that doesn’t reach my eyes.
He snorts. “Are you proposing to me, Lidiya?”
“In your dreams,” I huff, arms crossed defensively.
“I thought you hated me.”
“I don’t hate you. I’m angry with you for letting me be poor when I could’ve been… less poor.”
“I thought you said that the money wasn’t yours anyway,” he ventures, more cautiously than I’ve heard him.
“Why do you have to be so rational and throw my words back in my face?”
“That wasn’t my intention. I’m just trying to figure out where I stand,” he says quietly.
“On a fault line,” I tell him. “Both feet, toes over the edge.”
He huffs, but he looks relieved to be given anything he can stand on.
Silence folds in again, less jagged now.
“How long until food?” I ask, needing something to clear the fog.
Damien checks his phone. “He’s already on the motorway. Thirty-five minutes.”
“I might die before then.”
“I won’t allow it,” he says, like it’s a ridiculous suggestion.
I tip my head, letting the dry humour keep me afloat. “If I do, cremate me with a kebab.”
“Macabre,” he mutters, but his gaze softens.
The ache behind my eyes spikes. I force a breath in, then out. “Why do I feel sorry for him?”
“Who, Anton? It’s his job.”
My shoulders slump. “No, you idiot. Stanislav. If you are correct, Regina Orlov has been playing him for a fool for a very long time.”
“Not a fool. Desperate to reunite with what was stolen from him. There is a difference. It is why he is being so careful.”
I fiddle with a napkin before I get up the courage for my next words. “When all of this is over, what do I do about him? Do I accept him? Do I shun him? Try to stab him? What?”
“I don’t know,” he says, placing his hand over mine to stop the nerves.
It works. It always works with him. If that isn’t a flashing neon sign from the universe, then I don’t know what is.
“You don’t have to decide tonight. Or tomorrow.
Or ever, if you don’t want to. If he is who Orlov says he is, then you decide what he gets from you. Not the other way round.”
“That sounds lovely and empowering until he throws a billion pounds at the problem and hires a choir to sing outside my flat.”
“He doesn’t have a billion pounds. If he did, you would be with him right now and not me,” he replies dryly. “And money won’t fix this. If he wants a relationship, he earns one. On your terms.”
“My terms,” I echo, hollow. “What does that even look like?”
“Boundaries,” he says simply. “No sudden meetings. No men in vans. No DNA tests without consent. If he wants to know you, he steps into your light. You don’t step into his darkness.”
I sit with that. “What if I want to know him?”
“Then you still keep your boundaries.”
“What if he’s kind? And I hate him anyway?”
“Then you hate him. Kindness doesn’t earn him the right to your life.”
“And if he’s cruel and I feel… nothing?”
“Then you walk.”
“Like it’s that easy.”
“It won’t be.” His voice softens. “But I’ll walk with you.”
Something inside me tilts towards him. I ignore it and stare at our hands. “And Orlov?”
“She gets him to come to us.”
“And then what?”
He chuckles, a dark sound that makes my pussy clench. “Then, solnyshko, I get Babushka Voronova’s yacht back.”