Chapter 42 Damien
Damien
Lidiya is curled up around me in our bed, her clothes in our wardrobes, her toothbrush next to mine in our bathroom, and I blink back the flash of fear that all of this is going to vanish.
It’s barely dawn, but I’m restless. I unwind myself from her, tucking the duvet around her so she doesn’t miss my heat and get up to pull on a pair of joggers.
Movement downstairs makes me move quickly, gun drawn but held loosely at my side as I take the stairs quickly.
“Dad,” I say when I see Baron sipping a cup of coffee as he stares at the space where Basquiat used to hang. “Everything okay?”
“You tell me,” he says. “You are late with your report.”
“I had to take care of some things.”
“Like Lidiya Kareva?”
“Like Annastasia Gorbachev,” I grit out.
He raises an eyebrow. “I heard it was a match. How is she taking it?”
I consider that question for a moment. “Exactly how she takes everything else. In her stride. She is the strongest woman I have ever met.”
“A good match.”
“You approve?”
I wait on the edge of this cliff. If he says no, it won’t matter, but it will sting.
He lifts the cup, inhales like a man judging vintage, then sets it down. “Approval is not the metric. Utility is.”
My jaw tightens. “She is not a metric.”
A pause. “No. She is a decision. Yours.” His gaze flicks to the absent canvas, then back to me. “You forced a correction at the Ashlar. Sloppy entry. Clean exit. Regina was overdue.”
“Overdue doesn’t cover it.”
His mouth curves, thin as a blade. “You have your grandmother’s yacht back. Docked at Port Hercule as it should be.”
“That was the easy part.”
“Roman is irritated. He preferred a sanction before a kill on private turf.” He lifts a brow. “And he thinks you’re indulging yourself.”
“I am.” I don’t flinch from it. “I’m indulging the one thing that matters.”
Silence stretches. He studies me like I’m a puzzle he’s nearly finished and hates to complete.
“You’re predictable where she is concerned,” he says at last. “That makes you dangerous in a way I can use, and vulnerable in a way I dislike.”
“Noted.”
“Is she worth the vulnerabilities she introduces?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. It lands. He accepts it with the smallest tilt of his head. “Then strengthen the parts she exposes. Your perimeter yesterday was adequate. Make it ruthless.”
“It will be.”
“And the ghost,” he says, so mild you might think we were discussing the weather. “Stanislav.”
“Alive. Sharp. He cut Orlov’s throat in front of us and handed Lidiya blood to confirm what he already believes.”
“He handed it to her, not to you.” He seems amused by that. “He understands power. Give me your read.”
“He’s patient. He won’t try to take her by force. He wants a family. That’s the end of it.”
“Is she going to give it to him?”
“Who knows? She is still trying to process. Can you answer the question?”
“Do I approve? That is a complicated answer. She is not the woman I would have chosen for you. At least, not at the beginning.”
“But now she is from one of the most powerful non-Bratva families, she is all right, is that it?”
“That’s not what I said. She has proved herself capable of being in this world without the urge to do something stupid.”
“Like?”
“Try to influence you and your decisions. Or encourage you to initiate some sort of takeover, or worse, to leave and start your own business.”
“I would never do that,” Lidiya’s voice rings out clearly on the stairs.
“I know,” Dad says, looking over at her. “I just said that.”
“Dad. I want you to meet Lidiya Kareva. Lidiya, this is Baron Voronov. Pakhan of the Voronov family.”
“Nice to meet you,” Lidiya says. “But you can call me Anna.”
My head snaps to the side as Baron’s eyebrows go up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so surprised in his entire life.
“Anna,” he says. “My pleasure.”
I go to her, taking her hand. “Are you sure about that?”
“It’s my name. The one I was born with. I told you yesterday, I want to forget Lidiya’s past. What better way than to revert to my birth name?”
I step in close and lace our fingers, a warning and a promise. “You don’t have to do this to prove anything to anyone, least of all your grandfather.”
“I’m not proving anything,” she says, chin up, eyes bright with something that isn’t fragility. “I’m taking back what was stolen. Anna is mine.”
Baron studies her like a chess position that just flipped on him. “Names are tools,” he says. “Useful when they open doors. Dangerous when they invite ghosts in.”
“Then I’ll lock the doors I don’t want,” she replies. Calm. Sharp. Beautiful. Mine.
Pride scorches through me. It’s an unruly thing, pride. It makes me want to carry her upstairs and put the city on its knees until it agrees with her choices.
Dad’s gaze flicks to me, as if to ask whether I’m going to contest it. I don’t. I step closer to her instead, the heat of her palm steady in mine.
“Then it’s settled,” he says. “Anna.” He tastes the name like he’s measuring its weight. “Use it with precision.”
“I will,” she replies. “Uhm, while you are here, I have something I’d like to ask you.”
He frowns and places his coffee cup down carefully.
I study her expression. She is nervous. Baron has gone into full pakhan mode, probably expecting some sort of negotiation whose terms he will hate.
She gulps. “Uhm, sir. Will you give me your blessing to ask your son to marry me?”
For a second, the world blanks. Then everything in me detonates.
She stands there in one of my hoodies over her pyjamas and bare feet, asking the pakhan for permission to ask me to marry her like she’s ordering coffee.
Baron’s mouth curves, thin and almost fond. “Unorthodox.”
“I am,” she says. “But I know what I want.”
“You don’t need his permission,” I say.
Her chin tips up. “I do. It’s right. And also, so there is a witness, and you can’t wriggle out of it.”
Baron folds his hands behind his back. “Marriage to my son isn’t a romance. It’s a contract with a target painted on it.”
“I already have one,” she says. “This makes the aim clearer.”
His gaze flicks to me. “You hear this?”
“I hear it,” I say, and I don’t bother softening the truth. “And I want it.”
“Then who am I to stand in your way?”
I snort and catch Lidiya’s—Anna’s—eye. “That means yes.”
She giggles, her cheeks pink. “Marry me then. For none of the reasons you gave me before and for all the reasons why this is inevitable.”
“Yes,” I say. “For all of the crazy reasons that are too plentiful to list.”
Baron rolls his eyes and clears his throat. “Lovely. Do give her Babushka’s ring that you insisted was yours.”
“She told me it was,” I counter with a half-smile.
“Very well. I will leave you to your day. A word of warning, though, that I would be remiss not to speak. If any of this backfires, you are on your own.”
“As always,” I say, but for the first time, I’m not bitter about it because I’ve got the woman who can give me everything I never knew I needed. And then some.