Vadim
“Dinner is ready,” Ivan interrupts at the worst possible moment.
I can’t take my eyes off this woman I’ve just informed will be my wife.
Tai wipes beneath her eyes with the sleeve of my cardigan and looks towards Ivan. “What are we having?”
“Roast chicken, potatoes, vegetables, and gravy,” he replies.
“Normal food.”
Ivan gives her a measured look. “I wasn’t aware you expected anything abnormal.”
“He has an interrogation room in the basement.”
“I’m aware.”
“And that doesn’t concern you?”
“No.”
She glances between us. “Right. Of course not. You aren’t weeping into your millions of pound notes over it.”
Ivan smiles. It’s a rare sight, and while it’s not filled with amusement, it’s not cold either.
He is indulging her. He turns and leaves, secure in the knowledge that we’ll follow.
He rules this house through expectation and raised eyebrows.
I’ve seen armed men question their choices under his attention.
Tai starts towards the dining room, then stops. “I still haven’t agreed to anything.”
“I know.”
“You’re not going to bring up marriage during dinner.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“How much wine you drink.”
Her expression sharpens. “You’re not getting me drunk so I agree to marry you.”
“I don’t need alcohol to convince you. You have a healthy survival instinct.”
“That arrogance should qualify as a medical condition.”
“It’s served me well so far.”
She mutters something in Russian that my babushka would’ve punished me for repeating at the dinner table as she follows me into the dining room.
Ivan has set a place next to the head on one side, rather than putting us opposite each other.
She sits and pulls the chair closer to the table. I take the seat at the head. Ivan lifts the silver domes off the plates with a flourish.
I make a noise of pleasure that makes Tai glance over.
“That’s the most human sound you’ve made all day,” she says.
“I eat like everyone else.”
“Do you? I assumed you fed on the fear of your enemies.”
“I do. This is just a side hobby.”
She smiles. I watch her pick up her fork and knife with more precision than the meal requires, cutting the chicken into pieces too small to need that kind of care. Stalling. She’s not ready to eat. She’s ready to think.
“You’ve gone quiet,” I say.
“I’m thinking about the fact that I could be dead by the end of the week, and instead of panicking, I’m eating roast chicken in a mansion with a man who wants to marry me and keeps handcuffs in his jacket.”
“The handcuffs are unrelated.”
“Everything about you is related.” She stabs a potato but doesn’t eat it. “Do you always eat like this? Formal dining room, silver domes, a butler?”
“Every night.”
“Alone?”
The question is loaded, and we both know it.
“Usually.”
She looks up at that, something in her expression shifting, though she covers it fast by finally putting the potato in her mouth. She chews slowly and swallows before saying, “Usually?”
“If you want to know specifics, just ask.”
She sniffs. “I’m not asking anything.”
“Actually, you are. It was framed as a question.”
She sets her fork down and glares at me across the small distance between our chairs. “You’re insufferable.”
“You’ve mentioned that already.”
“It bears repeating.”
Ivan reappears with a bottle of red, pouring a measure into her glass without asking. She eyes it, then me, then drinks anyway.
My silence speaks volumes.
She narrows her eyes and takes another, larger sip, clearly to spite me. I let her. Some victories aren’t worth having, and watching her drink good wine while glaring at me over the rim of the glass is its own reward.
“Tell me about your family,” she says suddenly, setting the glass down. “If I’m going to marry into this family, I should probably know who I’m marrying into.”
“You’re not marrying into anything yet.”
“Humour me.”
I set my fork down and consider how much truth she deserves before I’ve decided whether she stays.
“My father was Ilya Voronov. He died six years ago. My mother left when I was nine and never came back. Baron is my uncle, my father’s older brother.
He’s led the Voronov Bratva since before I was born. ”
“Six years. What happened to him?”
“Heart attack. No violence involved, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I wasn’t. Do you have siblings?”
“A younger brother, Lev. He’s a pain in the arse.”
“Jesus,” she mutters. “If you’re saying that, he must be seriously irritating.”
“He is.”
“And?”
“And what? My aunt Irina also has a copy of Anna Karenina.”
Tai’s mouth falls open momentarily, and then she smiles fondly. “My mother used to say it was an old Russian tradition that women passed down to their daughters. I thought it was bull.”
“Baron thinks I should find myself a nice Russian woman and settle down.”
“Ah, so the truth comes out. You are doing this to gain approval from your uncle.”
“Baron’s approval is irrelevant.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“Because you asked about my family, and he’s part of it.”
“Convenient dodge.”
“It’s not a dodge if it’s true.” I refill my glass. “I don’t need his approval to marry you. I need his cooperation to keep you breathing.”
“Cooperation.” She turns the word over like she’s checking it for sharp edges. “So this isn’t just your decision.”
“It’s mine. He’ll need informing.”
“Informing. Not asking.”
“I told you already. I don’t ask when I’ve decided something.”
“Right. You just announce it and expect the world to catch up.” She pushes a piece of chicken around her plate. “What happens if he says no?”
“He won’t.”
“You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I’m sure of him. Baron doesn’t say no to things that keep the family stable. A soon-to-be-dead woman running from the Melnikovs with our name attached to her is a liability. A wife with our name attached to her is an asset.”
“Wow.” She takes another mouthful of wine, bigger than the last and swallows too quickly. “I’m an asset.”
“You’re several things. Asset happens to be one of them.”
“Name the others.”
I study her, deciding how much rope to give her. “Complication. Distraction. Problem I didn’t have yesterday.”
“Thank you.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
She waits, fork suspended, wariness creeping back into her eyes.
I let the silence stretch because she’s earned the discomfort of waiting for it.
“And?” she prompts.
“And the thing I didn’t know I wanted until you walked into my office soaked through and giving me a terrible fake name.”
Her fork lowers to the plate with a small clink.
Whatever retort she had lined up dies before it reaches her mouth.
I’ve caught her off guard, and I file the small victory away next to all the others I’ve collected today.
Her cheeks flush pink, and she reaches for the wine again, if only to have something to do with her hands.
“You can’t just say things like that,” she mutters into the glass.
“Why not? They’re true.”
“Because it’s not fair. You keep switching between arrogant bastard and someone who says something like that, and I don’t know which one I’m supposed to trust.”
That word hits me. I sit back, elbows resting on the chair arms, fingers steepled. “Trust.”
“Trust,” she repeats, setting her glass down with more care than before.
“What would it take?”
She looks at me directly, no deflection this time, no sarcasm loading in her eyes. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I’ve never been particularly good at it.”
“Neither have I.”
She picks up her fork again and works through the chicken in silence. I let her have it. I’m built for quiet, and Taisiya Korotayeva, wearing my cardigan and wine-flushed cheeks, is worth waiting out.
“Tell me something true,” she says eventually.
“About what?”
“About you. Not the Bratva. Not the family. You.”
I consider that for longer than I’d like to admit. “I haven’t slept more than four hours in one stretch in over a decade.”
She looks up. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” It’s the honest answer, and it costs me more than I expected to say it out loud.
Tai puts her fork down. She doesn’t say anything for a moment, and when she does, her voice is quieter than I’ve heard it all day. “Is it the job? The violence?”
“Probably some of it.”
“And the rest?”
“Quiet is peace. Violence is noisy.”
She stares at me. Not with pity. Something more careful than that. “What does your head do in that situation?”
“Nothing worth describing.”
She accepts that without pushing, which surprises me. I expected her to pull at the thread like she pulls at everything else. Instead, she picks up her fork again and eats, and the silence between us shifts into something that doesn’t require filling.
Ivan clears the plates and brings dessert, a dark chocolate tart that Tai eyes with something approaching reverence before she takes the first bite and closes her eyes for two full seconds.
“Ivan,” she says without opening them.
He pauses at the door. “Madam?”
“You are worth every penny.”
“Thank you,” he says dryly, making her chuckle as he leaves.
I finish the tart in silence, aware of her eating beside me with the same quiet focus she brought to the chicken. The wine has softened her edges without dulling them. She’s still watchful, but the fear has dropped below the surface for now. I don’t know how long that lasts.
“What happens tomorrow?” she asks.
“We stay here while I figure out who took over from Anton and what their motives are.”
“I’m not sitting in this house all day.”
“You can go in the garden.”
She puts her fork down. “Vadim.”
My name in her mouth makes my cock hard all over again.
“You can’t lock me up in here.”
“I’m not locking you up. The guards are there to keep threats out, not to keep you in.”
“There’s a distinction?”
“A significant one.”
She pushes the last of the tart around the plate. “What if I want to go out?”
“Why the fuck would you?” I ask, my voice more clipped than she probably expected because she flinches. “Tell me, Taisiya. Why would you want to go out where you are in danger?”
She looks down. “I—”
“Exactly. You have no answer because you are being obtuse. I said I didn’t want boring, but I am growing really tired of reminding you of the position you put yourself in because you find it inherent to fucking argue with me at every fucking turn.
Enough.” I slam my hand down on the table, and she jumps. “Has any of that sunk in this time?”
Her bottom lip trembles and she catches it between her teeth. “You don’t need—”
My patience snaps. I stand up, glass in hand, and throw it across the room.
It hits the wall at the opposite end of the table, splashing wine everywhere that Ivan will be furious at, but I don’t care right now.
Placing my fists on the table, I lean over.
“Stop fucking arguing with me, Tai. I get it. You are independent, like to have your agency, you want to not be a pushover. All admirable. But right now, you are up to your fucking neck in shit you cannot even begin to understand. You have a choice now. You can stay and stop disagreeing with me every two fucking seconds, or you can walk out that door, not look back, and this is the end of it. Decide now. You have five seconds, and two of them are already gone.”