Chapter 12 #2
I kissed her to shut her up, but also because that smile was doing things to my chest that probably required medical attention.
She melted against me immediately, arms winding around my neck, and for a moment I considered saying fuck the pet store, fuck the outside world, let's just stay here where I can keep you safe and naked and mine.
But when I pulled back, her eyes were bright with excitement—real excitement, not the manic energy of survival—and I knew I'd burn down the entire city before I'd disappoint her.
"Shower," I ordered, patting her ass where the marks from last night's spanking had faded to a gentle pink. "We leave in an hour."
She scrambled out of bed with more energy than someone who'd been up half the night should have, completely unconscious about her nudity.
I watched her gather her things—my t-shirt from the floor, her underwear from somewhere near the door where I'd thrown it—and felt that thing in my chest expand again.
"Kostya?" She paused at the bathroom door, looking back at me with an expression I couldn't read. "Thank you. For this. For . . ." She gestured vaguely, encompassing everything. "Just. Thank you."
Before I could respond, she disappeared into the bathroom, and soon I heard the shower running.
I lay there for another moment, staring at the ceiling, trying to reconcile the man I'd been yesterday with whoever the fuck I was now—someone who took women on pet store dates, who used kitten supplies as an excuse for romance, who was probably going soft in ways that would get us both killed.
But then I thought about her face when she smiled, and decided that maybe soft wasn't the worst thing to be. At least, not with her.
I got up to get dressed, already running security protocols in my head. Two men in a follow car, discrete. Another team to sweep the store before we arrived. I might be going soft, but I wasn't going stupid.
Besides, the kittens really did need better food.
The PetSmart on Atlantic Avenue assaulted you the moment you walked in—fluorescent lights bright enough to perform surgery under, primary colors screaming from every surface, and a parrot near the entrance that took one look at me and started shrieking like I'd personally offended its ancestors.
The whole place smelled like industrial disinfectant mixed with dog food and that particular pet store odor that probably had a scientific name but I just called "animal. "
I felt like a shark that had somehow ended up in a fucking goldfish bowl.
The teenage employee stationed at the entrance took one look at me and dropped the stack of sale flyers he'd been holding.
They scattered across the floor in a cascade of neon orange paper advertising two-for-one dog toys.
His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, eyes tracking from my face to my exposed forearms where the bratva tattoos told anyone who knew how to read them exactly what kind of monster had just walked into his minimum-wage Saturday.
"Welcome to PetSmart," he managed, voice cracking on the second word.
Maya didn't notice. She was already three aisles ahead, making a beeline for the cat section with the kind of purpose she probably brought to emergency surgery.
I grabbed a cart—the thing looked like a toy in my hands—and followed her, noting how every customer we passed did the same double-take.
A mother pulled her kid closer. A man in khakis suddenly remembered he needed something in the opposite direction.
Even the Golden Retriever in aisle three tucked its tail and pressed against its owner's legs.
But Maya? Maya was holding up a feather wand with pink streamers, studying it like it contained the secrets of the universe.
"Zmeya would destroy this in five minutes," she announced when I caught up.
"So we don't—"
"Perfect." She tossed it in the cart. "She needs to destroy things. It's her nature. Better toys than your furniture."
I thought about arguing that my furniture had survived fifteen years of my temper and could probably handle one small kitten, but Maya was already moving on, pulling packages off hooks with the efficiency of someone used to making quick decisions under pressure.
"Catnip mice," she said, adding three packages.
"Different sizes so they can choose their prey.
This ball with a bell inside—Malysh will either love it or be terrified, only one way to find out.
Oh, and this—" She held up something that looked like a tiny fishing rod.
"Interactive play. Important for bonding. "
"Doc, they're cats, not—"
"They're babies," she corrected, giving me a look that suggested arguing would be hazardous to my health. "Traumatized babies who need structure and enrichment and—oh my god, look at this."
She'd found the beds. An entire wall of them in every conceivable shape and color. She ran her fingers over the fabrics, testing softness, and her expression was so serious I had to bite back a smile.
"This one," she said, pulling down a bed shaped like a shark. "For Zmeya. Look, it has teeth and everything. Perfect for a warrior princess."
"It's a bed," I said. "She sleeps on my chest."
"She needs options. And this—" She grabbed another bed, soft gray fleece formed into a cave. "Malysh needs somewhere to hide. Somewhere that feels safe and enclosed."
She kept adding things. A scratching post that looked more like modern art than cat furniture.
Treat dispensers that would "provide mental stimulation.
" Food and water bowls in stainless steel because "plastic harbors bacteria.
" The cart was filling up with the artifacts of a life I'd never imagined having—domestic, ordinary, centered around two cats we'd found by accident.
An employee in a blue vest appeared at the end of the aisle, probably sent by management to make sure I wasn't about to rob the place. He was maybe twenty, trying to look professional despite the fact that his hands were shaking.
"Can I help you folks find anything?" His voice went up at the end like he was asking permission to exist.
"We're good," I said.
He scurried away like I'd pulled a gun.
"You're terrifying them," Maya observed, but she said it absently, like it was just a fact.
The weather is nice, the sky is blue, you're terrifying innocent retail workers.
"I'm just standing here."
"You're looming." She held up a bag of treats, squinting at the ingredients. "You have resting murder face."
"Resting what?"
"Murder face. You look like you're calculating how many bodies would fit in the trunk of your car."
I narrowed my eyes. "Sedan or SUV?"
She laughed—that real laugh I was already addicted to—and tossed the treats in the cart. "See? That. That right there. Normal people don't have an answer ready for that question."
She moved further down the aisle, and I watched her compare two different types of cat litter with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb.
The fluorescent lights made her skin look paler than usual, highlighted the shadows under her eyes that hadn't quite faded despite a full night's sleep.
But she was smiling, really smiling, and she looked .
. . alive. Present. Not running probability matrices about threats and escape routes.
"What about this?" She held up a package containing a tiny collar with a bell.
Something cracked in my chest. The collar was fucking ridiculous—soft pink leather with a tinkling silver bell and a breakaway clasp for safety. It was meant for something precious, something loved, something that belonged to someone.
"For which one?" My voice came out rougher than intended.
"Malysh, I think. The bell would help us know where he's hiding." She studied the package. "Though maybe it's too soon. They need to feel secure first, before we mark them as ours."
Mark them as ours. Like they weren't just strays we'd found. Like we were building something together, even if that something was just a safe space for two abandoned kittens.
"Get it," I said. "Get both colors. Let them choose."
Her smile could have powered the entire fucking store.
This was what normal people did. They went to bright stores on Saturday mornings and bought things they didn't strictly need.
They debated the merits of different products.
They built small, soft lives around creatures that depended on them.
They existed in the world without constantly calculating angles of attack and escape routes.
I'd never had normal. Never wanted it, never thought I could pull it off even if I tried.
My world was violence and vodka and the kind of loyalty that was signed in blood.
But standing in that ridiculous pet store, watching Maya hold up cat collars like they were surgical instruments, I thought maybe—maybe—I could learn.
"We need a carrier too," she said, already moving toward the next section. "For vet visits. Two, actually. They shouldn't have to share if one is more stressed than the other."
Vet visits. Future tense. Like we'd still be doing this in six months, a year. Like the kittens would grow up and we'd be there to see it.
Like we were building something that might last.
"Whatever you think is best," I said, and meant it.
She beamed at me over her shoulder, then went back to examining carriers, and I pushed the cart full of our new life after her, ignoring the way other customers pressed themselves against shelves to avoid getting too close to me.
Let them be afraid. I had cat toys to buy.
Brighton Beach was a far cry from the tourist postcards—gray ocean meeting gray sky, wind sharp enough to cut, only the hardcore joggers and Russian grandmothers brave enough to face the boardwalk.
We walked with our PetSmart bags rattling in the gusts, probably looking like the world's most unlikely couple—a bratva enforcer and a fugitive doctor, carrying enough cat supplies to stock a small shelter.