Chapter Four
Alexei’s POV
The Lobanov machine does not grind; it hums.
In the three days following the attack, the estate transformed from a residence into a war room masquerading as a wedding venue.
There is a terrifying efficiency to how my family handles a crisis.
While the florist—a man whose hands trembled as he arranged white calla lilies—set up the altar in the grand conservatory, my men were in the basement cleaning cosmoline off semi-automatic rifles.
I stood on the mezzanine, looking down at the foyer. Below, crates of vintage Cristal were being wheeled in alongside crates of body armor. It was a grotesque juxtaposition, one that had defined my entire existence.
“The Morettis have gone quiet,” Dimitri said, stepping up beside me. He smelled of gun oil. “Too quiet. Enzo knows he can’t hit us while the other families are watching the wedding, but he’s nesting. He’s digging in.”
“Let him dig,” I said, my voice flat. I adjusted the cufflink on my left wrist—gold, embossed with the family crest. “By tonight, she is officially a Lobanov—the rest is ceremony. If he touches her then, he’s not just settling a score with a dead sniper.
He’s declaring war on the Bratva. Even the Sicilians won’t back him for that. ”
“And the girl?” Dimitri asked, his gray eyes sliding toward the west wing. “How is the future Mrs. Lobanov?”
“She’s breathing,” I replied.
That was all I’d allowed myself to acknowledge.
But the truth was more intrusive. I had spent the last seventy-two hours watching her through the digital eyes of the estate’s security system.
I watched her pace her room until her feet must have ached.
I watched her stare at the meals brought to her, picking at the food like it was poisoned.
I watched her sit by the window, her chestnut hair catching the afternoon light, looking like a Renaissance painting of a martyr.
She was soft. Too soft. Her skin looked like it would bruise if I gripped her too hard, and her eyes were far too honest for a world where a smile was usually a prelude to a throat cutting.
She was a psychology student, and she studied the “why” of human behavior.
But in my world, there is no “why.” There is only “did” and “done.”
She didn’t belong here. And yet, the thought of her anywhere else—of her in a room with Enzo Moretti, or even back in her quiet, unassuming apartment where she was a sitting duck—made my blood simmer.
“It’s strategy,” I muttered, more to myself than to Dimitri.
“Of course it is,” Dimitri replied, though the tilt of his scarred eyebrow suggested he didn’t believe me for a second.
The signing of the contract took place in my study. The room was a temple to old-world power: floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with leather-bound classics, a heavy desk carved from a single piece of oak, and the scent of expensive cigars and ancient secrets.
Viktor sat in the high-backed chair, his presence a heavy weight in the room. Roman and Damian stood by the fireplace, shadows in expensive wool. They were there as witnesses, their faces masks of stone.
Then the door opened, and Anya led Mila in.
Mila was wearing a dress I had ordered for her. A simple, high-necked silk sheath in deep emerald green. It was the color of a forest at dusk, and it made her hazel eyes shimmer like glass. She looked small between the towering bookshelves; a rabbit led into a wolf’s den.
But as she approached the desk, she didn’t look at the Pakhan or my cousins. She didn’t look at the guards, either. She looked at me.
Her chin lifted. It was a small movement, but in this room, it was a declaration of war. Her eyes, usually so warm and expressive, were chips of ice. She wasn’t cowering anymore. She was vibrating with a silent, focused fury.
“Sit,” Roman suggested.
Mila shot him an appreciative look but remained standing, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.
“I’ve read the document,” she said, her voice steady despite the slight tremor in her frame.
“It’s a standard prenuptial agreement merged with a non-disclosure agreement and a loyalty oath.
You’ve legally bound my life to your family’s assets. ”
“It is for your protection,” I said, stepping forward.
“Hm,” she mumbled.
Something in my chest tightened—a sharp, sudden knot that felt dangerously close to admiration.
“The signature, Mila,” I said, my voice dropping to a low warning. “Now.”
I picked up the fountain pen—a heavy, gold-nibbed instrument—and held it out to her.
She stared at the pen as if it were a dagger.
For a long moment, I thought she might actually refuse.
I thought she might choose the bullet over the ring.
And for a split second, a flash of genuine panic flared in my gut.
I didn’t want her dead. The realization was a breach in my own defenses, a crack in the armor I had spent decades forging.
Finally, she took the pen from my hand. Our fingers brushed—a momentary contact that felt like a localized electric strike. Her skin was freezing, but the fire in her eyes was hot enough to burn.
She leaned over the desk and scrawled her name across the parchment. She didn’t use a flowery, loopy script like I would have expected. She signed it with jagged, violent strokes.
Mila Petrov.
She dropped the pen down on the desk, raising a brow at me as if to ask, “I’m yours on paper. Are you satisfied?”
“You’ll be safe,” I assured her, my voice sounding strained even to my own ears.
“I will never be safe with you,” she whispered, so low the others couldn’t hear. “I’ll just be a different kind of prisoner.”
She turned and walked out of the room. Anya hurried after her, casting a worried glance back at me.
“She has spirit,” Viktor remarked, lighting a cigar. The blue smoke curled toward the ceiling.
“She’ll learn her place,” I said, though the words felt like ashes in my mouth.
“Will she?” Roman asked from the corner, a smirk playing on his lips. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re the one being led on a leash, cousin.”
I turned on him, my movement so fast he actually stepped back. Then he chuckled, and I did the same, shaking my head. The predatory instinct that usually governed my life was screaming, but it wasn’t directed at our enemies. It was directed at anyone who dared to comment on her.
“The marriage is finalized,” Viktor said, his voice a lethal rasp. “The alliance is set. Everything else is irrelevant.”
As we walked out of the study, my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
**********
I found myself in the garden an hour later. The sun was setting, casting long, bloody streaks across the sky. The air was turning cold, the first hint of autumn biting at the edges of the summer heat.
I stood by the fountain, watching the water churn.
I told myself this was a strategy. It was a cold, calculated move to protect her and maintain the balance of power. I could tell myself that the tightening in my chest was just stress, the result of a looming war with the Italians. But I knew that wasn’t it.
I could still feel the phantom heat where her fingers had brushed mine.
I could still see the way her hazel eyes had blazed with defiance.
She wasn’t just a girl to be protected anymore.
She was a challenge. She was a puzzle I wanted to solve, a soul I wanted to claim—not because of her father, but because of the way she looked at me as if she could see the monster beneath my suit and wasn’t afraid to call it by its name.
In my world, everyone bowed. Everyone whispered. Everyone played the game.
Mila Petrov didn’t play. She fought.
And as I stood there in the dying light, I realized with a terrifying clarity that I didn’t want a submissive wife. I didn’t want a girl who would sit quietly in the shadows of the Lobanov name.
I wanted that fire. I wanted to own the flame that had burned in her eyes when she signed that contract.
I checked my watch. In a few hours, we would stand before the priest. Then she would publicly be mine.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed Dimitri.
“Boss?”
“Double the perimeter sweep,” I ordered. “And tell the kitchen to send a bottle of the ’96 Krug to Mila’s room. Tell her… tell her it’s to steady her nerves.”
“Right away, boss.”
I hung up and looked back at the house. Up in the west wing, a single light was burning in her window.
I didn’t believe in love. I didn’t believe in fairytales. I believed in power, in loyalty, and in the blood that bound us all. But as I watched that light, I felt a shift in the universe.
The war wasn’t just coming from the Italians. The real war was beginning tonight, within the walls of this estate, between a man who thought he could control everything and a woman who had nothing left to lose but her heart.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure if I was the one who was going to win.
**********
The silence of the Lobanov estate at three in the morning could be called elusive. It was a living, breathing thing—the hum of the security servers, the rhythmic footfalls of guards on the gravel paths below, the distant, muffled sound of a city that never sleeps.
I sat in my darkened office, the only light coming from the bank of monitors built into the wall.
My eyes were burning, raw from hours of staring at thermal feeds and intelligence reports.
Enzo’s men were moving. Our informants in the North End had seen the movement—cars being prepped, shooters being pulled from the suburbs.
They were circling us like vultures over a dying beast, waiting for a crack in the armor.
I tapped a pen against the mahogany desk, the sound sharp and repetitive.
I should have kept thinking about the logistics of the perimeter.
Instead, my traitorous mind kept dragging me back to several months ago. To the night I’d met Mila for the first time, the night Anya’s car broke down.