Chapter Eight
Alexei’s POV
I’d always been an early riser. It came from years of discipline carved into my bones like names etched in marble.
Five-thirty, no matter the season. No matter how late I’d been awake the night before, negotiating shipments or cleaning up problems that required my particular brand of precision.
The ritual was sacred: rise, dress, coffee black as sin, then into the world before most men have opened their eyes.
But this morning, I didn’t move. I simply didn’t want to.
Pale gold light spilled through the gap in the curtains, falling across Mila’s hair where it tangled against my chest in shades of chestnut and copper.
Her breath was soft and even, warm against my collarbone.
One of her hands rested on my ribs, fingers curled loosely into the sheet like she was holding on to something even in sleep.
Her lashes fluttered—some dream playing behind her closed lids—and I found myself wondering what she saw there. Wondering if I was in it.
The thought unsettled me more than it should.
I’d had lovers before. Dozens, if I was being honest with myself, though I rarely bothered with honesty when it came to the women with whom I’d been intimate.
They were transactions, most of them. Elegant exchanges of pleasure, choreographed carefully so that neither party expected more than skin and sweat and the cold side of the mattress by morning.
I knew how to give them enough to make them sigh my name, and I knew exactly when to pull back before they started looking at me like I was something more than what I was.
A shrewd man in expensive suits. A man who built empires on violence.
But Mila…
My jaw tightened as I watch the rise and fall of her body.
The way the morning light caught on the curve of her shoulder where the sheet had slipped down.
Last night shouldn’t have happened the way it did.
It was only the third night of our marriage—a marriage born of necessity and strategy, not affection.
I’d planned to keep my distance. To treat her with the cold courtesy I’ve perfected over the years, the kind that keeps people at arm’s length while still appearing civilized.
She wasn’t supposed to matter.
And yet she did.
The realization sat in my chest, heavy and immovable.
Maybe it was the way she’d looked at me at the engagement party, after the gunfire and the blood, when everyone else had been screaming or crying and she’d just stood there with her hands shaking and her eyes clear, watching me like she was trying to solve me.
Or maybe it was later, in the living room, when she’d finally spoken. Not to beg me for reassurance or explanations, but to ask—quietly, almost clinically—who the men that attacked us came for.
If that had been the first crack in my control, last night must have been the fault line splitting wide open.
Right from the moment I set my eyes on her, I’d told myself it was just desire—that sharp, chemical pull that had been building between us.
But when I’d finally let myself touch her, when she’d opened for me with that devastating trust in her eyes despite everything she knew about me, it had felt like something far more dangerous.
It had felt like being seen.
I shifted carefully, not wanting to wake her, and extracted myself from the warmth of the bed with the same precision I applied to everything else in my life.
The floor was cool beneath my feet as I moved across the room, silent out of habit.
I dressed in the half-light: charcoal trousers, crisp white shirt, the familiar weight of cufflinks sliding through buttonholes with practiced ease.
Each movement was automatic, a ritual that grounded me back into the man I was supposed to be.
Not the man who had held Mila like she was something precious.
Not the man who had whispered her name against her throat like a prayer.
But the man who managed the European shipping wing of the Lobanov empire.
The man who made problems disappear and didn’t allow himself to be compromised by soft skin and even softer sighs.
I fastened my watch—Swiss, understated, worth more than most people make in a year—and glimpsed my reflection in the mirror above the dresser.
Dark auburn hair still slightly mussed from sleep, hazel eyes sharp even in the dim light.
The tattoos that mapped my shoulders and ribs were hidden beneath expensive fabric, as always. Violence wrapped in silk.
When I glanced back at the bed, Mila had shifted onto her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. She looked impossibly young like this. Impossibly gentle. Everything I was not.
Before the tightness in my chest could spread any further, I turned away and left the room without a sound.
**********
At my warehouse, everything was already awake and moving.
Two of my men were waiting in my office.
Dimitri was sprawled in one of the leather chairs by the window, deceptively casual in the way that meant he’d already cataloged every entrance and exit in the room.
Kirill, on the other hand, sat in one of the two chairs facing mine against the table.
Both of them looked up when I entered, and they were smart enough not to comment on the fact that it was nearly seven—over an hour later than my usual arrival.
“Good morning, boss,” they greeted at the same time, rising to their feet.
That was when Roman and Viktor entered the room. The greetings only took a minute, and we were already delving into the reports they brought of Moretti’s movements.
“Moretti,” Viktor said without preamble, placing the tablet in his hand on the desk.
I didn’t sit. I never did during these meetings. I picked up the tablet and scrolled through the reports.
“Moretti’s men have been making moves—subtle, but not subtle enough. Three of our shipping routes have experienced “unexpected delays” in the past week,” Roman explained.
“One of our clubs in Prague reported a fire that the local authorities were calling electrical, but the burn patterns suggested accelerant,” Kirill revealed.
“And there have been whispers that Enzo Moretti has been asking questions about a certain forensic accountant turned Lobanov bride,” Dimitri added as I kept going through the reports.
“The engagement party was just the opening salvo,” Kirill disclosed, his voice a low rumble. “He’s testing our response time. Seeing where we’re vulnerable.”
“Enzo’s patient. He’ll escalate slowly, force us to spread our resources thin, then strike where it hurts most.”
“Mila,” Viktor uttered.
It was not a question.
My fingers tightened briefly on the edge of the desk—the only outward sign of the cold fury that spiked through me at the thought of Moretti’s men getting anywhere near her.
“Mila,” I confirmed, clenching my teeth to suppress the memory of when she was naked beneath me and I was whispering that same name.
“She’s leverage. Against Lev, if he’s still alive. Against us, now that she’s family.”
“Then we should move first, boss,” Kirill opined, leaning forward. “Hit their operations hard enough that Enzo has to pull back and defend his own territory.”
“No.”
Both of my men looked at me. I met their gazes without flinching, my expression carved from ice. “If we strike first, we look reactive. Desperate. Moretti wants us to come at him with everything we have so he can bleed us out in a war of attrition. We’re smarter than that.”
“So what do you suggest?” Roman inquired.
“We tighten security here. Double the perimeter, vet every staff member again, and make sure Mila doesn’t leave the estate without a full detail,” I answered, my voice clipped.
“Meanwhile, we gather intelligence. I want to know every move Moretti makes before he makes it. Every shipment, every meeting, every man on his payroll. When we strike, it won’t be a skirmish. It’ll be an execution.”
Viktor chuckled. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
We spent the next hour going over contingencies, reviewing security protocols, and coordinating with Konstantin’s network back in Moscow.
I switched seamlessly between languages—Russian, English, and Italian when I was on the phone with our contact in Naples.
My mind was a machine, processing variables and probabilities with ruthless efficiency.
But even as I discussed kill orders and smuggling routes, a part of me remained upstairs.
In the room where Mila was still sleeping, curled beneath sheets that smelled like both of us now.
In the curve of her spine and the way she’d looked at me last night—not with fear, but with something far more terrifying.
Trust?
It was all new to me. None of my past lovers had carved themselves under my skin the way she did in a single night, with nothing but her honesty and her breath catching on my name.
By the time the meeting ended, my cousins left, and my men went to deal with their respective duties, I felt like I’d been awake for days.
I poured myself two fingers of whiskey from the decanter on the sideboard—Macallan, aged eighteen years—and downed it in one swallow. The burn was grounding, in a way.
I had work to do. Calls to make, people to threaten, and the whole wing of an empire to protect. So I got to it. But after a while, when I glanced at my watch and realized it was noon, the first thought that crossed my mind wasn’t business.
It was whether Mila had eaten. I wondered if she was still in bed, or if she was in any kind of pain.
**********
Later that day, I found her in the garden.
Or rather, I found her with Anya in the garden, the two of them seated at the wrought-iron table beneath the pergola where wisteria will bloom in another month.
They were drinking tea, delicate porcelain cups that looked absurdly fragile in the afternoon light, and Anya was gesturing animatedly about something.
And Mila…
Mila was smiling.