9. Hostage cuisine. （Tamara）
HOSTAGE CUISINE. (TAMARA)
“Ineed to reschedule the Healy consultation.”
My assistant Maya sounds confused and wary. “Reschedule? Tamara, that’s your biggest client this quarter. They’ve already been waiting three weeks.”
“I know.” I stand at the bedroom window, watching rain streak the glass. “Something came up. Family situation.”
Papers rustle on her end. Then, carefully, “Are you okay? Because a small army showed up at the studio this morning and dismantled half your office.”
“I’m fine,” I lie. “I’ll be working remotely for a while. I just need you to move things around.”
“How long is a while?”
There’s the problem, because I don’t know the timeline or whether the business I spent five years building can survive long enough to wait for me.
“Tamara?”
“I’ll let you know.” I press my palm to the cold glass. “Tell them it’s temporary.”
“And if they don’t want temporary?”
Then I lose them. The clients, the reputation, the one thing in my life that belonged entirely to me.
“They’ll wait,” I say with more confidence than I feel.
Afterward, the apartment goes back to being enormous and not mine.
By noon, Aleksander’s men had recreated most of my studio inside his study without asking me where anything should go.
Mikhail had supervised from the doorway, which made the whole thing feel less like a burglary only in the technical sense.
My drafting monitor now sits beside his. Fabric samples cover the conference table. Someone even brought over the brass task lamp I use during late-night revisions.
It should feel considerate. It does a little. That’s the problem.
The lamp sits exactly where I would have put it myself, angled for my right hand and the way I mark up plans late at night.
I can’t decide whether the accuracy is kindness or surveillance.
I spend most of the afternoon trying to focus. The plans blur together. Measurements stop making sense halfway through calculations. I keep looking to the street, where everyone else appears to have permission to leave.
By four o’clock, I give up and wander into the kitchen. If I can’t control my life, maybe I can at least control dinner.
That turns out to be optimistic.
The rice burns on the bottom and stays undercooked on top. The chicken somehow manages to be dry and suspicious at the same time. The vegetables split their loyalties between mush and frostbite depending on which side of the pan they landed on.
It’s catastrophic.
But it’s my catastrophe.
By the time I hear Aleksander’s key in the lock just after seven, I’ve plated the disaster and set the table with grim determination.
The apartment door opens, then Aleksander’s footsteps slow at the edge of the kitchen.
I pretend to adjust silverware.
His attention moves from the table, to the food, to me.
An hour ago I’d still been wearing actual clothes, but somewhere between nearly setting oil on fire and dropping sauce down the front of my blouse, I’d given up and pulled on the nearest clean thing I could find.
Which happened to be his shirt.
Aleksander’s hand stills on the edge of his coat before he finishes taking it off. The shirt hangs loose on me, sleeves rolled twice, collar slipping slightly off one shoulder.
“You cooked.”
“I attempted to cook. Results are inconclusive.”
He shrugs out of his coat and sits down across from me. Up close, he looks like a man who has spent the day making decisions no one will thank him for.
I grew up watching my father come home from days like this. On good days it was meetings and money laundering and strategic threats. On bad days, it was silence.
Despite every effort I made to build a life outside that world, here I am. Married straight back into it.
“It’s chicken,” I offer weakly. “Technically.”
Aleksander cuts into it with the caution of a man defusing explosives.
He takes a bite.
Swallows.
No visible reaction.
“Well?” I ask.
“It’s yours.”
“That bad?”
“I’ve had worse.”
“When? During wartime?”
“In prison.” He says it like he’s mentioning boarding school.
I make my face do nothing. “You went to prison?”
“Briefly.” He lets that sit. Then, with a shadow of a smile, “The food there had less ambition.”
That explains absolutely nothing. I file it away alongside the track marks and The Power Broker.
He keeps eating. Chicken. Rice. Vegetables. Completely serious about it.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say eventually. “We can order something.”
“I know.”
Another bite. His plate is now almost empty. The fact that I notice is embarrassing.
“Is there more?”
I blink, waiting for the punchline. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
I bring the pan over silently while he serves himself another portion of food that could legally qualify as a hate crime.
“You know this is terrible,” I say.
“You cooked.”
That settles the matter for him. I sit back down slowly. The sleeve slips over my knuckles.
“You’re wearing my shirt.”
I glance down. “I spilled sauce all over my blouse.”
He takes another bite, which is frankly unnecessary. “You should probably stop cooking unsupervised.”
I lose the fight against the corner of my mouth. We eat for a while without speaking. Outside, the city blurs behind the glass.
“I had to reschedule a meeting today,” I say carefully.
He hears what I’m not saying. “Only one?”
“The Healy consultation.” I pick at my rice. “I told them I’d follow up once things were clearer.” The next part costs more. “I didn’t cancel anything else.”
“But you considered it.”
“My reputation matters to me,” I say quietly. “I built that business to give myself a life outside my father’s world. Now I’m right back in another version of it.”
He sets his fork down slowly, not angry, choosing his next words.
“The threat is real, Tamara.”
“So is my career.”
He absorbs that instead of arguing. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” The answer comes too fast. Too certain. “I’m working on it,” he says.
I stop pretending to care about the rice. “Working on what?”
“Security protocols. Transportation. Site coverage.” He nods toward the study. “You’ll work from here temporarily. Then we transition you back into meetings once everything’s secure.”
I blink at him. “You already moved half my studio into your office.”
“It seemed practical.”
“It seemed…very mafia.”
“Very mafia,” he repeats, almost amused. “You object to the setup?”
“I object to the fact your men dismantled my office like a hostage extraction.” I pause. “But the monitor placement was surprisingly thoughtful.”
“I know you need more space. This is only temporary.”
Wanting to believe him is its own kind of humiliation. “How long?”
“A few days. Maybe a week.”
It is not freedom. But it’s movement.
“I didn’t realize how terrified I was,” I admit quietly.
He stops eating. “Of what?”
“That this arrangement would swallow my life.”
He doesn’t answer immediately. That tells me more than he probably means it to. “You’ll keep your work.”
I hate how badly I needed to hear this. Because work means income. Accounts in my name. Clients who know how to find me. A version of myself that still exists outside this marriage.
If I ever get to Mark—if I ever get him back—I’ll need more than desperation and adrenaline to disappear with him.
I’ll need options.
“You’re thinking too hard again,” Aleksander says quietly.
I set the fork down. “Occupational hazard.”
“You’re going to hate the security protocols,” he says with the calm of a man familiar with violence.
“I’ll tolerate armed supervision if it means keeping my business.”
“You might have to.”
I make a sound that is neither agreement nor dissent. “Most mafia husbands would probably just buy their wife a Birkin and call it a day.”
He considers that. “There’s a two-year waitlist for that.”
“I’m not even going to examine how you know that.” I laugh.
His fork stops midair. His gaze drops to my mouth for one second before returning to my eyes, then he sets the fork down and pushes the plate away. “I don’t think you carry purses.”
I stare at him. “How can you tell?”
A small shrug. “You don’t strike me as someone who tolerates having her movement restricted.”
Annoyingly, he is right. I rarely carry a purse at all—just lip gloss, earbuds, and my phone shoved into coat pockets.
Aleksander picks up his fork again and takes the last bite of the terrible chicken, apparently finished with the subject.
When we’re done, Aleksander starts gathering plates before I can stand.
“I can clean up.”
“You cooked.”
“That hardly feels like a contribution considering the outcome.”
“It still counts.”
He rolls up his sleeves at the sink, exposing the faded marks along his forearms again. I turn back to the dishwasher too late.
“I was on heroin for a while,” he says matter-of-factly, rinsing a plate beneath hot water.
The honesty catches me off guard. “And you’re telling me this while loading a dishwasher?”
A faint shrug. “You noticed.”
There’s no shame in his voice. No performance either. Just fact.
My attention goes back to the faded marks. “Was it bad?”
The plate stays under the running water long enough for me to think he won’t answer.
“Yes.”
That’s all he gives me.
I reach for another plate. “How did you stop?”
“Igor.”
Aleksander rinses the dish with careful attention, as if the motion deserves more focus than the conversation. “He dragged me back. Locked doors. Took my phone. Sat through the withdrawal. Let me hate him.”
“Did you?” I ask.
“Hate him?”
“Yes.”
“For a while.”
“And now?”
He hands me the plate. “Now I’m alive.”
We fall back into silence after that, him rinsing, me loading the dishwasher.
His phone buzzes twice on the counter. He ignores it both times.
“You can answer that.”
“It can wait.”
“What if it’s important?”
He hands me a plate. “Right now I’m here.”
The phone keeps buzzing. He keeps working.
I could ask him. The thought is so dangerous I nearly drop a pan. He has resources. Reach. He already suspects my father forced me to agree to this marriage with leverage. Maybe he could help me find Mark.
I crush the thought immediately. Not yet. I still don’t know what Aleksander Sokolov does with information once he has it.
The dishwasher hums to life, taking the last practical reason for us to stay side by side.
“I should go to bed,” I say eventually.
“Probably.”
He notices my mouth; I notice him noticing. The dishwasher keeps humming like an idiot.
I think about last night. About lying beside him aware of every inch of distance he deliberately maintained. About cedar and smoke lingering faintly in the sheets long after he moved away.
About how much easier this would be if he were cruel.
“Tamara.” He says my name like he is reminding himself of a rule. “That shirt is not helping.”
The words take a second to translate.
I grip the cuff. “I’ll give it back.”
“Don’t.” He doesn’t give himself time to lie. “I like it on you.”
Then he’s gone, just turns and walks out of the kitchen like he didn’t say anything catastrophic at all.
I stand there after he leaves, still wearing the thing he told me not to give back.
The problem with Aleksander Sokolov is not what he takes. It’s what he waits for. When one of these boundaries finally breaks, I’m beginning to suspect it will be because I cross it first.