Chapter 12 #3
"See? You are smiling. And you're smiling like a naive bookworm who just got asked to prom by the high school quarterback.
" Mia sighed, dropping all teasing, her eyes filling with genuine seriousness.
"Vivienne, I'm warning you one last time.
He's the alpha wolf, a killer with mafia ice in his veins.
You can take his money, write his story, but don't you dare...
don't you dare sign your heart on the bottom line of that damned contract too.
Think carefully about what game you're actually playing. "
I fell into a long silence.
The tea in my hand had gone completely cold, condensation sliding drop by drop down the cup onto the marble tabletop.
"I don't know, Mia..." I looked down at my clasped hands, my voice so low it was almost a whisper to myself.
"Sometimes... I just feel like something's starting to go wrong.
Every time he gets close, every time he looks at me with those gray eyes, my brain turns into complete chaos.
I can't explain what it is... Maybe it's just some illusion from spending these days together. "
Mia didn't press further on this heavy topic.
She just gave me one last meaningful look and patted my hand.
"As long as you can figure it out yourself, writer.
Come on, you've got a gala tomorrow where you need to slay, and we need to find a haute couture gown truly worthy of the 'Pakhan's wife' title. "
For the next two hours, Mia dragged me through Georgetown's ultra-luxe boutiques.
Those gorgeous lace and silk gowns I normally wouldn't dare glance at flashed before my eyes one after another, but all I could hear in my head was what Mia had said at the café.
"Why are you smiling?"
Why was I smiling?
That inexplicable, unsettling heat inside me felt like a fine net, suffocating me, making me distracted.
On the ride back, night had completely fallen.
Washington's bustling streets became countless streams of shattered neon outside the window. The Escalade's heavy bulletproof cabin was cold as an icebox, silent except for tires grinding asphalt.
Sasha gripped the wheel wordlessly, his black sunglasses in the rearview mirror still reflecting the back seat's light without any warmth.
I leaned my head somewhat bored against the cold window glass. Looking at that towering, fortress-like man in black ahead, a curiosity buried deep for a long time finally, inexplicably, broke through my rational defenses.
"Hey, Sasha," I spoke softly, my voice somewhat jarring in the quiet cabin.
No response from up front. Not even the slightest hesitation in how he turned the wheel.
I was used to this dead wood's poker face. I took a deep breath and pretended casualness, just throwing out the question that had been keeping me up at night. "I figure you must've served lots of women like me—women your boss brought back to live in the west wing of this Volkov estate, right?"
The words left my mouth, and my breath involuntarily tensed.
I stared hard at Sasha's reaction in the rearview. I expected him to humiliate my nosiness with absolute silence as usual, or shut me down with a cold "that's not your concern."
But this time.
I watched closely as Sasha's lips suddenly pressed into a tight line.
The cabin fell into a bizarre ten-second silence.
Not until the car merged onto the highway toward the suburban woods did Sasha's low, raspy voice—like two rusty metal plates grinding together—finally penetrate the soundproofing up front.
"No. In all the time past, aside from the late Mrs. Anna, the Pakhan's birth mother."
In the rearview mirror, Sasha's black sunglasses dipped slightly, aligning precisely with my gaze as he pronounced each word like a verdict.
"You are the first, and only woman in five years that Pakhan has personally permitted to cross those wrought-iron gates and enter the west wing master suite. In this family, he has never shared his territory with any woman."
Sasha's words hit like a sledgehammer, striking dead-center on my already chaotic heart.
First. Only.
That feared, cold-hearted mafia boss had opened the estate's most secret, most sacred space to me without reservation...
An indescribable tsunami instantly swallowed what remained of my reason.
"Wow, that's pretty cool."
I hastily covered my panic, said nothing more, just turned away somewhat frantically and pressed my burning forehead hard against the cold window glass.
The night scene rushed backward like a tide outside, and that indefinable flutter and longing I'd been unable to grasp finally broke through all the fog in this moment, accompanying Sasha's raspy words, becoming unprecedentedly clear, scorching, even carrying a destructive weight.
It was a dangerous seed that had already started taking root and sprouting wildly in the dark mafia swamp.
But looking at my own blue eyes reflected in the glass—full of panic and wavering—in this silent, unnerving deep night, I ultimately squeezed my eyes shut tight, not daring to continue down that fatal path.