Chapter 13 Arkady
Arkady
She’s inside my head. Burrowed in like shrapnel, and every time I try to dig her out, she embeds deeper.
The theory about my father orchestrating his own death sits in my chest like a grenade with the pin half-pulled.
I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to look at it.
But it’s there, ticking, and the worst part is that the logic holds.
Nik was never a man who got caught off guard.
In sixty-one years of navigating a world designed to kill him, he never once sat still and let death walk through the front door.
He had contingencies for his contingencies.
A panic room behind the study wall. A Makarov taped under every desk in the house.
Duress codes that would’ve locked the place down tighter than a submarine.
And yet he sat there, phone in hand, calling me, and let someone put a bullet through his forehead without so much as blinking.
That doesn’t happen. Not to Nikolai Saranov.
Unless he wanted it to.
I slam my fist into the desk and welcome the pain that shoots up through my already split knuckles.
The wood doesn’t crack, but the skin does, fresh blood welling over the scabs from yesterday.
I stare at it and force myself to think like him.
Not like his son. Like his successor. Like the man he raised to take over when the time came.
If Nik knew someone was coming for me—and he would’ve known, because nothing moved in this city without reaching his ears eventually—what would he do?
He wouldn’t warn me. Warning me would’ve tipped off whoever was orchestrating it.
He wouldn’t have gone to war openly because that would have exposed the family to retaliation during a power struggle.
He would’ve done exactly what Alina described.
He would’ve made it impossible for anyone to strike me without causing an uproar in the Bratva world.
A dead pakhan triggers succession. Succession puts me in the seat with the full weight of the Bratva behind me instead of operating as his blade in the dark.
Whoever wanted me dead wanted me dead because I was vulnerable as an heir.
As pakhan, I’m armoured. If this is true, someone had something that forced him into this.
Now it’s finding out who and what. I press my bloodied knuckles against the desk and breathe.
The briefcase under my desk suddenly feels heavier.
I’ve been avoiding it since Vik slapped it down yesterday, treating it like a bomb that might go off if I acknowledge it.
But if Nik planned this—if he sat in that chair and made the call knowing what was coming—then whatever’s in that case is part of the plan.
He wouldn’t have left it to chance. He never left anything to chance.
I pull it out and set it on the desk. The latches are brass, scratched from years of use. I know this case. It sat beside his desk for as long as I can remember, and I never once saw him open it in front of me. It was always locked, always within arm’s reach.
The combination. I don’t have it. I try his birthday. Nothing. My mother’s birthday. Nothing. Mine.
The latches pop open.
I lift the lid and stare at the contents. This is his black book. The ledger where he recorded every single transaction where someone ended up owing him. There are things that go back thirty years that are favours to be called in when the time is right.
I lift the book out and slam the case closed. Carrying the ledger to the wall safe, I unlock it and throw it inside. It means nothing to me yet.
I need to see her. The thought ambushes me, and my jaw clenches.
Perfect fucking timing. My father’s corpse isn’t even cold, someone in my inner circle wants me dead, and tomorrow I face a roomful of men waiting for me to show weakness.
Yet here I am, distracted by the memory of her standing in my dining room, blue eyes narrowed, telling me exactly how fucked I am, like she’s earned the right to that kind of honesty.
Except she has.
I climb the stairs and unlock the bedroom door without knocking. She’s sitting by the window, barefoot, in jeans and a shirt.
“You’re going to the meeting,” I say, closing the door behind me.
Her head snaps towards me, and whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t that. She recovers fast, though.
“Okay,” she says, and the calm in her voice is so deliberate it borders on theatrical. She’s trying not to gloat. I can see the effort it takes, the way her jaw tightens to hold back whatever triumphant remark is fighting to get out.
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t.” She stands and crosses her arms. “What do you want me to do?”
I move further into the room and sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, bloodied knuckles on display. I don’t hide them. “You sit beside me. You don’t speak unless spoken to. You observe. Every reaction, every glance, every twitch. You register it, and you tell me afterwards.”
“So I’m your spy.”
“You’re my eyes when mine are occupied.”
She processes that, her gaze dropping to my hands. “What made you change your mind?”
“There are things at play here that I haven’t figured out. I can’t deal with every Saranov brig while trying to scan for ulterior motives. Vik needs his eyes on me. Dima will have too many eyes on him. Do you see where this is going?”
“No one will look twice at me?” There is no bitterness, only acceptance.
“Yes. Because you aren’t Alina Belova. Not tomorrow. You are Alina… my wife.”
She blinks. “What?”
“Seriously hate repeating myself.”
“I heard you. I don’t understand it, but I heard you.” She moves closer. “Why?”
“It’s the only way to get you into that room without revealing who you are. Some random woman? They won’t accept it. No one will say shit. But my wife? The wife of the new pakhan? That’s something else altogether.”
“So we fake it.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head with a slow smirk. “We make it real.”
“How? You can’t just roll up to the nearest Russian Orthodox church and get married.”
“I can,” I say.
She grimaces. “Of course you can.”
A beat.
Then, she says, “You realise how insane this is? You’re going to marry me just to get me into a room with your family.”
I rise and move closer, gripping her chin tighter than is strictly necessary. “I’m marrying you so I can fuck you every which way to Sunday and you can’t refuse me.”
She swallows hard, her eyes flashing dangerously. “What is this? The seventh century?”
“No. It’s the Bratva.” I release her chin but don’t step back. “You wanted in. This is in. All the way in. No half measures.”
Her breathing has changed. Faster, shallower, and she’s doing a piss-poor job of hiding it. I can see the calculation behind those blue eyes—the rapid-fire assessment of risk versus reward that makes her more like her father than she’ll ever admit.
“And after?” she asks. “When this is over, and you’ve found whoever killed your dad? What then? We get a nice little divorce, and I go back to being Alina Ashworth, window boxes and book clubs?”
“That life is dead. You killed it when you walked into my shower and wrapped your hands around my cock.”
The flush that crawls up her neck is spectacular. She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. For the first time since I met her, Alina Belova is speechless, and I savour every second of it.
“You’re out of your mind,” she finally manages.
“Probably. But you’re still here. You’re still pushing to be useful. You said you have waited for this moment, to be the phoenix. Fly, krasotka. Fly.”
She stares at me with those blue eyes that have been driving me mad since I first saw them, glassy and unfocused under the strobe lights.
I can see the war playing out behind them.
The part of her that wants to run, that has spent twelve years building a life specifically designed to avoid this moment, fighting the part of her that has always known it was coming.
The Belova blood that runs through her veins, whether she drinks Champagne or bleach.
“My dad will lose his mind,” she says quietly.
“Your dad will understand.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know Valery Belov. I know what he values. Protection. Legacy. Strength. This ticks every box.”
“And love?” The word comes out before she can catch it, and I see the instant regret flash across her face. She didn’t mean to say it. It slipped through the armour she’s been rebuilding since I kissed her against the dining room wall, and now it’s out there, hanging between us like a lit fuse.
I don’t flinch. I don’t mock her for it. Instead, I trace my thumb across her lower lip, smearing the warmth of the kiss she didn’t ask for but didn’t stop.
“Love is a luxury,” I say. “Obsession is what keeps you alive.”
Her breath catches against my thumb. I feel the tiny hitch, the involuntary parting of her lips. She doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t bite me, which, with Alina, is practically a declaration of affection.
“That’s the most fucked-up thing anyone has ever said to me,” she whispers.
“Get used to it. You’re marrying into fucked up.”
She closes her eyes for a beat, and when she opens them, something has shifted. The fight is still there. It will always be there, and I’d be disappointed if it weren’t, but underneath it, there’s a decision. I can see it settling into her bones like concrete finding its form.
“When?” she asks.
“Tonight.”
“Tonight.” She says it flat, testing the weight of it.
“Father Alexei owes me. He’ll perform the ceremony here. Private. No witnesses except Vik and Dima.”
“That’s not legal.”
“It’s legal enough. I have someone who owes me a favour at the town hall. This can be backdated, and a marriage certificate in my hands before Father Alexei gets here. All you have to do is sign it.”
“This way or I stay in your bedroom out of sight, out of mind?”
I don’t reply. I don’t need to. She knows the score.