Chapter 20
Alina
His laugh fills the kitchen, and it does something to me that I’m not ready to examine too closely.
It’s genuine, unguarded, the kind of laugh that rewires a room.
It makes him look younger, less like a man carrying the weight of an empire on his shoulders and more like someone who might, under very different circumstances, have been just a person.
I turn back to the island and finish wiping it down with more force than is strictly necessary, because if I keep looking at him laughing, I’m going to do something catastrophic like tell him I’m falling for him, and we have already reached our honesty quota for one night.
“Stop laughing at me,” I say.
“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because you are extraordinary.”
“Same thing.” I rinse the dishcloth out, toss it back over the tap, and refill my glass because I need something to do with my hands. “Don’t make it weird.”
“You just said my cum is your cum, Alina. It’s already weird.”
“It’s not weird, it’s logical. We are married.
Married people share things. Finances. Toothbrushes.
Bodily fluids.” I down the shot and immediately regret it because he is looking at me with that expression again.
The one I’m collecting. The one that makes my chest do something structurally unsound.
“Toothbrushes,” he repeats.
“Don’t push it.”
He pours his own shot and leans against the counter opposite me, all dark ink and low-slung joggers and the absolute audacity of looking like that after everything we’ve just done. He drinks slowly this time, watching me over the rim.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing the staring thing again.”
“And?”
I grab a piece of chicken and bite into it because I need something to occupy my mouth that isn’t words I’ll regret.
The kitchen is warm, lit by the overhead strip that’s slightly too bright, making everything feel too real.
No candles. No ceremony. Just cold chicken and Beluga, and my husband’s eyes tracking every move I make, like I might disappear if he looks away.
Husband.
I turn the word over in my skull and wait for the panic to show up. It doesn’t. That’s either personal growth or a very bad sign, and I’m too tired and too vodka-warm to figure out which.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Arkady says.
“I’m not thinking at all. That’s the problem.”
He tilts his head. “What does that mean?”
“It means I should be having some kind of existential crisis right now.” I gesture vaguely at the ring, at the kitchen, at him.
“We’ve been married for approximately three hours.
I’ve been your hostage for less than a week.
I signed a pre nup that Dima basically shoved at me and told me not to think about.
And I’m standing here eating cold chicken and feeling—” I stop.
“Feeling what?”
I chew slowly and look at him. “Fine.”
The corner of his mouth does that thing. Not the smirk. The other one. “Fine.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like it’s the best thing you’ve ever heard.” I point at him with the chicken. “It’s not a declaration of undying devotion. It’s just… fine. Calm. Like the inside of my head has gone quiet for the first time in years, and I don’t know what to do with that.”
Arkady is quiet for a long moment. He sets his glass down on the counter and crosses the kitchen until he’s standing in front of me.
He takes the chicken out of my hand, sets it on the board, and then grips my throat with one hand, the other one, pulling me closer to him by my hip. Deliberate. Unhurried.
“That quiet,” he says, “is what safe feels like.”
I stare at him.
“You’ve been running so long you forgot what it feels like to stop,” he continues. “Alina Ashworth was always moving. Always performing. Always one step ahead of something she couldn’t name. When your mother left, your world spiralled.”
“Don’t psychoanalyse me at this time of night in your kitchen.”
“I’m not psychoanalysing you. I’m telling you what I see. You stopped running when you walked into that shower with me. You just didn’t realise it yet.”
I want to argue with him. I have the words lined up and everything.
But they dissolve somewhere between his hands and the look in his eyes, and I’m left standing here with nothing but the truth of it sitting quietly in my chest like a stone that’s been there so long it’s become part of the foundation.
“I hate it when you’re right,” I say.
“I know.”
“It’s incredibly annoying.”
“I know that too.”
He releases my throat, and I let out a breath that’s been sitting somewhere behind my sternum for about a decade and lean into him, my forehead against his chest, my hands curling into the fabric of his joggers.
He doesn’t make a big deal of it. He doesn’t say anything smug or triumphant.
He wraps one arm around me and holds on, his chin dropping to the top of my head, and I let myself stop.
It lasts maybe thirty seconds before my brain starts back up again, because apparently that’s all the stillness I’m capable of in one go. “The meeting tomorrow,” I say into his chest. “I need to know who’s going to be in that room.”
His hand moves up my back, slow and steady. “Vik will brief you in the morning.”
“I want to know now.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” he says. “You need sleep more than you need a briefing.”
“I need both.” I pull back enough to look up at him. “Give me names so I know who I’m going to be looking at.”
He studies me for a long moment, the kind of look that takes stock of everything and gives nothing back. Then he exhales through his nose and releases me, moving to the kitchen doorway. “Come on.”
I grab the vodka bottle off the island and follow him to the office.
The office is exactly as I’d expect. Dark wood, clean lines, everything in its place with the deliberate order of a man who controls his environment because he can’t always control what happens inside it.
A single lamp burns on the desk. He drops into his chair, and I perch on the edge of the one opposite, tucking my feet under me, the bottle balanced on my knee.
He opens the laptop, taps for a few minutes, and then turns it to face me. A grid of photographs stares back. Twelve men in total.
“Meet the Saranov family,” he says.
I lean forward and glare at the men on the screen, remembering features like the scar in the eyebrow, the crooked nose, the eyes so black they look like pits from hell. “This is all your family?”
“Not all of them. Not by blood, anyway. That’s not how it works. They are the Brotherhood of Saranov. Mostly lone wolves, men who have proven themselves, some from families who are not Bratva but prominent in other areas.”
“Like what?”
“Government, finance, the usual.”
“Names. Start with him.” I point to the guy on the top left.
“This is a hierarchy. The top line is the blood family. That’s my cousin, Vsevolod Saranov.
Or Seva. Thirty-three and next in line. An enforcer of sorts.
Next to him is my other cousin, Grigory.
Grisha to everyone except Nik, who refused to shorten anyone’s name on principle.
” He taps the screen. “Grisha is thirty-five, runs the financial arm. Laundering, primarily, but he has his fingers in everything that generates paper.” He moves along the row.
“The third blood family member is Miroslav. My uncle. Nik’s younger brother. ”
I look at the photograph. Miroslav Saranov is heavier than his brother was, broader across the jaw, with the kind of face that looks like it was designed to project authority and has been doing so for so long it’s forgotten how to do anything else.
His eyes are pale, almost colourless. “He’s the one who did it. ”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
Arkady inhales deeply and looks like he is about to blow a gasket, and if I were anyone but his wife, he probably would. I see how this works now. Protected. Even from him. “Do not accuse anyone of anything unless you have three forms of proof, okay, krasotka?”
“Sorry,” I mumble. “It’s just… I don’t know… he would trust his brother.”
“Moving on,” he says swiftly. “Last Saranov on this row is Anton. Miroslav’s boy. Twenty-nine. Runs the clubs, fronts the glamour, thinks he’s untouchable because he grew up at Nik’s table. He’s not stupid, but he’s vain. Vanity makes men sloppy.”
I file that. Seva, the next-in-line; numbers guy Grisha; Uncle Stoneface; and Pretty Boy Anton.
“And the rest?” I ask.
He scrolls. Second row, four more faces fill the screen.
“Lev Orlov,” he says, tapping a thick-necked brute with pale eyes. “Old guard. Controls the docks in Tilbury. Calls himself practical, which means merciless when it’s efficient. He loved Nik. Or loved the stability Nik gave him.”
“Loved,” I murmur, and he cuts me a look. I lift a hand. “Not accusing. Not yet.”
“Next, Pavel Markov.” A sharp suit with a scar through one brow and a banker’s smile.
“White-collar. He launders for half the city. Thinks he’s above blood and bullets.
He isn’t. Ilya Reznik,” he continues, pointing to a wolfish face.
“Clubs and coke. He’s unstable when he’s on a run.
Which is often. Never underestimate a man who can go three days without blinking.
He’ll do anything to make the noise stop. ”
I make a small face. “Noted. Next.”
“Roman Chernov.” He taps a broad, square face with a brutal nose. “Ex–Spetsnaz. Runs the private security contracts. He’s loyal to money and to whoever signs his remit. Nik kept him fed. I intend to do the same.”
“Roman looks like he strangles people with his bare hands for exercise.”
“He prefers garrottes. Yury Malin.” A narrow man with wire-frame glasses and a banker’s calm.
“Construction, waste management, and planning permissions. He looks like wallpaper. He’s not.
He moves money through concrete like it’s water.
Next is Kaspar Volkov. Imports. The sort of imports you don’t list on a bill of lading.
Smart, patient. He’s ambitious, but he prefers to attach himself to a sure thing rather than make a bid himself.
Anatoly Vetrov. Imports. Puts antiques on manifests and people in the crates.
He hides behind charities. Nik tolerated him because he paid on time and kept the press quiet.
And last but not least, Dmitri Baskov. He controls some northern spots we are looking to get a hold in. He went dark a few days ago.”
“Dark?”
“Missing.”
“I know what dark means. Don’t you find that suspicious?”
“As fuck. But what can you do without proof?”
“Okay, so will he show tomorrow?”
“We’ll see.”
“That’s all of them.”
“And their seconds, maybe one or two extra security. Thirty max.”
“Fuck. Where are you going to put them all?”
“In the living room.”
“Make sure to close the blinds,” I mutter.
He chuckles. “Not my first rodeo, wife.”
“Sorry, just thinking out loud. Do you want me there as they file in or appear later once they are all assembled?”
He searches my gaze for a moment. “Already there.”
“Good choice,” I say, standing up and taking a swig from the bottle. “I’m going to bed. You coming?”