Chapter 22
Alina
Iwake to grey light and the smell of coffee.
For approximately thirty seconds, I lie still and let my brain catch up with my body, which is telling me several things at once.
That I’m warm. That I ache in places I’ve never ached before, which is impressive given my general lifestyle.
Turning my head, I see the coffee mug, steaming on the bedside cabinet and hear the shower running.
Groaning, I sit up and grab the mug, taking a sip of the scalding liquid and letting the burn ground me in the reality of this morning.
Alina Saranova.
I test it again, quietly, just moving my lips around the shape of it.
It still tastes like ash and expensive Champagne.
It still doesn’t feel real. But the ache between my thighs is very real, and the ring on my finger is real, and the man in the shower is very, very real, so I suppose I’d better get used to it.
I pull the sheet up and lean back against the headboard, both hands wrapped around the mug, and take stock.
Tonight, I will be in a room full of men who have built careers out of identifying weakness and exploiting it before the target has finished their morning coffee.
I will sit beside a man who has been pakhan for a few days and project the kind of calm authority that says I was always going to end up here.
I was always going to end up here. Alina Ashworth was a lie. Alina Belova has always been who I am and who I was destined to be.
The thought doesn’t frighten me the way it should.
The shower shuts off.
I drink my coffee and listen to the sounds of him moving around in the bathroom.
The clink of something on the counter. The rasp of a drawer.
The deliberate, unhurried rhythm of a man who woke up this morning with the same weight on his shoulders as yesterday and has already decided what to do about it.
I think about the men in those photographs.
Twelve faces I’ve registered and filed behind my eyes like a deck of cards I intend to play correctly.
But the one I need to watch like a hawk is Miroslav.
The younger brother with those colourless eyes that looked through the camera like it owed him something.
I don’t have proof. In a room full of men who have survived decades by never moving without certainty, accusations without foundation aren’t just useless—they’re fatal.
But there’s something about the way Arkady’s jaw locked when I said the name.
Not the way a guilty man looks. More like a man who’s been waiting for someone else to say the thing he hasn’t let himself think.
That’s not nothing.
The bathroom door opens. Steam billows around Arkady as he steps through, one hand gripping a towel slung dangerously low on his hips.
Water beads trace slow paths down the tattoos spanning his chest. His gaze finds me—coffee mug cradled in my palms, sheet pooled at my waist, his ring catching the grey morning light.
His pupils dilate slightly, jaw tightening.
Yesterday, he would have smoothed his expression into something unreadable.
Today, he just stares, tracking every inch of me with the focused intensity of a man memorising something he can’t afford to lose.
“You’re awake,” he says.
“Do you ever sleep?”
He shrugs and moves to the wardrobe, the towel dropping to the floor with a soft thud.
I fix my gaze on the rippling surface of my coffee, tracing the steam with my eyes while my fingers tighten around the warm ceramic.
My throat goes dry at the rustle of fabric in my periphery.
I take another sip, burning my tongue, and cross my ankles beneath the sheet. The clock on the nightstand reads 8:17.
“Vik will brief you at nine,” he says, pulling on dark pants and then a dark shirt.
He rolls the sleeves up, and I take a sip of coffee to stop myself from drooling over his well-defined forearms. “I need you to listen to everything he tells you and not argue with him. He is less indulgent than I am.”
My lips curve up. “Just with me, I assume, you mean.”
He smirks and leaves that question unanswered.
Instead, he goes to my side of the wardrobe and starts rooting through the minimal amount of clothing I have.
He yanks out a pair of jeans, and a black long-sleeved tee.
“Cover up, krasotka. Don’t give me a reason to shoot him between the eyes for staring. ”
“Fair, but what do I wear tonight? I don’t think jeans and a tee are going to make much of an impression on the brigs.”
His chuckle is raw. “Allow me to make a suggestion?”
“I’m all ears.”
He opens the third set of doors, and I nearly choke on my coffee.
I place it down before leaping out of bed and naked as the day I was born, I rush over to the racks of clothes all lined up neatly by length.
There are dresses, skirts, jackets, smart trousers, floaty trousers, long summer dresses, evening gowns and everything in between.
“Holy fuck,” I mutter. “When?”
“This morning. You sleep like the dead, Mrs Saranova. And, you snore.”
“I do not snore!” I exclaim. “You had someone come in here while I was sleeping?”
“No, I brought it up.”
“And lined it up exactly how you wanted it,” I murmur, not annoyed, just impressed.
No, that’s not even the right word. Touched.
That’s the word. I’m touched that he stood in here in the early hours of the morning, hanging dresses and folding things and arranging them by length like some kind of terrifying, tattooed stylist. That he knew what I’d need before I did. That he thought about it at all.
I run my fingers along the hanging rail, fabric whispering against my fingertips. There are things here I would have chosen myself and things I wouldn’t have looked at twice in a shop, but which I already know will look extraordinary. He has taste, which shouldn’t surprise me, but somehow does.
“You picked all of this?” I ask.
“I told someone what to get.”
“But you chose it.”
He doesn’t answer, which means yes.
“Underwear?”
He nods to the drawers.
I cross over to it and pull my one open to find it all neatly stacked with lingerie that makes me moan like a crazy woman.
Silk, lace, sexy, all the things I would normally choose for myself, but now are for him.
I turn back to him, trying not to cry. “Tonight?” I clip out, trying to get back on track before I pull everything out of the wardrobe and roll around in the designer fabrics, having missed this aspect of my lifestyle more than I thought.
He moves to the wardrobe and studies the rail for a moment, then pulls out a dress I didn’t notice before.
Deep midnight blue, almost black in the low morning light.
Structured at the bodice, fitted through the hip, with a slit that stops just above the knee.
Conservative enough to command respect. Dangerous enough to command attention.
He holds it out to me.
I take it and hold it against myself, looking down. “Heels?”
“Black. Second shelf.”
I find them. Simple, pointed toe, high enough to give me presence without making me look like I’m trying. I set them on the floor beside the dress and stand back, assessing the combination the way he would. He’s dressed me for war, and done it in a way that looks effortless.
“Perfect,” I say.
“I know.”
“I have a request.”
He huffs out a small breath but says nothing. His eyes are dark, waiting for the axe to fall.
“I want my phone, or a phone at least. I need to call my dad, and talk to Mina and Jess, even Nadia. I am not your prisoner anymore, I am your wife, and I demand that you treat me that way.”
He studies me for a long moment, and I watch the calculation happen behind his eyes. The muscle in his jaw ticks once, twice, and then he exhales through his nose with the resigned quality of a man who has already lost the argument and knows it.
“Your father first,” he says. “I will get Dima to bring one up. Clean. Monitored. Tracked.”
I lift my chin, but I expected nothing less. Bratva wives are extensions of their husbands. I have known that my entire life. I knew that signing the pre nup and marriage certificate. “Of course.”
“Your friends you will call after the meeting.”
“Arkady—”
“After.” His voice doesn’t rise. It never rises.
It just gets quieter, which is somehow worse.
“I need your head in that room tonight, not distracted by whatever your friend is going to scream at you down the phone because she’s been trying to reach you for days after seeing you be…
” One corner of his mouth pulls up, a slow curl that doesn’t reach his eyes.
Those remain winter-cold, calculating. “… removed from the club.”
He has a point, and I hate it. Mina will absolutely scream. She will probably cry, and then she will scream again, and then she will ask me approximately forty-seven questions in the space of three minutes, and by the time I hang up, I’ll be a wreck. He’s not wrong to protect the timeline.
“Okay,” I say, because it is. “But my dad. Now. This morning. He needs to know he gained a son-in-law.”
Arkady’s expression does something complicated. It moves through several things in quick succession—calculation, resignation, and something that looks almost like apprehension, which on his face is so alien it takes me a moment to identify it.
“He’s going to lose his mind,” he says.
“Maybe.”
“Get showered. Dima will bring it up in ten minutes.”
I nod and take the jeans, tee, and some underwear into the bathroom with me.
The shower is hot, and I stand under it longer than I need to, letting the pressure work through the ache in my shoulders and the deeper, more interesting ache lower down.
I think about the phone call. About my dad’s voice, which I haven’t heard in days and which I’ve been pretending I don’t miss because missing it feels like admitting I’m in over my head.
I’m not in over my head.
I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. That’s the terrifying part.
I wash my hair, condition it, and drag myself out before I shrivel up like a prune. I dry off, pull on the clothes and blow dry my hair as quickly as I can before I drag a brush through it until it lies flat and glossy against my shoulders.
When I come back into the bedroom, the phone is sitting on the bedside cabinet.
The latest model in pink, and I smile. He knows his wife.
He knew I’d ask, and he was ready. I slide my thumb over the screen, and it opens without a passcode.
Knowing him too well already, I tap the contacts and see three numbers.
Dad, Mina and Jess have been added. Nadia, he probably couldn’t find out yet from just her first name and the fact that she goes to the gym.
It’s fine. I’m sure she isn’t losing any sleep over where I am.
I inhale deeply and let it out before I hit video call on dad’s number.
He will want to see me. The screen glows for three rings.
Four. I’m about to convince myself he isn’t going to answer, that he’s in a meeting or on a job or deliberately making me sweat, when his face fills the screen.
“Alina.” He says my name like he’s been holding it in his mouth for days, waiting to put it down somewhere safe.
“Hi, Dad.”
His eyes move over me. Taking inventory. Checking for damage the way he’s done since I was small. “You’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“He’s treating you well?”
“Yeah.” I pause. “Dad, I have something to tell you.”
His jaw tightens. Not much. Just enough. He already knows something is coming. He has always been able to read the architecture of bad news in my face before I’ve even opened my mouth.
“What did you do?” he says.
“Nothing bad.”
“Alina.”
“It’s actually good. Arguably. From a certain angle.”
“Alina Belova.” His voice drops to the register he reserves for things that are about to cost someone dearly. “Tell me what you’ve done.”
I take a breath. There is no elegant way to do this. There is no framing that softens it, no arrangement of words that makes a man like Valery Belov hear I married a Saranov after a few days and feel anything other than the urge to commit violence. So I don’t try to soften it. I just say it.
“I got married last night.”
The silence that follows is the specific quality of silence that precedes a detonation.
His face goes very still. Not blank. My dad’s face is never blank.
It goes still the way a man goes still when he is choosing, very carefully, which of the thousand things he wants to say he is actually going to say first.
“To who?” he asks. Not a question exactly. He already knows.
I let out an inappropriate giggle. “Arkady, obviously.”
He breathes out through his nose, his eyes flashing dangerously. “He forced you?”
“No, not exactly. It’s a strategy, yes. I agreed to it. It’s above board. It’s fine.”
“Strategy?”
“I can't explain. It’s not my place. Just know that we know what we’re doing.”
“And after the reason for this hasty wedding? You will divorce? Did you sign a pre nup?”
“I did sign a pre nup, but we aren’t getting a divorce or an annulment. We are staying together.”
“Alina—”
“Don’t give me the thousand and one reasons why you think it’s a bad idea and it won’t work. I’m an adult, I can make my own decisions, and I did. We are good. I promise.”
The silence on his end stretches long enough that I start to wonder if the connection has dropped. Then he says, very quietly, “Put him on.”
“Dad—”
“Put. Him. On.”
I close my eyes for a second. This was inevitable.
I knew it was inevitable. I still wasn’t ready for it.
I get up off the bed and open the door to see Arkady leaning against the hallway wall, that smirk on his face that tells me he knew what was coming.
He holds his hand out, and I give it to him, my eyes screaming an apology at him for whatever my dad is going to yell at him.
He takes the phone without breaking eye contact with me, and then turns away, walking back down the hall. I don’t follow. Some conversations are not meant to have an audience, even if I’m the subject of them.
I lean against the doorframe and stare at the ceiling, before I go back to the bedroom to pull on a pair of socks and my trainers, before going to meet with Vik and hopefully grab some snacks on the way.