Chapter 3
Chapter three
Mikhail
Coffee is the only thing that tastes right this morning. Black. Bitter. I hold the mug in both hands and stare at the Russian newspaper spread across the marble kitchen island. The words blur. Fucking blur. Because I am not thinking about NATO sanctions or oil prices.
I am thinking about the girl asleep three doors down.
She thinks I don’t hear her. The rustle of sheets, the pad of bare feet on hardwood. The stop-start of her breath as she stands in the hallway, deciding whether to flee or fight. I hear it all. Nothing moves in my home without me noticing.
She enters. Shoulders tight. Eyes sweeping the corners. She’s looking for exits, for cameras, for the catch. I like that she's smart enough to understand that there is always a catch.
“Sit,” I say. I don’t look up from the paper. “Eat.”
There is a spread on the counter. Bircher muesli. Eggs. Fruit. A carafe of juice she won’t touch because juice is for people who trust the sugar in their lives. I know this because I learned hunger the same way she did—you start by rejecting anything that seems too easy.
She sits. She doesn’t eat. She watches me like she expects betrayal, and my jaw tightens. I want to tell her that she is safe. But I am not in the business of lying to prey.
“Why am I here?” she asks.
Her voice is rough. Sleep and yesterday’s violence. Dante’s backhand left a bruise on her cheekbone that blooms purple today. I should have put the bullet in his skull instead of his kneecap. The mistake gnaws at me.
“Because you are a danger to yourself,” I say, “and by extension, to me.”
“So send me away again.”
I set the mug down. It hits the counter too hard.
“I did.” The words come out sharp. Razor blades wrapped in silk. “You found a drug dealer in under a week. I am curious what you would find next. A cartel? A cult? Perhaps a nice organ-harvesting ring in Southie?”
Her chin juts out. The gesture hits me somewhere low in the gut. She has a fucking chin on her, this girl. Made for taking hits.
“I was doing fine.”
“You were on the floor with a man’s belt undone.”
She flinches. Not much. A twitch around the eyes. But I catch it, and I hate that I catch it, and I hate more that I want to smooth it away with my thumb.
Silence stretches between us. The harbor is visible through the east windows, gray water chopping against the hulls of yachts I never use. Boston spreads out below, crooked streets and buried history, a city built by people who survived. She is built the same way. She'd die fighting before begging.
I take a breath. Time to show the cards.
“Dante’s dead,” I say. Her eyes widen a fraction. “He has a brother.”
“Jayshaun, they call him Big Jay.”
I nod. “He knows I took you. He doesn’t know why. But he’s put out word.”
I pause. I want to gauge if she understands the weight of what comes next. She stays still. Listening. “A few thousand to whoever delivers you to him,” I continue. “Another five if they kill me in the process.”
She gives an ugly, broken laugh. “I’m only worth a few grand? Inflation’s a bitch.”
“It’s not about the money. His men make more than that in a night. Pride is its own currency. You aren’t a target because you matter to him. You are a target because taking you wounds me.” She tilts her head. “It is inconvenient. For both of us.”
I push away from the island, move to the window, and look down at the street. From here, the pedestrians are insects. From there, I am just a face in a tower. Power is about perspective.
When I look at her again, she is hunched over the counter, fingers worrying the edge of a napkin. She spent three months building a business plan out of her own body. She would have made a magnificent lieutenant in another life.
“You were selling your virginity,” I say. “What if I offered you more for it? A year of your life in exchange for a child. An heir.”
The room goes quiet. Even the refrigerator stops humming.
Riley's brows meet, and her throat works. “You want to buy a baby from me?”
“I want to buy a future. So do you. I am proposing a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”
I lay it out. Cold. Precise. The way I would negotiate a shipping contract or a territory dispute.
“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. One year. You live here, in the penthouse. You carry my child via artificial insemination. Nothing invasive beyond what the doctors require. After the birth, you are free. The money, a clean identity if you need one, and enough to open your shop and start over. No strings attached.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. I can practically see her recalculating. “You’re serious,” she says.
“I am always serious.”
She should run away screaming. She should call me a monster and throw the orange juice at my face. Instead, her eyes narrow.
Then it happens. The shift from victim to negotiator. The same shift I made in a Vladivostok alley at sixteen, when a man offered me boots in exchange for a favor, and I countered with a blade.
“Three conditions,” she says.
I arch a brow. “Speak.”
“One. I want a contract. Written. Signed. Legally, it might not hold up, but it is binding in principle. I want it clear that this is a deal, not... not whatever the fuck this is.”
“Agreed.”
“Two. I keep working toward my cosmetology goals. During the pregnancy. I don’t get locked in this tower. I research my shop. I plan. I don’t become a—what do you call it—a broodmare.”
“Broodmare,” I repeat. The word darkens the room. “You will have freedoms. Within reason. With security.” She opens her mouth to argue, but I stop her. “Big Jay…”
“Fine.” She lifts her chin. Its stubborn tilt nearly undoes me. “And three...”
She trails off. For the first time since she walked into my kitchen, she looks unsure. Young. Twenty years old and trying to sell a body she has never fully claimed.
“This artificial insemination,” she says, not meeting my eyes. “I’ve never... I mean, I’m still...” She takes a breath. Steels herself. “I don’t want the first time something breaks my cherry to be a medical procedure. Or a baby.”
Riley Miller has been one shock after another.
She is never what I expect. This could have been a cold, distant undertaking.
But no. Why would I think she would ever make things simple?
The words hang between us. Heavy. Hot. Dammit, I was trying to do this clean—to not be the dirty old man my wet dreams tell me I am.
One flash to last night's dream, and my blood goes south before my brain can catch up.
I should say no. I am forty-two. She is twenty. It is already morally bankrupt. To do this under contract is to stand on the ledge of something from which I cannot step back.
“You want me to take your virginity?”
“I want it to be a choice.” Her eyes find mine. Furious. Proud. Gorgeous. “My choice. Not just biology happening to me. I’ve had enough of that. Foster care. The system. Men deciding where I sleep and who touches me. If I’m going to do this, I want to decide who takes that from me. When. How.”
My hand tightens on the counter. Brick. Mortar. Something solid. “You do understand,” I say slowly, “that conceiving may require several attempts. We might have to... practice repeatedly.”
She gives me a jerky shrug. “I understand. But I can take it. I could do worse.”
The laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it. Raw. Genuine. It hurts my throat. “You think this is funny?” she snaps.
“No, Riley.” I shake my head. “I think you are the first person in a long time to make me laugh.”
The humor fades. Then returns to my chest, heavy and old. I look at her—red braids, bruised cheek, spine straight as a sword—and want slams through me. Hunger of a different kind.
“I agree to your terms,” I say. “But hear me clearly.” I lift that chin, hold it in my hand, curling my fingers around the side of her face. Tracing the slight swelling. She’s so fragile. With no idea how easily she could be broken. I hold her wide doe-colored eyes. “Riley, do not fall for me.”
She snorts. The sound is inelegant. Perfect. “I should say the same to you, Pakhan.”
Pakhan. She says it like a dare. “Agreed,” I say.
She holds out her hand to shake. I stare at it. Her fingers are slender. Strong. I take her warm hand. It is calloused at the edges from work I cannot imagine.
“Two copies,” she says. “Of the contract.”
“Two copies,” I confirm.
“And I want it today.”
“As you wish.”
I release her hand. The loss of contact irritates me. I want to touch her again. Not sexually. Just... contact. Proof she is real and not some phantom bred from too many sleepless nights staring at fire.
She stands from the stool. The oversized robe in emerald silk, swimming on her small frame, slides open at the thigh. She does not notice. Or she pretends not to.
I notice.
I watch her walk toward the guest room. The set of her shoulders. The swing of her hips. The red braids that catch the morning light like warning flags.
At the doorway, she stops. Turns. “You forgot something,” she says.
“What?”
“The safety guarantee.”
I smile. It is not a nice smile. “Jayshaun Briggs will not live to see you open your shop. That is a Pakhan’s promise.”
She studies my face. Looking, I think, for the lie. She will not find one. “Okay then,” she says. “Get your lawyer on the phone. Let’s make this official.”
She disappears into the room. The door closes with a soft click, and I am alone again with the spread of food she did not touch, the newspaper I cannot read, and the hard, uncomfortable truth sitting in my chest. Breeding her is not my only reason for keeping her.
I reach for the burner phone. Dial the only attorney I trust with something this grotesque and this sacred.
“Draw up a contract,” I tell him. “Surrogacy. Non-standard terms. Two hundred fifty thousand, one-year term, full room and board, artificial insemination with... manual provisions.”
A pause on the other end. “Manual provisions?”
“Do not make me repeat myself.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
I end the call. I stand in the kitchen that costs more than most Boston homes, and I stare at the closed door, and I think about the fucking Ismailovs again. Anton with his son on his knee. Dynasty. Legacy.
A child. An heir.
And then, unbidden: Her.
I push the thought down where it belongs. Into the frozen ground with the rest of my sentiment.
This is a transaction. A contract. Two signatures. Two copies.
I am the Pakhan. I do not make deals with my heart.
But hours later, when the contracts arrive—crisp paper, black ink, clauses sharp enough to cut—I find Riley in the library.
She has showered. Changed into clothes my assistant bought without asking: dark jeans and a burgundy wine-colored sweater.
The bruise on her cheek looks better. Or maybe I am simply getting used to the sight of damage on her skin.
She reads every word. I watch her lips move. She does not trust me. She is right not to.
She signs first. Riley Miller. The handwriting is vivid. Slanted. Alive.
I sign below her. Mikhail Kutuzov. My signature looks brutal besides hers.
Two copies. Two signatures.
She holds hers against her chest like the placard in the warehouse. A shield. A claim.
“Now what?” she asks.
“Now,” I say, “we begin.”
She looks up at me. The morning sun softens the bruise on her cheek. She is twenty years old and walking into a cage I built, and I want to protect her. The realization unsettles me. It terrifies me more than any bullet ever has.
I step back. Put distance between us. Distance is the only armor I have left.
“The doctor comes tomorrow,” I say. “Tonight...” I stop. Tonight. The word suddenly feels dangerous.
“Tonight, what?” she asks.
“Tonight,” I say, “we do nothing. Rest. This is already enough for one day.”
She nods. She does not look disappointed. But she does not look relieved, either. She walks past me to the window. The same window she stood at last night. She presses her palm to the glass, and her breath fogs the cold surface.
Riley turns her head. Just slightly. And because this girl is full of nothing but surprises, she says, “Hey, Mikhail?”
“Yes?”
“You better not fuck me over.”
I almost smile. “I am many things, Riley. But I am not a man who breaks contracts.”
“Good,” she says. “Because I’m not a girl who allows it.”
She stays at the window. I stay at the door.
The deal is done.