Chapter 14 Giulia
Giulia
SONG: JUST PRETEND BY BAD OMENS
It became our routine after that night. Dimitri would arrive at seven, sometimes earlier if his day ended sooner. I started watching for him around six-thirty, positioning myself near the windows with a book I wasn't reading, and pretending I wasn't counting down the minutes.
He'd walk in and the house would transform. The emptiness I'd gotten used to during the day would vanish. Suddenly there was noise, movement, and life.
We'd have dinner. Helen outdid herself every night. Elaborate Italian meals that took hours to prepare. She claimed she was practicing, but we both knew she was showing off, trying to impress the man who'd made me stop moping.
I loved her for it.
After dinner we'd talk, sometimes in the dining room over wine, sometimes in the library by the fire. Sometimes we'd skip straight to the bedroom and conversation would happen later. Breathless and tangled in sheets that smelled like both of us now instead of just expensive detergent.
He told me stories about the Bratva I'd never find in files. About Maxim's terrible sense of humor. About Viktor's surprisingly good singing voice that only appeared when he was drunk. About Alexei's secret love of romance novels that he thought nobody knew about.
I told him about Columbia. About my professors and my friends and the thesis I'd been planning to write on the Fourth Crusade before my life imploded. About Isabella and her terrible taste in men. About Mamma's obsessive need to feed everyone who walked through our door.
We learned each other through words and silence and the thousand small intimacies that build between people who actually share space instead of just occupying it separately.
The house stopped feeling like a prison and started feeling like a home. Our home.
This place he'd bought to keep me away from his world had become the one place where we could exist without the weight of being Pakhan and mafia princess.
Without alliances and expectations and the constant threat of violence.
Here we were just Dimitri and Giulia. Two people who'd been forced together and somehow found something real in the wreckage.
He'd stay the night—every night. I'd wake up to his arm around me and his breath soft against my neck. Sometimes he'd be awake already, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read. Tender maybe. Or confused, like he couldn't figure out how this had happened either.
We'd have coffee together, and he'd leave for meetings around eight, kissing me goodbye at the door like we were a normal couple leading normal lives.
Then I'd spend the day waiting for seven o'clock.
Reading. Studying the Bratva files he kept giving me access to.
Cooking with Helen, who'd taken it as her personal mission to teach me everything her Neapolitan grandmother had known.
Talking with Margaret, who'd stopped being staff and started being something closer to a friend.
But mostly waiting. Counting hours. Watching the clock.
This obsession with his return should have worried me.
It should have been a warning sign that I'd gotten too attached too fast. That I was setting myself up for devastation when this inevitably fell apart.
I didn't care. I'd spent three weeks alone in this house.
Three weeks of misery and loneliness and feeling like a discarded obligation.
Now, I had this—had him. Mornings where he'd pull me back into bed, claiming he could be late just this once.
Dinners where we'd laugh until Helen threatened to separate us.
And nights where he'd touch me like I was precious instead of just convenient.
I wasn't giving that up without a fight.
"This is dangerous," I said one night.
We were in bed, tangled together in that boneless state that followed sex and preceded sleep. His fingers traced lazy patterns on my bare shoulder, abstract shapes that might have been letters or might have been nothing. I couldn't tell.
"What is?" His voice was drowsy, and content.
"This. Us. Being this happy." I turned to look at him. His gray eyes were soft in the lamplight. Unguarded in ways they never were during the day. "It makes me forget that the rest of the world exists. That there are still problems. Still threats."
"Would you rather go back to hating me?"
"No." The answer came immediately. Honest. "But I'm scared that when reality comes back it's going to destroy this."
Because it would. Reality always did. I'd read enough history to know that peaceful periods never lasted. That empires built on blood eventually drowned in it. That alliances held together by marriage failed more often than they succeeded.
We were living in a bubble. Beautiful and fragile and completely unsustainable.
Eventually the Bratva would need him for more than just daytime hours. Eventually my family would need me for something. Eventually Geraldo's anger or Yuri's ambition or any of a thousand other threats would puncture this perfect isolation we'd created.
And then what? Would Dimitri retreat back into being the Pakhan who couldn't afford vulnerability? Would I go back to being the lonely wife locked away for her own protection?
Would we survive reality or had we only learned to exist in this artificial space we'd carved out?
He was quiet for a moment, and I felt his chest rise and fall beneath my cheek. Steady. Solid. Real. Then he pulled me closer. "Then we'll fight to keep it. Whatever comes. We face it together."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
I wanted to believe him. To trust that promises made in the dark would hold up in daylight.
That the man who'd abandoned me for a week wouldn't do it again when things got difficult.
He'd kept every other promise he'd made lately.
Shown up every night at seven, stayed when he said he'd stay, and opened up in ways I knew cost him.
Maybe this promise would hold too.
"I'm falling in love with you," I said. I couldn't stop the words even though admitting it felt like handing him a loaded gun. "I know I'm not supposed to. I know this was supposed to be political. But I can't help it."
His hand stilled on my shoulder, just for a second, then his fingers resumed their patterns. Slower now, more deliberate. "That's dangerous," he said finally.
"I know."
"Loving me could get you killed."
"Loving anyone in this world could get me killed." I propped myself up to look at him properly. "But at least with you it would be worth it."
Something shifted in his expression. Pain maybe. Or fear. Or that terrible vulnerability he spent so much energy avoiding. "I don't deserve that."
"Probably not." I kissed him gently. "But you're getting it anyway."
He pulled me back down and held me so tight I could barely breathe. His face pressed into my hair, and I felt him shudder slightly. "I'm trying," he whispered. "To be someone worthy of that. Of you."
"I know."
"I'm going to fail. Probably spectacularly. I'm going to mess this up and hurt you and prove that I'm exactly as broken as I think I am."
"Maybe." I wrapped my arms around him and held on just as tight. "But you're going to try first. That's what matters."
We lay like that until my breathing evened out and sleep started pulling me under. His heartbeat steady beneath my ear, and his warmth surrounded me. This felt safe. Real. Like something worth protecting at any cost.
"Giulia?" His voice was barely audible.
"Mm?"
"I think I'm falling too. For you. I don't know what to do about it."
My eyes flew open. I started to sit up but he held me in place.
"Don't," he said. "Don't make me look at you while I say this. I'm barely holding it together as is."
So, I stayed, listening to his heartbeat accelerate, and felt his hands tighten on me.
"I wasn't supposed to care about you. You were supposed to be a political tool.
A pretty face at important functions. Someone I could ignore except when necessary.
" He laughed but there was no humor in it.
"Then you stood in that library and told me to get out of your house.
And I realized you were real. Not a tool.
Not an obligation. A person. Someone interesting and smart and entirely too good for someone like me. "
"Dimitri—"
"Let me finish. Please." He took a shaky breath.
"Every night I come here I tell myself I'm just maintaining the alliance, just doing my duty, but that's a lie.
I come here because you're the only good thing in my life.
The only place I don't have to be the Pakhan.
Where I can just be...me. Whatever that means. "
Tears pricked my eyes. I blinked them back.
"So, yes, I'm falling. And it terrifies me. Because everyone I've ever loved has either left or died or tried to kill me. And you..." His voice cracked. "You deserve so much better than what I can give you."
"What if I don't want better? What if I just want you?"
"Then you're making a terrible decision. But I'm selfish enough to let you."
I turned in his arms despite his protest and looked at him properly. His eyes were wet. Actually wet. Dimitri Morozov, the Pakhan, who'd killed more people than I could count, crying.
"I love you," I said, clear and definite. "I know it's too soon. I know we barely know each other. I know this is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done. But I love you anyway."
"Giulia—"
I kissed him, cutting off whatever self-deprecating thing he was about to say. I poured everything I felt into it. All the love and hope and terrified joy of finding something real in the least likely place.
He kissed me back. Desperately. Like I was oxygen and he'd been drowning. We made love again. Slower this time, more tender. His hands shook when he touched me. Mine shook when I touched him back.
Afterward we lay in the dark holding each other, both afraid to let go. Both knowing that we'd crossed some invisible line tonight. We'd stopped pretending this was just physical or just political or just anything other than what it was.
Love. Messy and complicated and probably doomed. But real. Undeniably real.
"When reality comes back," he said quietly, "when things get bad, promise me you won't regret this."
"I promise." I pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. "No regrets. Whatever happens."
"Even if I fail you?"
"Even then. We'll face it together. Remember?"
"Together," he repeated, like he was testing the word. Like it was foreign and strange and maybe dangerous.
But he held me tighter. And he didn't let go.
We fell asleep like that, wrapped around each other. Two people who'd been forced together and somehow found love in the wreckage.
The bubble wouldn't last forever. I knew that. Reality was coming. Violence and family obligations and all the things we'd been ignoring were waiting just outside our perfect isolation.
But for tonight, we had this. Each other and the promise that whatever came next, we'd face together.
I chose to believe in the promise instead of the fear.
I chose survival.
Even if the odds weren't in our favor. Even if loving him might destroy me. He was worth the risk.
We were worth the risk.
And when the walls finally came down, we'd either stand together or fall apart.
I was betting everything on standing.