Chapter 6 OKSANA
Not much later, he leaves, telling me to get some rest and promising to have guards around me at all times. "For now, we'll keep the charade. You're my wife, and I protect what's mine," were his parting words.
Why the hell did that sound so sexy?
When the nurse came by a little while later to check on me, I asked her to give me my phone from the pocket of my clothes and to close the sliding glass doors. I have no intentions of letting the Italians overhear my conversation with Grigori. Just in case, I ensure we speak in Russian.
"When were you going to tell me you married an Italian mobster?" He greets me.
"My, word travels fast," I reply, a smile circling my swollen lips.
He can pretend all he wants to be the big bad Bratva Pakhan, but I know he loves me and would do anything for me.
It wouldn't surprise me to know that he has followed my every step from landing in New York to arriving at St. Raphael's.
"No congratulations? No, ‘I'm sorry you got shot and almost died’? "
"Certain jobs come with certain risks," he counters.
Only Solnyshko—Grigori calls his wife little sun, and the nickname has stuck—and I ever hear the thread of steel beneath his calm.
To the world, he’s a psychopath who’d auction his own soul for the right price.
Reputation is armor. But my sister-in-law and I know the truth: after the auction, he’d torch the buyer, salt the earth, and keep walking through the fire until even the smoke was afraid to rise against him.
"Any word on the leak?" I ask, keeping my voice low.
A beat. Then, winter-dry, "Not yet. But I'll find him."
The rest is understood. Grigori doesn’t extract information—he excavates it. If torture came with degrees, he’d be a decorated professor.
"So," Grigori says, returning to his original question, “you married him?"
Not curiosity. Judgment. A reminder that every choice I make reflects back on him. That if this is a lie, it better be a good one.
I almost laugh. Almost.
"It’s a charade," I say evenly. "I needed his eyes on me."
"Oh, you have them," Grigori snarks, and now there’s dark amusement curling at the edges. "I would’ve paid to see the moment Stephano Conti realized the storm just walked down the aisle wearing his ring."
I exhale a short, humorless sound. "I’m living the replay. Trust me."
The amusement dies. Leather creaks on the other end. He’s pacing, slow and lethal, the way he does when the world is about to get smaller.
"We traced the noise," he says. "Not the source. Just the path."
That’s new. And a good step forward. "And?"
"And one of my channels talked when it shouldn’t have." A pause. Controlled. Angry. Which means this is serious. Grigori only goes silent when he's really fuming, not just for show. "Not enough to burn us. Enough to confirm intent."
"Contained?" I ask.
"For now." Another pause. "I’m narrowing it."
That tells me everything. Grigori doesn’t narrow unless he’s already chosen who’s on the list. "Who?"
"What do you want, sestra?" he asks.
Everything.
"Leverage," I say instead. "Time."
He stops moving. "You’re taking this personally."
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. He already knows.
"I take every mission personally." I remind him. And then, "You didn’t answer my question."
"I was going to tell you when you weren’t one twitch away from ripping the IV out and finishing what the bullet started.
" He stops. The line goes so quiet I can hear the monitors behind me counting my heartbeats. Then his voice drops, rougher than I’ve ever heard it, like the words are clawing their way out. "We found one."
I hold my breath because I can tell whatever name he is going to give me is going to be personal. "Jury Ovanko."
Fuck!
That hurts.
Jury was my father's second-in-command. He was like an uncle to us.
"Why?"
I can hear the shrug through the line, followed by a short huff, "Why do men do things?"
"A woman?" I guess, even more astounded now.
"Not just any woman."
Outside, one of the suits shifts, tipping his head toward the nurses’ station. They’re not careless; they’re bored. Bored guards get creative. I lower my voice.
"Donna Margarita?" I whisper.
"Donna Margarita," he confirms.
Goosebumps run up and down my spine, and not in a good way. "Then… this must have been going on for years."
"Da." He confirms.
"Who else?"
"We don't know yet. They are all individual Cells, working through a church, through hymns of all things."
"Hymns?"
He grunts, telling me his frustration level is at its max. "Da. Church of St. Vladimir. There is one here in New York, too. I'm following that trail."
"Why would Donna Margarita have been messing with us?" I think out loud.
"I don't know. Yet." He admits. "But your trip to Venezuela, that would have been a tip he would have sent out."
I can see that. Although I'm still having a hard time believing that my Uncle Jury sold me out. To Donna Margarita. It hurts in ways… I haven't thought possible since Papa shattered my heart at ten. It was Jury I’d gone to. Jury who encouraged me to go into training.
"Let me keep working this from here. Stephano thinks I’m breakable."
"You are. You’re in a hospital bed." He reminds me gleefully.
I glance at the IV, from which blood creeps into me like it’s ashamed to be late. Do I really need it, or is Stephano's insurance just that good, and they're milking it for all it's worth? My bet is on the latter. "Temporary condition."
"Hmm." Paper rustles; he’s checking a note someone handed him. Then he's all business. He's gotten all the important information. She was shot. In surgery. Survived. She'll live. Time to move on. "Updates?"
"Venezuela first." Like I said, my brother's emotions are… different. He would have shown more consideration for one of his soldiers being shot, but he wouldn't have cared as much as he does for me—or his wife. I give him a brief rundown on what I know, which isn't much since we last talked.
"Why would Donna Margarita be interested in us?"
"I haven't found anything yet," Grigori assures me. "I'm still checking."
Code for people died. My brother does nothing halfheartedly. "We're missing something."
"Not for long," his voice is ice.
"Dobro," I say. Good.
"And your… husband."
I smirk at the ceiling. "Husband adjacent."
"Is he a problem I must solve or a weapon I can steal?"
"You don’t steal weapons," I say. "You pick them up and see if the balance sings.
" I hesitate, then give him the truth he pays me for.
"He’s sharper than his reputation. Clean when he can be, dirty when he has to be.
He read my lie and decided to keep it alive because it was useful.
That makes him dangerous, but it also makes him predictable. "
"Careful, Oksana."
"I’m always careful."
He snorts, the fond, annoyed kind only Solnyshko and I ever get to hear. "You jump out of planes without checking the ground for knives."
"That was once."
"That was twice."
"Semantics." I shift, and nausea and heat climb my throat. I breathe through it. "What do you want me to do?"
"For now?" he says. "Play wife. Learn the house. Count the brothers and their teeth. Help Stephano get Nico out. The Conti boy might be useful to us. He'll circle. Let him. When he lands, leash him or cut him loose so he runs where I want."
"And the Venezuelans?"
"Our best bet to get to them is through the Italians."
A knock bangs the glass and slides the door an inch before the latch catches. I flinch on instinct, fingers finding the bed’s remote like it’s a trigger. The nurse peeks in, apologetic. "Sorry. Just your antibiotics, Ms.—" Her eyes dart to the clipboard. "Mrs.—"
"Later," I say in English, sweet as a scalpel. "Ten minutes."
She retreats. I watch the suits watch her, then me, then each other.
"Time’s up," I tell Grigori.
"One more thing," he says. "Solnyshko wants to see you."
A laugh punches out of me before I can stop it. "Your little sun in a room full of Italians? She’d blind them."
"That’s the point. She misses you."
I swallow that ache. "Tell her I’m not worth the airfare."
"I won’t," he says. "Because it isn’t true."
My chest tightens in a way the bullet didn’t manage. "Lyublyu, bratok." I love you, brother.
"I know," he says, then ends the call before the tenderness can become a weakness that needs killing.
I slide the phone under my pillow and close my eyes until the pulse in my wound stops trying to climb out. When I open them, the suits are joined by a third shape—taller, broader, a gravity that the hallway tilts toward without permission.
Him.
He fills the doorway without touching it. The nurse slips past him with the glare of a woman who wants to live forever. He doesn’t look at her. He looks at me like I’m a problem he decided to enjoy.
"You were supposed to be resting," he chides.
"I was. You are late." I point at the clock even though I have no idea what time he said he’d be back. "Your guards breathe too loud."
His mouth curves, a sin that almost looks like a smile. "Get used to it."
"Or get better guards." My voice is air and knives. "The one on the left favors his right leg. Men who limp shoot faster out of guilt."
He doesn’t turn to check, which means he already knows. He steps inside; the glass sighs shut behind him. Up close, I can smell the storm he carries—gun oil, clean soap, something like cedar burned down to its brass.
"You called someone," he says, conversational as a threat.
I angle my head. "Hospital privacy is very progressive in New York."
"I didn’t need to hear the words." He drags a chair with his boot and sits, forearms on his thighs, making the cheap plastic look like a throne. "I heard your face."
"Did my face say anything interesting?"
"It said you’re not afraid of me." He studies me with quiet, patient violence. "And it said you think I made a mistake."
"Did you?"
He doesn’t blink. "No."
My pulse does something I don’t authorize. "Then we’re both very clever."
"Tell me why you came to our table bleeding."
"Because the other table was on fire," I deadpan, and let a smile cut my mouth. "And because you have better silverware."
He rests his palm lightly on the rail of my bed, not touching, but close enough feel the heat. "I don’t care who you are on the phone with, Zhena. I care who you are when they come through that door."
"Zhena," I repeat—wife—letting the word roll and digesting the fact that he speaks Russian. "Big word for a small room."
"It’s a big room," he says. "You’re just lying down."
I look up at him and decide I like the way power sounds when he forgets to hide it. "You said you protect what’s yours."
"I do."
"Then consider this my wedding gift." I lower my voice until it can’t be heard past his collar. "The Venezuelans have Cells here who run their orders through churches."
He is silent when he stands. He doesn’t ask how I know. He doesn’t tell me I’m lying. He just nods once, the barest concession a king makes when a stranger puts the right map on his table.
"I’ll have someone look into it," he says. "You rest."
I salute with two fingers. "Yes, dear."
He should bristle. He doesn’t. He walks to the door, then pauses, half-turning like the room owes him a secret and he’s waiting for it to pay.
"Eat," he says.
When he leaves, the suits shift back into their posts. The nurse comes in with antibiotics and a look that says if I try to give her any trouble, she’s calling security.
I let the drip take me down a notch. The ceiling tiles line up like chess squares. Elsewhere, in a hundred churches, a hundred old women fold bulletins around hymns they don’t know are blood.
I close my eyes and picture Solnyshko laughing in her kitchen, sunlight on her bare feet, while Grigori pretends not to watch. I picture the Italian’s mouth when he said Zhena.
Most of all, I picture the absent look of surprise on Stephano's face when I told him about the Cells and hymns. He already knew. But he didn't tell me that he did. That makes him not just interesting, but dangerous. A man I should watch out for, not look forward to being married to.