Chapter 13 STEPHANO
The road to Creel is a bad joke. Our borrowed VW finds every pothole like it owes them money; the suspension died sometime in the nineties, and no one told the shocks.
Oksana stares out the window and pretends she isn’t gritting her teeth.
She’s pale under the desert glare—too pale, making her fading bruises stand out more—and every jolt hits the same place in my chest. To make matters worse, the AC isn't working, and with the windows rolled down, we're choking on the desert dust.
"Almost there," I lie.
"Good," she says, and doesn’t look at me.
After what seems like an eternity, Creel finally rises out of the hills with the tired face of a town that’s seen too many secrets.
I park two blocks off the plaza and walk Oksana into a small hotel with tile floors and a desk clerk who knows exactly when not to ask questions.
I sign us in under a name I haven’t used in years and tip enough to rent discretion.
The room is clean, but not the kind of clean that comes from pride, more like someone fought a losing battle with grime and decided good enough was a victory.
The walls are cracked near the ceiling, and the paint is flaking in the corners.
A fan hums overhead, halfhearted, moving hot air from one side of the room to the other.
The bed looks like it’s seen more sins than confessions.
I stop just inside the door and take it in. "Charming," I say. "I wouldn’t let my dog sleep in that bed."
Oksana drops onto the bed; the frame groans like it remembers better days. She smirks over her shoulder. "Not quite up to the Mafia prince’s taste?"
I glance at the sagging mattress. "I’m a simple man, Zhena. I just prefer thread counts that don’t look like they’ve been through a war."
She laughs, it's short and throaty and does things to my dick I don't really want to acknowledge. "Spoiled much?"
I shrug. "Why rough it when you have the money not to?"
She sits back, testing the mattress. The springs protest.
"You seem right at home," I say.
"I’ve slept in worse," she answers without missing a beat. She’s not joking, and that realization sits in my chest like a weight.
I study her, dust on her boots and shirt, but her eyes are sharp even when she’s dead on her feet.
There’s something about her that keeps knocking the air out of me, something that shouldn’t fit in my world but does anyway. And that’s the dangerous part.
I’ve spent my life cataloging threats—men, money, borders, loyalties—learning where lines harden and where they break.
I know what the Bratva is. I know how they move: patient, layered, cold as winter steel.
They don’t bluster like Italians. They don’t posture.
They endure, outlast, and then they collect.
And she carries that in her bones.
Not openly. Not like a flag. But in the way she conserves motion, the way her eyes never quite stop counting exits, the way she treats rest as a temporary ceasefire instead of a right. Whatever she ran from—or through—didn’t leave her soft. It honed her.
That should bother me more than it does.
Because if the Bratva is a storm on the horizon, then she’s the quiet before it. And I can’t tell yet whether she’s shelter… or the thing that teaches me how badly a man can bleed and still stand.
"Maybe one day you’ll tell me," I say.
She looks up, a grin playing with the corner of her mouth. "Maybe one day I will."
"When?"
She winks. "Our fiftieth anniversary?"
I huff a laugh. "At this rate, I’ll be lucky if we make it to next week."
"Optimism, Marito. It’s good for the heart."
She leans back, closing her eyes for a second, and I can’t help the small, traitorous thought that crosses my mind, how she looks like she belongs anywhere, even in this rundown room that makes my skin itch.
"Yeah," I murmur, more to myself than to her. "So are you."
She looks up, and our eyes meet. Something unspoken passes, something that makes the air sizzle with electricity.
I take an involuntary step forward, ready to take her into my arms and kiss her senseless, but the paleness of her face stops me.
She’s only a few days out of the hospital.
She needs time, not me dragging her into my bed like a starving man.
You didn’t seem to care about that yesterday, my conscience whispers, and I grind my teeth.
I made her bleed. The memory tastes like guilt. My chest tightens. I made her bleed because I couldn’t slow down. Bravo, Romeo. Try not to break the woman you… whatever-the-hell-this-is.
From my bag, I pull a bottle of prescription painkillers and a water bottle. Dispensing three pills into the palm of my hand, I hold them out to her, shaking the water bottle for good measure. "Take these, you’ll hate me for twenty minutes and sleep for hours."
She arches a brow. "Drugging me now, Conti?"
"Something like that."
"You better not take advantage while I'm out."
I smirk. "Is that an invitation?"
"You wish." Her voice is smooth as a blade, but something in her eyes gives her away—heat, defiance, the same damn fire that’s been eating at me since the first time she opened her mouth.
"You’re gonna take a nap too?" she asks, tilting her head, still suspicious but already reaching for the pills.
I shake my head. "I’m gonna find us some food. Maybe see if anyone in this charming town knows where a certain Mexican Cartel likes to play hide-and-seek."
She swallows the pills, gives me the smallest nod, and lets the fight drain out of her bones. She yawns, leaning back against the headboard. "Be careful with the food. We don’t want to catch Montezuma’s revenge."
I frown. "Monte—what now?"
She grins without opening her eyes. "Stomach bug. Hurling and the shits, the whole nine yards. It’s in the water. And the food."
I roll my eyes. "Charming. And you call me spoiled. Bias much?"
"No," she says, settling deeper into the pillow. "Just a sensitive stomach."
Unable to resist, I poke, "That must be the only sensitive part about you."
Her eyes open, gleaming with mischief. "Oh, I have others."
And just like that, if my cock could groan, it would. Damn woman.
She takes another sip from the bottle. "Go play spy, Marito. Try not to get poisoned."
All I can picture are those lips closed around my cock instead of the bottleneck. Fuck she's getting under my skin.
"Try not to burn down the bed while I’m gone," I warn, not liking how hoarse my voice is.
Her eyes are already closing, that smirk still curved against the pillow. "No promises."
I stand there for a second longer, watching her breathe, the rise and fall steady and human. The word wife slides around my chest again, stubborn and dangerous. I tug off her boots, slide her pants free, and pull the sheet up. She’s already drifting when I kiss her forehead.
"Asleep, you look…" The words that arrive are ones I don’t want to say out loud: fragile, beautiful, my wife… "…human," I finish, quietly.
A small smile plays around the edges of her full lips, and, with a sigh, she rolls over onto her side. I finish draping the threadbare sheet over her and admire the curve of her hips. Damn, she's beautiful. I can see my hands wrapped around those hips while…
Focus Conti, focus.
Before I go full pervert on her, I grab my jacket and head out into the heat, wondering what kind of man drugs a woman, tucks her in, and then risks his neck to keep her safe, and realize I already know the answer.
And I don't like it. The word wife is starting to mean more than a shield I can hold up to the world.
My phone vibrates. Dad. I let it buzz itself into silence and put it back into my pants pocket. It buzzes again. I'm tempted to ignore it, but duty gets the better of me. I frown when I see the name across my screen: Grigori Arsenyev. What the hell?
I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard enough to know he’s not the kind of man you want knowing your blood type. In Bratva circles, his name isn’t spoken; it’s measured. They talk about him like a ghost story parents tell their sons to scare them straight. A boogeyman with a doctorate in pain.
They say he lives like a czar out of time, in stone castles behind iron gates, with rooms lit by fire instead of bulbs. Rumor has it he collects medieval torture devices the way other men collect cigars. Not for show. For practice. He believes old pain teaches better than new science.
And yet, in the same breath, they’ll tell you he’s a genius with a keyboard. Knows how to gut a man through code as easily as through the ribs. He can launch a cyberwar while sharpening a blade. A psychopath on speed and silicon, half ghost, half algorithm.
He’s not just feared because he kills. He’s feared because he studies why people live, and then he takes it from them.
"Arsenyev," I say, dry as a tombstone, because I like to start with facts. "What a surprise. Calling to introduce yourself to your new brother-in-law?"
Silence answers like a blade dragged across glass. When he speaks, it’s slow and clean—danger broken into syllables. "Conti. I'm not calling to be pleasant. I'm calling to warn you not to kill my sister by negligence."
My nose detects the faint smell of piss in the corridor and wrinkles in disgust. A maid passes, shoulders tight, eyes on her shoes.
I watch her move out of habit, watching is how you measure distance between people and weapons.
She doesn’t slow. That little human motion makes this whole conversation feel theatrical.
"I’m not running a hospice," I tell him. "She’s sleeping." I leave out the part about the sedative. No need to hand him a knife with my name on it. "I’ll make sure she rests."
"My sister is stubborn as iron," his voice holds a deep Russian accent. "She'd rather die than admit a weakness."
"I’ve noticed. Self-immolation seems to be her hobby."
He snorts. Not a laugh, but I take it as such. "You are not amusing."