5. Nina #2
I’m not part of the Bratva. I don’t handle blood money.
I don’t sit in smoke-filled rooms while men decide who disappears.
I manage calendars, board materials, private dining rooms, investor calls, legal folders, acquisition files, travel logistics, and, because the universe hates me personally, Luka Kazan’s endless parade of beautiful women.
My job is clean. Well… clean adjacent.
Clean enough that my brother agreed to let me work here only because he trusts Luka more than he trusts oxygen, which is another problem entirely.
“You still there?” Misha asks.
I blink and realize I have been quiet too long.
“Yes,” I say quickly. “Sorry. I was looking for my pen.”
“Your pen?”
“I’m a secretary, Misha,” I remind him.
“He works you too hard,” Misha says.
“Yes.”
“I’ll speak to him.”
“No,” I say too fast.
Another pause. I stare at the wall. Well done, Nina.
“No?” Misha says slowly.
“No, because then he’ll know I complained.”
“You are complaining.”
“To you. That’s different. You’re family. You’re legally required to hear me complain.”
“He should not keep you late.”
“He keeps everyone late.”
“He should keep you less late.”
“I’m very moved by your feminism.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“I would never.”
“You are mocking me now.”
“I’m lovingly mocking you.”
He sighs. “I mean it, Nina.”
I soften despite myself. “I know.”
And I do know.
Misha’s protectiveness can be suffocating, absurd, occasionally medieval, and impossible to defend in modern polite society, but it is also the language he learned first. He was old enough to remember the worst years before I was born, old enough to know exactly how quickly life can turn, old enough to understand that little sisters are not fragile because they are weak but because the world is very creative in the ways it tries to hurt them.
The problem is that I’m not little anymore.
The larger problem is that Luka Kazan has apparently noticed.
My pulse gives one traitorous throb at the memory, and I shift my weight, instantly regretting it because the soreness between my legs wakes like a secret.
Misha says, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m sure.”
“You sound breathless again.”
“I found the pen.”
“That made you breathless?”
“It rolled.”
“Where?”
“Under the table.”
I look at the conference table. Technically, a pen could have rolled under it. Technically, many things have happened around this table today.
“I bent down,” I add, then immediately hate myself because even the phrase bent down feels obscene now.
Misha makes a thoughtful sound. “You need to exercise more.”
My mouth falls open. “Excuse me?”
“You are winded by a pen.”
“I’m not winded by a pen.”
“You just said—”
“I regret every word I’ve ever spoken.”
“That’s wise.”
I laugh despite myself, and this time it comes out almost normal. “Anyway,” I say, desperate to move the conversation away from my cardio, my brother’s suspicion, and the very real possibility that Luka is somewhere in this building still carrying my underwear like a war trophy, “how is your day?”
“My day is fine.”
“That was detailed.”
“I had meetings.”
“With scary men?”
“With boring men.”
“Sometimes those are the same.”
“Not everyone is Luka.”
No. No, they are absolutely not.
“Thank God,” I say, a little too sincerely.
Misha laughs softly. “He giving you trouble?”
I look around the boardroom, at the papers still scattered at the far end of the table, at my notebook, at my reflection in the glass looking flushed and guilty and alive in a way I don’t fully trust.
“No more than usual,” I say.
“Usual for Luka is not normal for anyone else.”
“That should be printed on the employee handbook.”
“He does not have an employee handbook.”
“He has one. I wrote most of it.”
“Then you should add it.”
“I’ll put it under workplace hazards.”
“Good.”
I gather my notebook from the table with one hand and try not to look at the exact spot where he put me. Impossible, of course. My eyes go there anyway. The pwood looks untouched. Smooth and innocent. As if it did not hold my shaking body ten minutes ago while Luka knelt between my thighs.
My cheeks burn.
Misha says, “Nina?”
“Yes?”
“You went quiet again.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“I’m your sister.”
“Exactly.”
I tuck the notebook against my chest and walk toward the glass wall, needing distance from the table.
My reflection follows me: beige dress, hair loose, flushed mouth, eyes too bright.
I smooth my palms over my waist, trying to pull myself back into shape, trying to become the Nina Hale my brother thinks he is speaking to.
The competent one. The sarcastic one.
The one who would never do something catastrophic with his best friend and then answer a family phone call before her pulse came down.
“I don’t even do real secretary work anymore,” I say, grasping for a normal complaint and finding the easiest one. “You know that, right? My title is executive assistant, but mostly I’m trying to keep his girlfriend of the week straight.”
Misha snorts. “That sounds like him.”
“It should not sound like anyone.”
“He’s always had terrible judgment with women.”
I press my lips together. Terrible judgment with women.
That seems unfair to the women and extremely relevant to me.
“Has he?” I ask and hate that I ask it.
“Beautiful women,” Misha says. “Dramatic women. Women who think they can soften him. Women who find out he’s not clay and then throw things.”
“He does inspire throwing.”
I grew up with Luka at the edge of my life in strange flashes: a tall man in black at our dinner table, younger then but still severe; a quiet voice in the hall when my brother thought I was asleep; a hand placing a ridiculous birthday gift on the table because he had no idea what little girls liked and apparently decided emerald earrings were appropriate for a twelve-year-old; a shadow beside Misha at important family moments; the man who never smiled much but once carried me to the car after I fell asleep at a winter party and pretended not to notice when I woke up halfway and kept my eyes closed because I liked being carried.
And now I’m one of those women.
The thought lands with such sudden ugliness that my throat tightens.
Not exactly, I tell myself immediately.
Worse, another voice answers.
Because the women in the diary at least get dinner first.
I close my eyes.
“Nina?” Misha says, softer now. “What is it?”
“It’s work,” I say. “Just work.”
“Leave early.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
Because your best friend just unlocked a door inside me with his tongue and walked away before I could decide whether to be furious or beg him to come back.
Because I don’t know if I’m the latest absurd entry in his invisible diary.
Because I’m terrified that if he calls me into his office now, I’ll still go.
“I have things to finish,” I say.
Misha sighs. “You work too much.”
The words make my stomach tighten. I turn away from the glass and look once more at the table, the closed door, the room that now knows something about me no one else does.
“Do you trust him?” I blurt out the question.
“With my life,” Misha says without hesitation.
I swallow. “And with mine?”
The pause is small. “With your safety,” he says.
I laugh lightly, because if I don’t, I might make a sound that means something. “Very specific.”
“You are my sister.”
“And?”
“And I trust very few men with anything that has to do with you.”
“But Luka?”
“With Luka,” Misha says slowly, “I trust him to protect you from everyone.”
The silence after that feels terrible.
Because what if the person I need protection from is Luka? And what if the worse truth is that I don’t want protection at all?
I force brightness into my voice. “Well, tell your terrifying best friend to stop making me organize his ballerinas, heiresses, and emotionally unstable wine collectors.”
“He has a ballerina again?”
“Former ballerina.”
“Worse.”
“Exactly.”
“Did she throw something?”
“Not yet, but the week is young.”
“Sounds like him,” Misha says again, amused and resigned.
I smile faintly, even as my chest aches.
Yes. It does sound like him.