Chapter Six
Nadia and I reached the bedroom door with her phone still open between us.
The photo showed Petya near the entrance of a brick building in a borrowed dark coat, one of my men visible behind him.
It was blurry, taken through glass or from across a street, but Petya’s face was clear enough.
The edge of the awning showed above his head, just as it had when I’d turned the phone toward Nadia minutes ago.
My men had already moved him from that building before Gennady’s message reached her.
The messages sat beneath the photograph.
UNKNOWN:
He has until tonight.
UNKNOWN:
Debt plus loss. Or I collect differently.
Nadia read them once more.
The color left her face, but she didn’t step back.
My shirt hung open where she’d unbuttoned it. Her mouth was swollen from mine. The room still carried the heat of the choice she’d given me with both eyes open. She’d chosen to be my wife without surrendering herself, and Gennady Kask had mistaken that choice for a new weakness.
I took the phone from Nadia before her grip could bruise her palm. “Tell me exactly where Petya is now.”
“Your men moved him seventeen minutes before the photograph arrived,” Lev said from the doorway. His voice stayed low. “The first guard checked in from the old site. The second location is clean, and Petya is under your protection.”
“Who sold Gennady the first address?”
“An old Kask gambling-room contact watched the street outside the first building and sent the photograph before he knew Petya had already been moved.”
“Bring the contact to me.”
“I’ll have him brought in.”
Nadia turned her head toward me. “You’re not doing that without me.”
I looked at her.
She stood with one hand braced against the doorframe and the other closed in the deep blue silk at her waist. The robe covered her from throat to mid-calf, but nothing about her looked hidden.
“You’re not handling this in a room where I don’t get a voice,” she said.
I held the phone at my side and watched the pulse beat hard at the base of her throat.
Gennady had put fear in her face.
He hadn’t put obedience there.
“Come here,” I said.
Her chin lifted. “That sounded like you were about to kiss me quiet.”
“If I wanted you quiet, I would’ve chosen the wrong woman.” I set the phone on the dresser and held out my hand. “Come here because I want you close when we decide what happens next.”
Nadia crossed the carpet without hurry. The robe brushed her calves, and the loose belt shifted where her fingers had knotted it too tight. She stopped within reach but didn’t put her hand in mine.
“You’re angry,” she said.
“I am.”
“At me?”
“No.”
“At Petya?”
“Petya is alive because you loved him enough to make terrible choices, and because I ordered my men to move him before Kask’s filth got close enough to touch him.” I kept my hand open between us. “Petya’s debt, his lying, and his pride will be dealt with, but Gennady comes first.”
Her lashes flickered once.
She looked down at the phone, then toward the hall, as if distance could put her brother where her eyes could reach him.
“Gennady sent that to make you run,” I said. “He wants you panicked, ashamed, and willing to trade yourself again because he believes fear teaches women to bargain downward.”
Nadia’s jaw set. “He’s going to be disappointed.”
“He’s going to be educated.”
A breath left her. It wasn’t quite a laugh. It was too sharp and too tired for that, but it carried enough of her dry edge to make the anger in my chest settle into something colder.
Lev looked toward the hall. “Irina is outside. She has clothes for Mrs. Sorin.”
Nadia’s head turned fast.
Lev didn’t correct himself.
Neither did I.
A flush rose along Nadia’s throat, then steadied beneath the robe’s deep blue edge. “I’m not Mrs. Sorin yet.”
“You will be before anyone can make the mistake of believing otherwise.”
Her eyes came back to mine. “Is that a romantic proposal or a threat to the paperwork?”
“Both, if necessary.”
This time, the sound she made came closer to a laugh, but it broke before it softened her mouth.
“I don’t want to hide upstairs while men decide whether I was worth enough money to fight over,” she said.
“I know.”
“I don’t want Petya dragged into a room and humiliated until he agrees he ruined my life.”
“He won’t be.”
“I don’t want you using him against me.”
She didn’t whisper. She didn’t apologize. She stood in my robe with my come still inside her and told me the line I wouldn’t cross.
My cock tightened at the sight of her courage, but the hunger stayed where it belonged. I would have her trust, or I would have nothing worth keeping.
“I won’t use your brother against you,” I said. “Not for sex, not for obedience, not for silence. Petya will answer for what he did because he’s a grown man and because he almost got you sold to Kask. He won’t answer as leverage over you.”
Her eyes searched mine.
I let her look.
I’d spent most of my life surrounded by men who believed a woman’s doubt was disrespect. They wanted soft eyes, lowered voices, and agreement delivered before they’d earned it. Nadia looked straight at me as if she would tear the truth out with her teeth if I tried to bury it.
My wife would ask questions. I wanted her teeth sharp. I wanted every man in my world to understand that before he opened his mouth near her.
Nadia finally put her hand in mine.
I closed my fingers around hers. “Gennady is forcing a public answer. If I pay him, he lives with the story that I compensated him for taking his property. If I ignore him, he keeps reaching through Petya. If I kill him in an alley, the Kasks make him a grievance before I’ve stripped the grievance from their hands. ”
“So you’re going to make him say it in front of people who matter.”
“Yes.”
Her palm tightened against mine. “Then I’m going to hear him say it.”
“You’ll be in the building. You’ll be protected. You’ll speak when it serves you and not when Kask tries to pull your anger into his mouth.”
“That’s close to deciding for me.”
“It’s close because I’m not finished explaining.
” I raised her hand and pressed my mouth to her knuckles.
“You’ll be there because you choose to be there.
You’ll stand where my men can shield you.
If you want to leave, you leave. If you want to speak, you speak after I’ve made the floor safe enough for your words to land as choice instead of risk. ”
Nadia looked down at my mouth on her hand.
Her voice was quieter when she spoke. “You can make a floor safe?”
“For you, I can make men crawl across it.”
The door opened behind Lev, and Irina stepped in with a garment bag draped over one arm and a flat box in the other. Her gray hair was pulled into its usual knot. Her black dress was plain, expensive, and severe enough to make the room feel like it should stand straighter.
“Miss Yelchin,” Irina said. “I brought options. Mr. Sorin asked for clothing you could move in.”
Nadia glanced at me. “When did he ask that?”
“Last night,” Irina said. “Before the rest of us knew how much trouble the day intended to be.”
Nadia almost smiled. “That sounds like him.”
“It does,” Irina said.
She laid the garment bag on the bed, opened the box, and revealed black wool trousers, a soft ivory sweater, a fitted black coat, low boots, and clean underthings folded with neat, practical care. The clothes were warm, elegant, and made for walking out of a room without anyone’s permission.
Nadia touched the sweater with two fingers. “This isn’t a dress.”
“No,” Irina said. “Dresses are for men who expect women to stand still.”
Nadia blinked once.
Then she looked at me as if I’d arranged the sentence myself.
I hadn’t, and Irina had just earned another raise.
“I’ll give you privacy,” I said.
Nadia’s grip tightened before I could step back. “Don’t leave the apartment without me.”
“I won’t.”
Lev shifted at the door. “The contact is being brought to the service level. We can question him here or at the club.”
“Here,” I said. “Nadia doesn’t need to stand in front of him.”
Nadia opened her mouth.
I looked at her. “He sold a location tied to your brother. You don’t need to watch me persuade him to regret it.”
“Is he going to leave alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is that because of timing?”
“Yes.”
She nodded once. “Then persuade him somewhere I can’t hear screaming.”
Irina’s face didn’t change.
Lev stayed expressionless.
Mine almost curved.
Nadia caught it and narrowed her eyes. “Don’t look pleased.”
“I’m not pleased.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m not lying. I’m proud.”
That stopped her.
Her fingers loosened around mine and then closed again, softer this time.
Irina lowered her gaze to the garment bag, but not before I saw the brief approval in her eyes.
Nadia swallowed. “Go deal with the contact.”
“I’ll be in the office down the hall.”
“I know where your office is.”
“Yes, you do.” I brushed my thumb over her wrist. “Get dressed, wife.”
Her breath caught.
I left before she could decide whether to argue or kiss me.
My office door shut behind me with a low click. The black stone, guarded elevator, and city beyond the glass stayed the same, but the penthouse felt colder without Nadia in it.
I buttoned my shirt and called my father.
Mikhail Sorin answered on the fourth ring.
His breath came rougher than it had a month ago.
The weakness in it struck a match against old anger I had nowhere to spend.
My father had taught men to lower their eyes.
Now the body he’d used to rule them had begun making its own demands, and the city had started leaning in to see if the old Pakhan would fall.
“You’ve made a mess,” he said.
His voice didn’t need a greeting.
“You taught me to make useful ones.”
A dry sound came through the phone. Pain caught the edge of it and turned it rough. “Your mother says you’re bringing war into my house over a waitress.”
“My mother knows better than to call Nadia that.”