Chapter 4
ARTUR
The first police officer through Katie’s door looks at the blood across the hall before studying the broken bedroom, where the attackers’ path from the entrance is impossible to miss.
Then he looks at Katie. “Is this retaliation for what she did to Igor at Velvet Fortune?”
Boris stops beside me.
The apartment smells of burned wiring and gunpowder under the garlic from dinner. Katie sits at the edge of her ruined bed with a blanket around her bare legs, one hand locked around Cherry’s.
The marks on Katie’s throat constrict my next breath because I was downstairs when one of the attackers closed his hand around her neck. My men reached the bedroom in time, yet the narrow difference between arrival and failure is bruising under her skin.
Misha was the last person I failed, and although I force the memory closed before it can open, the old failure tightens beneath my ribs. Every breached perimeter carries his name.
Katie is alive, yet my pulse stays high and my hands want to pull her closer just to prove it.
Nobody from Velvet Fortune called the police, nor was Igor’s name given to the emergency dispatcher. The officer arrived too quickly to have learned of his involvement through an ordinary report.
“Who told you Igor was involved?” I ask.
The officer’s eyes move toward the hall. “I heard one of your men mention him.”
My men have called him only the injured attacker since the shooting began; none has used Igor’s name.
“Which man?”
He reaches for his notebook as the pulse in his neck accelerates. “There’s a lot happening here, Mr. Dymov.”
“That is why I asked a simple question.”
He doesn’t answer my question.
Police corruption widens Katie’s danger beyond the locked apartment someone opened with a key or my club breached through a stolen service route.
Now a uniform has arrived carrying information he shouldn’t possess, proving her protection can’t depend on any single door, guard, or institution the enemy can corrupt.
I give Boris one look, and he speaks quietly into his phone as I cross to Katie.
She watches the officer too, fear visible in the stiff line of her back and the way her fingers check Cherry’s pulse every few breaths.
“We’re leaving,” I tell her.
“The police need statements.” Her voice is rough from the hand around her throat.
“This officer arrived with information from an attack we kept private.”
Katie’s grip tightens around Cherry’s hand, and she looks from the officer to me and stops arguing about the statements.
“Where are you taking us?” she asks.
“Somewhere the lock belongs to me.”
Katie looks at her bedroom, where blood has soaked into the rug beside her packed black duffel. “Give us five minutes.”
I give her ten.
In the dark ahead of dawn, two armored vehicles take us to secure rooms above a Dymov construction office whose ground-floor windows disappear behind steel shutters. Upstairs, plain furniture stands beneath white lights that expose every stain on our clothes.
Cherry showers first as a doctor examines her split lip and the swelling behind her ear. Katie refuses an examination until Cherry is cleared of a serious head injury, then submits to the doctor’s questions and careful hands.
Katie emerges in black leggings and a gray shirt supplied by one of my staff, ordinary clothes made intimate by exhaustion and the fact that they touch skin I carried out of a ruined room.
My jacket covers the shirt, its shoulders too wide and its sleeves hiding her hands, while the hem nearly reaches her thighs.
Clean soap can’t entirely cover the smoke in her hair.
Seeing Katie wrapped in my jacket sends heat through me at the worst possible moment, and my trousers tighten.
Katie sets her duffel on the office table to sort what the guards recovered, placing her identification beside three photographs sealed in a plastic bag atop her folded clothes.
A phone charger lies beneath the rent notice she can now afford to ignore.
Before returning each item, she checks it for damage with a care that makes the cheap objects irreplaceable.
Everything important to her fits inside a bag packed before anyone invaded her home, its zipper worn smooth from use. The clothes were folded for quick removal rather than storage, making me dislike whoever taught Katie to keep her life within reach of an exit.
I remove the magazine from my pistol, inspect the chamber, then begin cleaning plaster dust from the slide with a cloth.
Katie glances at the weapon. “Is that necessary during a marriage proposal?”
I keep my voice solemn. “The previous proposal lacked atmosphere, although the bullets did provide more than I intended.”
“Your improvement is debatable,” Katie replies dryly.
Her mouth almost curves before her bitten tongue makes the smile careful.
I put the unloaded weapon on the table. “Right now, Igor can kill an unattached witness and call it cleanup.”
My private order could send men after him, but each captain would still judge whether one civilian warranted extending a war. Naming Katie as my mistress would provide guards, access to my homes, and the appearance of status. The label would also advertise Katie as leverage worth taking alive.
Marriage activates obligations older than either of us: every captain swears to defend the boss’s legal family, and neutral organizations recognize an attack on that family as a declaration. Refusing to answer would weaken every promise holding the Dymov organization together.
Katie stops folding as the fluorescent lights flatten the color in her face, though anger soon warms it.
“So you need paperwork before my life becomes valuable?”
“Your life is already valuable to me.”
I didn’t intend to admit her value aloud, but the words bring her eyes to mine.
I continue before she can answer. “Marriage makes that value enforceable for men who don’t care what I want.”
She studies me until the heating vent grows loud in the room. My pulse stays steady, but the skin under my collar feels warmer.
“One year,” she says. “After that, I leave without your permission. My attorney represents me alone, and you receive no private reports about what she tells me.” She removes a notepad from the desk and writes the first demand.
The next line requires two million dollars in an account only Katie controls, less than I expected. I keep that opinion to myself because telling a woman her demand is inexpensive rarely improves the demand.
Katie adds secure housing for Cherry, guards of Cherry’s choosing, with protection equal to her own. Cherry will never be required to live with us, work for me, or accept involvement in Dymov business.
The pen presses harder as Katie rules out carrying weapons, transporting packages, holding funds, lying to police, or performing any other illegal task. Each restriction gives her back a choice the attackers removed when they used her apartment key.
I accept every line without alteration.
Katie studies my face. “I should have said five million.”
“You may amend the amount, but two million already appears sufficient to keep you away from my packages.”
“I kicked your assassin in the face. Your packages should be afraid of me.”
She gives me the full curve of her mouth this time, brief but real.
“No sexual obligation,” Katie says. The faint curve of her mouth disappears.
Her fingers tighten around the pen, and she expects resistance, perhaps because men have taught her that protection is rarely offered without an unspoken purchase.
Anger tightens my grip on the cleaning cloth.
“I won’t put sex in a contract,” I say.
Her shoulders lower slightly.
“If you come to my bed, I want you there because staying out of it has become unbearable. I won’t accept anything your fear or my protection purchased.”
Heat returns to her face. Her gaze drops to my hands before moving back to the notepad. “Your confidence should be regulated, especially when your jacket has fewer personality defects.”
The picture of her naked under my jacket worsens the pressure under my zipper, though the table conceals my reaction.
Katie clears her throat and winces before making a final demand that preserves everything placed in her name, her freedom to leave, and at least six months of protection after the marriage ends. The protection continues longer if her attorney documents an active threat.
“Your attorney decides,” I tell her. “I accept.”
She tears off the page and holds it out without crossing the space between us. “Find her.”
Nadia arrives forty minutes later in a navy suit, carrying a laptop as impatience hardens her expression, and she reads Katie’s handwritten terms before acknowledging me.
She establishes Katie as her only client, barring me from privileged information or any influence over her advice. I may contact Nadia only with Katie included, a rule delivered without apology.
“Good,” I say.
Nadia points toward the door. “Then leave us alone.”
I take my pistol and leave the building entirely.
The Dymov mansion is quiet when Boris and I arrive after sunrise.
Beyond iron gates, stone and dark glass rise with a severity that turns the building’s scale into restraint instead of display.
Morning travels across pale floors kept cool by the air-conditioning, and long corridors open in perfect lines toward guarded windows.
Nothing announces the cost because the house assumes anyone admitted already understands it.
In the study, beeswax warms the dark wood while bitter coffee waits on my desk; near Misha’s photograph, a cut-glass tumbler holds the memorial measure of vodka my family replaces on the anniversary of his death.
Ivan stands beside the windows with the marriage dossiers arranged in front of him again.