23. Razvan
RAZVAN
The humming of the Gulfstream’s engines matches the irritation pulsing in my temples, a low, vibratory growl. We are thirty thousand feet above the Russian wilderness, suspended in a pressurized tube of leather and mahogany, and the silence between us is thick enough to choke a man.
I sit in the oversized captain’s chair, my laptop open on the mahogany table, a spreadsheet of Baltic shipping manifests glowing against the dim cabin light.
I haven’t processed a single line of data in forty minutes.
My wound from the car fight is stitched and sore, but I don’t let the pain show.
My eyes keep drifting, my focus snagging on the woman sitting three feet across from me.
Lena is staring out the window. She hasn’t moved since we leveled off after takeoff. She hasn’t reached for her water, hasn’t touched the plate of smoked salmon the attendant placed before her, and most importantly she hasn’t looked at me. Not once.
It’s a new kind of warfare.
In Moscow, our relationship was a series of sharp edges.
She fought me with her eyes, with her tongue, with the way she bristled whenever I entered a room.
I knew how to handle that. I understood friction.
I understood the language of a captive clawing at her bars.
But this? This total, clinical erasure of my presence?
It’s driving me toward a ledge I didn’t know existed.
That sex…it changed the molecular structure of the air.
I can still feel her. The phantom sensation of her heels digging into the backs of my thighs, the way she arched into me as if she wanted to disappear into my skin.
In that hotel room, the masks didn’t just slip; they disintegrated.
She wasn’t the “traitor’s daughter” and I wasn’t the “monster.” We were just two starving people devouring each other in the dark.
I thought—naively, perhaps—that it would be a bridge.
I thought that once I had claimed her so thoroughly, once I had seen the absolute ruin of her composure, there would be a new language between us.
Instead, she’s deleted the alphabet.
“Lena,” I say. My voice is a low rasp, cutting through the hum of the jet.
She doesn’t blink. She doesn’t even shift her gaze from the clouds. It’s as if the sound of my voice is merely ambient noise, like the wind whistling against the fuselage.
“Lena,” I repeat, louder this time, the edge of my authority sharpening into a blade. “I’m speaking to you.”
She turns her head. It’s a slow, deliberate movement. Her eyes meet mine, but there’s nothing behind them. No hatred. No fire. No lingering heat from the bed we shared hours ago. It’s the gaze of a stranger looking at a piece of furniture.
“Yes?” she asks. Her voice is flat. Level.
“The security briefing for our arrival,” I say, gesturing vaguely to the papers on the table, grasping for a reason—any reason—to force a real interaction. “Lyosha will be meeting us at the private terminal. We’re going straight to the estate. No stops.”
“Fine,” she says.
One word. That’s it. She turns back to the window, the movement so dismissive it feels like a physical slap.
I snap the laptop shut. The sound echoes in the quiet cabin.
I want to stand up. I want to lean over her, trap her between the seat and my body, and demand to know where she went.
I want to remind her of the way she screamed my name in St. Petersburg.
I want to force her to acknowledge that I am the man who took a bullet for her—or at least, was willing to.
But I stay seated. Because for the first time in my life, I’m afraid of the answer. Or worse, I’m afraid there is no answer. Just this vast, echoing nothingness.
I’ve spent my life mastering men’s fears. I know exactly how much pressure to apply to a man’s throat to make him tell me his secrets. I know which accounts to freeze to ruin a rival. But I have no idea how to make a woman talk to me when she’s decided I no longer occupy the same reality as her.
I find myself obsessing over her profile.
The curve of her ear. The way a single dark strand of hair has escaped her clip and rests against the pale column of her neck.
I remember the taste of that skin. I remember the way it tasted of salt and peonies.
My hand twitches on the armrest, a localized tremor of pure, unadulterated need.
I have everything. And yet, I am sitting here, starving for a single look that isn’t empty.
The descent into Moscow is gray and dismal, matching my mood. We land at the private terminal under the shroud of a light drizzle. The tarmac is slick, reflecting the amber lights of the hangars.
Lyosha is waiting. He’s standing by the lead SUV, his hands folded in front of him, his face a mask of professional neutrality. But I see the way his eyes sharpen when he sees Lena step off the stairs. He’s checking her for damage. He’s checking me for the cause of it.
“Boss,” he rumbles as I reach the ground. “Welcome back.”
“Status,” I bark, my tone more clipped than usual.
“The estate is locked down. No incidents. The boy is, well, he’s been a handful. He’s currently convinced the playroom is a fortress and he’s the commander of the guard.”
A ghost of a smile tugs at my lips, the first bit of genuine warmth I’ve felt since the gala. “Good. Let’s move.”
The drive back to the compound is another exercise in silence. Lena sits in the corner of the SUV, her hands folded in her lap. She doesn’t look at the city as we pass. She doesn’t look at the reinforced gates as they hiss open to admit us. She is a ghost haunting her own life.
The moment the car stops in the courtyard, she’s out. She doesn’t wait for the guard to open her door; she’s already halfway to the main entrance before I’ve even unbuckled my seatbelt. She’s running. Not from the guards, but from me.
I follow her inside. The air in the foyer is cool, smelling of beeswax and old stone. I shed my overcoat, handing it to a silent maid, and head toward the stairs.
I hear him before I see him.
“Is it them? Is it?”
The high-pitched, frantic pitter-patter of small feet on the hardwood upstairs. Then, a streak of blue pajamas appears at the top of the landing.
“Superman!”
Theo doesn’t care about Bratva politics. He doesn’t care about shipping manifests or the fact that his father is a murderer. He only sees the man who promised he’d be back.
He clears the last three stairs in a single, reckless jump. I drop to one knee, my heart leaping into my throat as I catch him mid-air. He hits my chest like a cannonball, his small arms locking around my neck with a strength that surprises me every time.
“You’re back! You’re back!” he shrieks, burying his face in the crook of my neck.
“I’m back, Theo,” I murmur.
I squeeze him tight, my eyes closing. He smells like sunshine and that strawberry shampoo Lena uses on him. He is the only thing in this world that is pure, the only thing that doesn’t look at me and see a monster.
“Did you find the bad dragons?” he asks, pulling back to look at me, his eyes wide and searching. “Did you win?”
“I won, little man,” I say, my voice sounding thick. “They won’t be coming here.”
“I told Lyosha you would win,” Theo says, his chest puffing out with pride. “I told him you’re the strongest Superman in the whole world.”
I feel a strange, localized ache in my chest. I want to hear it.
I want to hear the word Dad. I want the title that isn’t a rank, the one that can’t be taken away by a coup or a bullet.
But I look at his face—the innocence there—and I know I haven’t earned it.
I’ve kept him safe, but I’ve also kept his mother in a cage.
“Go on,” I say, ruffling his hair. “I think someone else missed you more than I did.”
I look up and see Lena.
She’s standing in the doorway of the playroom, just down the hall.
She’s watching us. Her hands are gripped tight in front of her, her knuckles white.
She’s watching the man who killed her father hold her son, and for a fleeting, terrifying second, the silence between us cracks.
I see a flash of agony in her eyes, a collision of her hatred for me and her love for the boy in my arms.
She blinks, and the shutters go back up.
“Theo,” she says softly. “Come here, baby. Let’s get you cleaned up for dinner.”
Theo gives me one last squeeze before scrambling out of my lap. “See ya, Razvan! We’re gonna play dragons later, okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
I stay on my knee for a moment after he runs to her. I watch her scoop him up, her movements fluid and instinctual. She doesn’t look at me as she carries him into the playroom. She doesn’t acknowledge that I exist.
I stand up, brushing the dust from my pants. I should go to the study. I have a war to manage. I have a list of names from St. Petersburg that need to be systematically erased from the earth. I have the weight of the Volkov empire on my shoulders.
Instead, I find myself drifting toward the playroom.
I don’t go in. I stop in the shadows of the hallway, leaning against the cold stone wall. The door is slightly ajar, casting a wedge of warm, yellow light across the floor.
I watch.
Inside, the room is a mess of plastic dinosaurs, wooden blocks, and picture books. Lena is sitting on the floor—the emerald silk of her dress fanned out around her like a fallen leaf. She’s shed her shoes. Her hair is down now, cascading over her shoulders.
She is…different.
With Theo, Lena isn’t a fortress; she’s a garden. She is soft in a way she never lets herself be when she knows my eyes are on her. She is unhurried. She listens to Theo’s rambling story about a T-Rex and a fire truck as if it’s the most important intelligence report in the world.
She laughs.
It’s a low, melodic sound that vibrates through the air and settles in my marrow. It’s the sound of a woman who isn’t afraid. It’s the sound of the woman I want—the one I’ve made impossible by being the man I am.
“And then,” Theo says, waving a plastic raptor in the air, “the dragon flew all the way to the moon!”
“To the moon?” Lena asks, her voice full of wonder. “That’s a very long way, Theo. Did he have a snack for the trip?”
“He had a cookie,” Theo says solemnly. “A chocolate one.”
Lena smiles, and it’s like a knife to my gut. She looks beautiful. Not the cold, sculpted beauty of a Pakhan’s wife at a gala, but a raw, radiant loveliness that is entirely focused on the child in front of her.
I stay there for an hour.
I watch her help him build a tower. I watch her read him a story about a little bear lost in the woods. I watch her kiss the top of his head when he gets sleepy, her lips lingering there for a beat longer than necessary.
She knows I’m here. I can tell by the way her shoulders stay slightly braced, the way she never quite turns her back to the door.
But she refuses to give me the satisfaction of an acknowledgment.
She is showing me what I’m missing. She is showing me the life that exists just out of my reach, a life that I can protect, but never truly join.
I am the guardian of the garden, but I am the one who is barred from the gate.
I think about St. Petersburg. I think about the way her skin felt against mine, the way her breath hitched when I touched her. I realize now that she wasn’t just forgetting in that bed she was escaping. She was using me as a way to burn away the reality of her life.
And now that the fire is out, all that’s left is the ash.
I turn away from the door. My chest feels tight, as if the Kevlar vest I wore in the car is still strapped to my ribs, suffocating me.
I walk down the hall to my study. The room is dark, smelling of tobacco and old paper. I sit behind the massive mahogany desk, the seat of power. I look at the computer screen, the data, the maps of territories that belong to me.
I have everything. I have the money, the men, the fear of my enemies.
But as I sit in the dark, the sound of Lena’s laughter echoing in my mind, I realize that I am the poorest man in Moscow.
I pick up the phone. I have a head to collect. I have a message to send to the North. I have to be the monster again. Because if I can’t have the love of the woman in the next room, I will damn well make sure she stays safe in the cage I built for her.
“Lyosha,” I say when he picks up. “The Petrovs. Start with the oldest son. I want it done before dawn.”
I hang up. The silence of the study is absolute.
I am the Pakhan. I am the strongest.
And I have never felt more like a ghost.