Roman Chapter
The helicopter from the mainland is still cooling on the helipad three decks above us, and already my wife is standing in the middle of our borrowed stateroom, commenting on all the ways I’ve failed her tonight.
She’s screaming about humanitarian crises. I’m calculating how fast I can get her panties off.
The velvet box in my jacket pocket presses against my ribs while she tells me all the promises I supposedly broke, all the ways I’ve betrayed her trust. I bought those sapphires three days ago, had them commissioned with a Vor star hidden in the clasp because she wears my rank now, whether she understands what that means or not.
She thinks she can dictate terms? She thinks her anger protects her? I’m going to strip that defiance away until she’s screaming my name.
“You promised me the auction catalog was everything,” she says, and her voice is shaking with rage that should warn me off, but only makes my cock harder.
“You promised me there weren’t any other copies, that we could sabotage the formula and walk away, and then Luka hands me a fucking guest list with thirty-seven names on it and half of them are—”
“I know who they are.” I cross the distance between us in three steps and catch her chin. “Did you think I walked into this blind?”
“Then why didn’t you fucking tell me?”
“Because you would have spiraled exactly like you’re spiraling now, and I needed you sharp for tonight.”
Her eyes flash with fury that makes my blood run hot, and my patience run thin. She’s magnificent when she’s angry, all fire and that stubborn chin she lifts when she’s trying to prove she’s not afraid of me. She should be afraid. Any sane woman would be.
But Anya has never been sane when it comes to me, and I’ve never been sane when it comes to her, and right now the only thing I can think about is reminding her exactly who she belongs to.
“Color.”
“What?”
“Give me a color. Now. Before I take the choice away from you.” My voice comes out rough. “Because I’m about two seconds from fucking you against that wall.”
Her chin lifts with that defiant hauteur she uses when she’s trying to pretend she’s not affected by me. “Green.”
I unzip the silk. It pools at her feet. It costs twelve thousand euros, and I want to rip it to shreds, but we have a gala to attend. I settle for ripping her panties instead. Every instinct is screaming at me to take her hard and fast and rough.
“You think you get to walk in here and start making demands?” I spin her around and press her face-first against the teak paneling, one hand fisted in her hair while the other works my belt open. “You think that fury gives you power over me?”
“I think you fucking owe me the truth—”
“I owe you nothing.” I shove my pants down just far enough and line myself up with her entrance, feeling the wetness I already knew I’d find. “You’re mine, Anya. My wife. My property under Bratva law. The truth is mine to give or withhold as I see fit.”
She gasps when I push into her, one long, slow stroke that seats me to the hilt while her hands scramble for purchase against the wall.
The sound she makes isn’t a word anymore, just this broken, desperate noise that goes straight to my cock and makes me want to hear it again and again until neither of us remembers what we were fighting about.
“Say it.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine anymore. “Say you’re mine.”
“Yours.” The word fractures when I pull back and thrust into her again, deep enough that her whole body arches away from the wall. “Every fucking impossible choice you’ve made. Every lie you’ve told me. Still yours.”
“Damn right you are.”
I set a rhythm designed to remind her exactly who she married, each thrust deep and hard.
The sound of skin against skin echoes through the stateroom.
Her nails drag down the paneling, leaving scratches in the teak, and when I pull her back against my chest so I can reach around and find her clit she makes a sound that belongs in a confessional.
“You’re the only thing in this life I worship.” The Russian roughens every syllable, makes them sacred in a way English never could. “Moya ikona. Moya religiya.” My icon. My religion.
She comes with her eyes squeezed shut. The sight of her falling apart because of me, because I made her feel this way, destroys whatever rhythm I was still holding.
I follow her over with my forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, breathing in the sweat and perfume and particular chemistry of her body wrapped around my cock.
The world stops existing.
Then she says, “I need to sit down.”
I ease out of her slowly and help her to the bed, noticing every mark on her skin with satisfaction I probably shouldn’t feel. The dress is intact on the floor, ready for her to step back into. The sapphires are waiting in my pocket.
“Shower,” I tell her. “Then you put on my jewels, and we walk into that casino and smile until we’re close enough to destroy everything Vadim built.”
“What jewels?”
I pull the velvet box from my jacket and watch her face change when I open it.
The sapphires catch the light, the exact shade of the dress pooled on marble. Set in platinum. Matching earrings. A bracelet that will catch light at her wrist every time she lifts a glass or reaches for the concealed blade, I know she’ll be strapping it to her thigh.
“Roman—” Her voice cracks. “This is too much.”
“It’s exactly enough.” I lift the necklace and show her the clasp, the hidden eight-pointed star worked into the platinum. “You see that? That’s the Vor star. You wear my rank now, Anya. Everyone who sees this knows exactly what you are to me.”
“And what am I to you?”
“Everything.” I fasten the clasp around her throat and press my mouth against her nape. “Now shower. We have work to do.”
* * *
The casino takes up the entire main deck of Polina’s floating kingdom.
Murano crystal and roulette wheels and baccarat tables where oligarchs bleed rubles into offshore accounts while pretending the money doesn’t have blood on it.
The smell hits me the moment we walk in—expensive cigars and cologne and underneath it something sour, the desperation of men who’ve bet more than they can afford and women calculating exactly what their company costs.
It smells like Moscow in the nineties. Like home.
Anya’s hand rests in the crook of my elbow with light pressure that somehow feels possessive. The sapphires at her throat catch every eye we pass, announcing exactly whose bed she warms and whose protection stands behind those blue stones at her collarbone.
“Vodka,” I tell the server who materializes at my elbow. “Beluga Gold. Neat.”
“And for the lady?”
“Nothing.” Anya’s voice is clipped. “I’m working.”
The server disappears. I let my gaze sweep the room.
“Four exits,” Anya murmurs, voice pitched low enough only I can hear. “Two staircases up, two down. Cameras in every corner. Polina’s at eleven o’clock, wearing Valentino she probably killed someone for.”
“She definitely killed someone for it.” The vodka arrives, and I down it in one swallow. Cold and clean and dangerous. “Dmitri’s with her.”
Anya’s fingers tighten on my arm.
Dmitri Volkov. My cousin by blood, suka by nature. He’s wearing a suit the color of bruised steel and standing with his hands clasped behind his back in that deceptively casual pose that tells me he’s running whatever scheme that involves my wife.
We’re three meters from Polina when she turns around.
Emerald silk, the exact shade from the Ritz auction. Her platinum hair glows under the chandelier light, and her smile could gut a fish at twenty paces.
“Roman Viktorovich.” Her Ukrainian accent drips honey and venom in equal measure. “And the bride. How delightful that you could join us for our little auction. The helicopter ride wasn’t too uncomfortable, I hope?”
Anya’s spine straightens beside me.
“Polina.” Her voice drops to something cold. “Still recycling dresses?”
The air between them freezes.
Polina’s smile falters for half a second before she recovers. “The sapphires are exquisite. Sri Lankan, if I’m not mistaken?” Her gaze drops to Anya’s throat, and her hand starts to rise toward the necklace.
“Touch me,” Anya says, stepping forward before I can move, “and I’ll break every finger on that hand. Roman doesn’t share, and neither do I.”
Several heads turn. In Bratva circles, public threats carry weight that whispers never do.
“My apologies, Mrs. Volkova.” Polina makes the name sound like an insult. “I didn’t realize you were so territorial.”
“Now you fucking know.”
My hand finds the small of Anya’s back, to back the threat she just made. Pride blooms in my chest at the fire in her voice, at the way she’s staring down a woman who’s murdered more people than most soldiers.
Dmitri chooses that moment to materialize at Polina’s elbow.
He’s holding a champagne flute, and his amber eyes are fixed on Anya with the kind of stare that makes my finger itch for a trigger.
“Cousin.” He uses the familiar address without the patronymic, an insult to my rank that he knows exactly how to deploy. “Happy to see you both, still together.”
“You’re a suka, Dmitri. In the old days, I wouldn’t have just broken your legs. I would have cut the stars off your knees myself and sent the video to every Vor from Moscow to Vladivostok.”
Dmitri’s face pales. The stars on a Vor’s knees mean I kneel to no one. Cutting them off is the ultimate punishment, worse than death, because it announces to the entire brotherhood that you’re nothing. That you never were.
“Offers can always be revisited.” His voice wavers despite his best efforts. “Especially when husbands prove to be less protective than they promised.”
I lean in close enough to smell the fear spiking off his skin, close enough that only he can hear what I say next. “You’re breathing borrowed air, cousin. I gave you three hours at the Ritz. I’m feeling less generous tonight. Na huy, before I decide you’re not worth the patience.”
Anya’s hand presses flat against my chest.
“He’s not worth the bullet, Roman.” Her voice carries just far enough for Dmitri to hear. “Not yet.”
She’s right. Killing him now ruins the operation.
I step back.
Anya turns back to Dmitri and Polina with a smile that could freeze vodka mid-pour. “The auction starts at midnight, I believe? We should circulate. So many old friends to greet.”
Polina’s stiletto clicks against marble. “Of course. Midnight, upper deck. Do bring your checkbooks. Vadim does so love it when family participates in his little ventures.”
She pivots on emerald heels and walks away. Dmitri follows, but not before his gaze slides over Anya one more time with possession he has no right to feel.
I make a silent list of bones I’ll break first.
* * *
We’re standing at the roulette table pretending to watch the wheel spin when Anya’s breathing changes.
“Roman.” My name cracks when it leaves her mouth. “It’s almost time.”
“I know.”
“I can’t fucking believe he will do this.” Her voice is low and vicious, fury barely contained. “Vadim took my life’s work and turned it into a weapon.”
I wait for the guilt. The blame. It never comes. Her eyes are dry. Her hands are steady. She doesn’t want to apologize; she wants to burn the world.
“I need to get into the computer system before the auction,” she says.
“The office is on the lower deck. Two guards, rotating shifts, keypad entry.”
“Then we need a diversion—”
“No diversion.” I catch her chin when she tries to argue. “A diversion draws security. You go in silent.”
She blinks, surprised I’m letting her do this. “The keypad code—”
“Is 7-4-9-2. And the guard rotation isn’t fifteen minutes, it’s twelve.
I bought the shift commander an hour ago.
” I hold her gaze, watching the fury in her eyes battle with respect.
“You know the formula, Anya. I know the violence. You handle the computer, I handle the path. You don’t move until I give the signal. Understood?”
“You’ve already planned this.”
“I didn’t bring you here to die, Anya. I brought you here to win. The shift commander is bought. The path is clear. Do your job.”
She stares at me for a long moment. Then something softens in her expression, just a fraction, just enough to tell me she’s accepting that I’m not just her husband or her protector but her partner in whatever bloody work needs doing.
“What about the server backups?” she asks. “If I change the formula on the main system, but they have copies stored somewhere else—”
“Luka’s handling the server room. By the time you’re done with the computer, there won’t be a single intact copy of your formula anywhere on this yacht.”
“And Vadim’s personal files?”
“I have a separate plan for those. You focus on the formula. I focus on getting us both off this yacht alive.”
The string quartet starts up again. A waltz, something Russian and mournful that fits the occasion better than they could possibly know.
I pull Anya into my arms and lead her onto the dance floor. Vadim thinks he’s the Pakhan, but he’s forgotten that a king who eats his own wolves eventually gets bitten.
Tonight, we bite back.
“When I’m inside the office,” Anya says against my shoulder, “don’t come looking for me. If I’m not out in ten minutes, assume I’m compromised and get yourself to the helicopter.”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
“Roman—”
“I said no.” I pull her closer, tighter, until there’s no space between us and she can feel exactly how serious I am.
“If something goes wrong, I’m coming for you.
Every guard between me and that office dies.
Every lock gets blown off its hinges. You don’t get to tell me to leave you behind, Anya. That’s not how this works.”
“How does it work, then?”
“Together.” The word comes out rougher than I intended. “We do this together, or we don’t do it at all.”
She’s quiet for a long moment.
“If you get yourself killed being heroic, I’m going to be fucking furious.”
“Noted.”
My phone buzzes.
Luka. Guards rotating in 7 min. Window opens at 23:45. Shift commander confirmed.
I show Anya the screen.
She nods once, decisive. Her eyes find mine with sapphires catching light at her throat and fury banked to embers that will reignite the moment we walk into that office.
“Seven minutes.” Her eyes are cold. “Let’s put on a show.”
She kisses me once, quick and fierce.