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My meeting with her father went as expected—efficient, transactional, and sharp-edged. The route is ours. We’ll move the shipment through Cartagena without interference. I should be thinking about the shipment, the ports, the guard rotations, and night movement. I should be focused, but I’m not.
All I see is her face—serious, poised, yet burning beneath the surface. Her words cling to the back of my mind like smoke that has refused to clear off.
"I want us to marry."
Every instinct tells me to dismiss our conversation because she’s too young—too soft and too protected to grasp what she is proposing or to whom she is proposing it.
But she wasn’t fragile when she stood in front of me.
She was fire.
And beneath the calculated proposal, beneath the calm she wore like silk, there was something honest in her eyes. A kind of desperation she was determined not to show.
It sticks with me.
I head to my balcony and light a cigar. I need air. I need space. I need to stop replaying every goddamned word of that conversation.
“If you say no, I’ll smile through an engagement I didn’t want.”
“Fuck.”
The cigar burn soothes my fingers and gives my mouth something to do. I lean against the rails, watching and admiringthe darkness that covers the earth, wondering what kind of animal I would be if I were one.
Probably a damn nocturnal animal. Maybe a saltwater crocodile due to its strength and bite force. This animal perfectly describes me because I’ve learned to survive and thrive even in the harshest conditions, and I definitely possess the strength and bite force capable of decapitating most men.
My mind reels back to Mara against my will. I know she wasn’t bluffing, and that’s what really gets me. She meant every word. She laid it out like a map, and for once, the path didn’t end in blood or betrayal. It ended in strategy.
A one-year marriage. No emotion. No obligation. No chains.
Only freedom for her. And what about the bratva? We would have unlimited and unhindered access to the most coveted Panama Canal route.
But something about her proposal bothers me because the idea of marrying her just to let her go feels…disturbing.
And that? That’s the part I can’t explain.
I arrive at the safehouse early. It is quiet when I get in. Viktor and Lev are in the den, dark suits abandoned for black tees and shoulder holsters. They're talking low over an open laptop and two untouched glasses of scotch. I drop into the armchair across from them without a word.
Lev eyes me first. “Well, look who’s finally here.”
I grunt.
“I’m happy you were able to talk Thiago into agreeing to let us use the route?” Viktor says without looking up.
“Yeah,” I say. “We’ll have full control over the port run starting next month. But he wants no overlap with his Cali shipments, though.”
Viktor nods. “Good. That’ll buy us some space with the East Coast handovers.”
Lev leans back, swirling the scotch he hasn’t touched. “You’re brooding.”
“I’m not brooding.”
Viktor looks up now, sharp-eyed. “You are brooding.”
“So?”
“You don’t brood,” Lev says. “You glare. You scowl. You gut people. But this? This is actual brooding. It looks weird on you.”
I shoot him a look, but Lev only grins.