Page 58

VICKTOR

The vodka burns against my palm, amber liquid swirling in crystal as I stand at the window of my Moscow apartment. My fingers tighten around the glass until my knuckles ache. Dawn bleeds across the skyline, painting Soviet-era architecture in deceptive gold, light glinting off windows like distant fires. A beautiful facade for a brutal reality—much like the Bratva world I've infiltrated.

Much like the woman who will soon be my wife.

Anastasia Markova. Mikhail Markov's daughter. My means to final vengeance.

The woman from Paris… the woman I knew better than to involve myself with emotionally. I shouldn’t have slept with her, or even if I did sleep with her, I shouldn’t have let myself feel anything.

"Fuck." The word escapes before I can catch it, echoing in the sparse, tactical emptiness of my apartment. I drain the glass, welcoming the burn down my throat, the heat spreading through my chest like liquid fire. The alcohol does nothing to dull the shock still reverberating through my system. My hands shake—actually shake—as I pour another measure, spilling expensive vodka across my knuckles.

Of all the variables, all the potential complications in five years of meticulous planning, this was the one I never fully anticipated—what it meant that the woman I touched in Paris darkness, the only genuine connection I'd permitted myself in my years of deception, was the daughter of the man I've sworn to destroy.

I think I never thought an outsider like me would be welcome in Markov’s inner circle, that I would get my revenge from the outside… not from the inside. How wrong I was.

The moment replays in my mind with visceral clarity: her standing across that dining table, blue eyes widening in recognition before her perfect Bratva mask locked into place. The jolt of recognition that shot through my body like electric current. The surge of something dangerously close to desire beneath the shock.

My phone vibrates on the desk, the sound harsh against the polished wood. Anton. I ignore it, pouring another measure of Zhiguli instead. My mouth tastes of ashes and expensive vodka. He'll demand reassessment, tactical adjustment. The mission shifting in light of this development.

He doesn't understand that my mind has been doing nothing else since the moment I saw her across that dining table.

She's changed—harder edges where Paris showed vulnerability, cold calculation where I once glimpsed genuine warmth. Inevitable, perhaps, for a woman raised in Markov's world. I saw her at the start of what she called her week of freedom, but here she is fully under her father’s rule. It shows in every set of her lips, every hardening of her gaze.

Yet something else has shifted in her too, something fundamental I can't quite identify. The subtle changes in her body—fuller curves despite her slenderness, a new maturity in her face, something guarded in her eyes that wasn't there before.

I close my eyes, and Paris floods back unbidden, memories so vivid I can almost taste them:

The Parisian lights filtering through gauzy curtains, painting her skin gold as she lay on the bed, wrapped in nothing but a hotel sheet. Her hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, smelling faintly of jasmine and sex, defenses down in the quiet aftermath. The taste of her still lingering on my tongue, the heat of her body imprinted on my skin.

"Tell me something true," she'd said, tracing idle patterns on my chest, her fingertips cool against my overheated skin. "Something you've never told anyone else."

I should have lied. Maintained my distance. Instead, I'd found myself answering honestly, words pulled from someplace I thought had died with my family.

"I hate violence," I admitted, the confession dangerous even in that seemingly private moment. "I'm good at it. Trained for it. Built for it. But every time..."

She hadn't laughed or dismissed it. Just nodded, understanding in those blue eyes that saw too much, that penetrated defenses I'd spent years constructing.

"We become what we pretend to be," she'd whispered, her breath warm against my chest. "Until the mask and the person beneath are indistinguishable." Her fingers found the scar along my ribs, touch gentle as revelation, tracing the raised ridge of tissue. "Is that what you're afraid of?"

No one had ever asked what I feared. No one had ever seen past the carefully constructed exterior to the question beneath.

"Yes," I'd answered, truth hanging dangerous between us. "What about you? What does Anastasia fear when no one's watching?"

Her smile had faltered then, something vulnerable and genuine replacing it. "Living my father's version of my life instead of my own. Becoming a possession instead of a person."

In that moment, I'd almost told her everything. Almost abandoned my years of planning to confess who I really was, what I was really doing in Paris… and that I knew all about her father.

Instead, I'd kissed her, silencing truth with desire, drowning dangerous honesty in the safer waters of physical connection. I'd rolled her beneath me, tasting the salt of her skin, losing myself in her heat, her scent, the soft sounds she made when I?—

The memory burns hotter than the vodka. My body responds with embarrassing immediacy, desire coiling tight and low in my gut. I hurl the empty glass against the wall, the crystal shattering with satisfying violence. The sound breaks through the memory, brings me back to the stark reality of my apartment, my mission, my purpose.

I force myself back to tactical analysis. Feelings are irrelevant. The mission is everything. The vengeance I've spent years engineering.

Yet questions persist like physical aches. Did she know who I was in Paris? Was it coincidence or calculation that brought us together that night? The vulnerability, the connection—was any of it genuine, or merely another performance from a woman raised in Bratva deception? I can’t imagine how or why she would have singled me out, or what her father would have hoped to gain by her doing so.

My secure phone chimes with Anton's emergency signal—three short tones, impossible to ignore. I answer with a curt "Da."

"We need to meet. Now." His voice tight with controlled urgency. "Unexpected variables require immediate assessment."