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The first time I saw Irina, I was twenty-one, half-drunk on whiskey and arrogance, my suit jacket slung across the velvet booth like I owned the place.

Hell, I nearly did.

It was the kind of night where the air smelled like cigar smoke and sweat, and the bass from the DJ booth made the floor pulse like a heartbeat.

Girls were dancing half-naked, some fully-naked, painted in gold, draped in glitter and sexual anticipation. In my mind, some of them blurred together, just noise and movement, like static on a television screen.

I watched, yet my mind was somewhere between business and boredom. And then she walked in, carrying a silver tray of overpriced vodka bottles, weaving through the crowd of sycophants and thugs like us, like she’d done it a thousand times.

She had that aura that stopped the world. She wasn’t the prettiest woman in the room, but she was the realest.

Eyes sharp, mouth tilted in a smirk like she already knew all our secrets. When she leaned in to pour my drink, I caught a whiff of something warm and clean—vanilla, maybe. No heavy perfume, no fake giggle.

She looked me in the eye. Most women didn’t, not like that.

“You look bored,” she said.

I arched a brow. “Is that how you get tips?”

“No,” she replied. “That’s how I get fired. But it was worth it.”

I laughed. Like, really laughed—not the cold, polite chuckle I reserved for clients and bastard enemies.

After that, I told her to sit down, and we talked.

For hours, maybe. Between the clinking of glasses and the shuffle of bodies, she sat beside me, never quite touching, always just close enough.

We talked about stupid things. Favorite food.

Dreams we didn’t believe in. Some actor she loved that I mocked relentlessly just to see her glare.

Then a drunk Matvey suggested we play truth or dare. I rolled my eyes, but Irina? She grinned like a devil in disguise.

It started as a joke.

“Truth or dare,” Matvey slurred, tossing back another shot as the table roared with laughter. “Come on, lighten up, Damie. Even Bratva royalty needs to play sometimes.”

I gave him a flat look, but Irina, seated beside me now, her legs crossed like a queen on a throne, leaned in with that wicked spark in her eyes.

“Come on,” she said, voice low and taunting. “Or are you scared to play with the waitress?”

I turned to her, slowly, grinning. “You think you can handle me?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” she purred.

So we played. Stupid questions. Stupid dares.

Strip a sock. Take a shot of hot sauce. Tell your worst date story.

Irina held her own and was somehow charming through it all.

She got me to admit I once punched a guy over a stolen cannoli when I was seventeen.

I made her confess she used to sneak into rich hotels just to swim in their rooftop pools.

Somewhere between laughter and vodka, the world outside that room blurred into nothing. It was just her and me.

Then Matvey grinned like the bastard he was and turned to Irina. “Dare.”

She narrowed her eyes, feigning suspicion. “Nothing illegal, I hope.”

“Nope.” Leo smirked. “If you lose the next round, you have to sleep with Damien.”

Laughter erupted around the table.

I tilted my glass, amused. “You don't have to, obviously.”

Irina didn’t blink. “Fine. But if yo u lose,” she pointed a manicured finger at me, “you have to let me draw a mustache on your face in permanent marker.”

“Deal,” I said without hesitation.

It was a coin toss—stupid and juvenile. I didn’t care about the game, not really. But when the coin flipped, landed tails, and Irina bit her lip to hide her smile...there was a pause.

She looked at me. Not the young man with the money or the title or the room full of power—but me .

And I saw the moment she decided.

“Guess I lost,” she said softly.

“You sure you want to do this?” I asked, something serious threading through the heat.

She leaned in, her lips brushing the shell of my ear. “If I didn’t, you’d already have a mustache.”

After thinking about it and deciding that I wanted it as much, I took her hand. We left the room like ghosts slipping out of reality.

“I’m on birth control,” she said, later, in the privacy of the suite upstairs. “Just in case you’re wondering.”

I wasn’t. I didn’t care then.

It wasn’t the kind of sex that came with strings or promises. It was heat and laughter and the kind of tangled sheets that made you forget your last name.

She didn’t make my blood boil or excite me enough to evoke the “feelings” poets talked about.

No woman held, or would ever hold, that kind of power over me.

But Irina was great company, and the sex was good.

***

After emptying the vodka from the bottle into the glass, I hurled the bottle at the wall closest to the door, watched it shatter into a million pieces, and frowned at the mess on the marble floor.

Fuck.

In front of Elena, I kept my shit together. Pretended that I didn’t want to march up to that table, snatch her away from that regular-looking clown in the blue dress shirt and black tie, and fuck her hard in that hallway.

Maintaining my composure and a dead-cold facade was never a task for me. After years of brutal training—dealing with danger, messing with blood and violence—it was second nature to switch off every emotion when necessary.

Somehow, Elena managed to turn off those defenses and penetrate. She’d done it on the two occasions we’d run into each other.

Piece of stupid shit.

What was I, a horny teenager? Of course, I was fucking not. A fucking grown man with a daughter and a faction to head, that was what I was.

Regardless, one glance at Elena sent a rush of excitement and intrigue through me. She stunned me—that strange young woman with fire in her hazel-green eyes and a strength I’d overlooked in her words.

The first night, she’d been sweet, acting like the pure na?ve virgin she was. Then earlier tonight, she’d been pissed, and confident. I liked both versions, even wanted to unravel more.

How the hell did I get here?

Seeing her distorted my focus. Standing close to her blurred the real world we lived in. But I knew what she really was. Beyond the intense attraction, Elena was a fucking distraction.

Angrily, I drank up the entire vodka from the glass, hissed when it burned down my throat, and aimlessly sent the glass flying across the kitchen. It smashed somewhere behind me, and I clutched the sink with a death grip.

The door opened, ushering in the heavy thuds of Fedor’s boots.

Recognizing the weight of his footsteps on the ground was one of the first things I learned when he started working for me.

No matter where we were, I could smell him coming from a mile away.

“I thought I heard a crash in here,” he said with uncertainty lingering in his voice.

I turned my back to the sink, leaning against it with my arms crossed over my chest. Fedor had his P-96 drawn, aiming toward the ground, with a frown on his face.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Burglar?”

“And I wouldn’t have killed him already with my bare hands?”

He glanced around the kitchen, looking even more curious when his gaze flicked from the broken shards of glass and spilled vodka back to me.

“Throwing tantrums? Gee, I wonder why.” He tucked the gun between his belt and took a stance that clearly meant he was waiting for some form of explanation.

With an eye roll, I pushed away from the sink and started for the porch. “Don’t I always throw tantrums?”

Fedor followed closely behind. “Glasses smashed against the wall? Spilled vodka ? This type of tantrum shit hasn’t happened since you….”

He stopped talking, but I didn’t need him to finish before knowing it meant I hadn’t thrown a huge fit of rage since I walked away from my daughter almost twelve years ago. Since Irina died.

“You usually just take a gun to a man’s head or beat the shit out of many guys at once. But when you brood over your anger, then that’s some incoming third world war shit. What provoked you that much?” he piped up after we walked past the living room.

I gritted my teeth. “Firstly, get Winter or someone else to clean up that mess back there, and secondly….” I hesitated in the foyer, glancing over my shoulder with my hand on the door. “It’s a girl.”

Fedor bellowed his head off and shut the doors behind him. “A fucking girl?”

I snuck my hands into my pockets, ignoring the cackles of the soldier beside me, while embracing the cool wind that whisked my hair.

The wind bit harder than usual tonight, slicing through like a dull blade, numbing everything it touched. I liked it that way. Cold made people honest. Cold stripped everything down to what mattered.

We walked down the steps to the driveway, and I stayed there, observing the men grow rigid at the sight of me.

“You’ve got Winter mopping the floor because of a girl? ”

“Technically, she’s a young woman. She’s about Katya’s age. Fuck. I’m practically old enough to be her father.”

“That’s your concern? I respect your reservations about younger girls, but twenty-two is legal enough to fuck without parental consent.

Age is but a number,” Fedor said more quietly, but I heard the traces of humor lacing his words.

“You might be old enough to be her father, but she’s got your blood raring to go. That means you like her.”

I eyed him. “Her age is not the only concern.”

“Mm.” Fedor stroked his chin. “What outfit’s she from? Italian? Armenian?” He winked. “Chinese?”

“She’s a marketing executive at Luxe Nest.”

He thought about it for a moment and ended up missing the point. “So, the American Mafia working undercover.”

“She’s an average citizen, working to make ends meet, probably living with the hope that her insurance will suffice in the near future. And if you didn’t understand that, I’ll spell it out: She’s an ordinary girl living an ordinary life.”

Confusion marred his features. “Your meeting took place where exactly?”

“First meeting at the Gipsy and, last night, at the restaurant.”