Page 10 of Mafia King's Broken Vow

“You’ve read every report on me,” I say, sitting back down, voice low, even. “You already know how I sleep. Why ask a question you’ve had answered six times over?”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m more interested in your perception than the reports.”

“A clever deflection.”

“An honest explanation,” she replies. “Perception informs reality, especially in trauma response.”

“Trauma,” I repeat, tasting the word. “Is that what you call it when someone takes everything from you? Or is trauma what happens in rooms like this, when professional boundaries start to blur?”

I move closer, close enough to see her pupils dilate. “Tell me, Doctor, which kind keeps you up at night?”

Her pupils blow wide—not fear, but a darker emotion. She shifts in her chair, thighs pressing together in a movement she probably thinks I don’t notice. But I notice everything about Dr. Mila Agapova.

“Let’s talk about your Anastasia,” she continues, shifting tactics.

I’m on my feet again before I realize I’ve moved, hands braced on either arm of her chair, caging her in. “Don’t.”

She doesn’t flinch, but her breath catches. This close, I can feel the heat radiating from her skin.

Her body betrays her even as her voice stays steady. The way she unconsciously tilts her face up toward mine, lips parting slightly. The flush creeping up her throat.

“Don’t what?” she asks softly.

“Don’t use her name like you understand.” My voice is rougher than intended. “Like she’s just another case study in your files.”

“I’m trying to understand you, Yakov.” She uses my first name deliberately, and something about the way it sounds in her mouth…

“Are you?” I lean even closer, watching her fight not to press back into the chair. “Or are you trying to understand why you’re attracted to someone you should fear?”

Then I pull back, taking my seat.

“What would you like to know?” I ask, voice clipped. “Her favorite color? How she took her tea? Or the way she unraveled piece by piece after tethering herself to a man too weak to protect her?”

“I’d like to know who she was to you.”

A deceptively simple question. Carefully worded. Designed to bypass logic and draw out feeling.

I weigh several responses. All of them calculated to reveal just enough.

“Everything,” I say at last.

The word sits there, ambiguous. Heavy with truth. Laced with deflection.

She makes a note. I don’t lean forward to see what it is, but I want to. Just to prove I could.

Instead, I reach out and place my hand over hers on the notebook, stilling her pen. The contact is electric; she goes rigid, holds.

“What are you writing about me, Mila?” I use her first name deliberately, my thumb brushing across her knuckles. “That I’m deflecting? Or that your skin just flushed when I touched you?”

She yanks her hand back, but not before I feel her pulse racing beneath my fingers.

“And did you lose everything when you lost her?”

I don’t answer. Not directly. Instead, I shift the spotlight.

“You wear grief like perfume,” I say suddenly. “It’s in the way you hold yourself—careful, controlled. Like you’re afraid if you relax, you’ll shatter.”

Her composure cracks just a hairline fracture.