Page 32 of Mafia King's Broken Vow

“Very well, Mr. Gagarin. Let’s go back to your father.” She gestures to the chair opposite hers. “Please sit down.”

“Make me.” The words slip out before I can stop them. Her pupils dilate. She remembers.

We freeze.

The air between us crackles with everything unsaid.

Then she sighs, closes her notebook, glances at her watch. “We’ve gone over time,” she says, surprised. “I should—we should stop.”

“Running again?” I catch her wrist as she rises, gently, but she gasps like I burned her. “What are you afraid of, Doctor?”

She looks down at my hand, then up. “The same thing you are.”

She pulls free, and I let her leave, but her words hang in the air like smoke.

I lower into the chair she vacated. Her warmth still lingers.

“Were you wrong?”Damien had asked.

Yes. About so many things.

But the worst thing might be how right Dr. Mila Agapova feels when she’s close enough to touch.

8

ADAPTIVE MECHANISMS IN HIGH-RISK PERSONALITIES

MILA

I’m already soaked by the time I reach the mansion’s entrance. The storm came from nowhere, like everything else threatening to drown me lately. Pablo Montoya. Yakov Gagarin. Two different dangers pulling me under.

Someone’s waiting with an umbrella. Igor Sokolov. My stomach tightens. He never does door duty.

I blink. “Igor,” I say, accepting the umbrella he holds. Unexpected. Usually it’s one of his men who walks me in.

“Mila.” He nods, accent clipped. “Not ideal weather.”

“I’ve driven through worse,” I reply, and we move toward the house in step, rain battering the fabric overhead.

He doesn’t speak. Not right away. But his silence is its own presence. Igor has never hidden his feelings about this arrangement. He wanted a firing squad. Not therapy.

“How’s your family?” I offer, because it’s neutral. Safe ground, supposedly.

“They’re well,” he says. “My son wants to know his uncle.”

Damien. Still echoing in my head. “It’s good he’s forming a connection,” I say carefully.

Igor’s look cuts sharp. “Connections to men like Yakov come with consequences.”

We reach the therapy room. I start to open the door, but he stops me with a hand on my arm. Not rough. Just firm.

“Don’t confuse strategy for growth,” he says, voice low. “Men like Gagarin don’t heal. They adapt. Like viruses.”

I carry that with me into the session.

Yakov’s already inside, standing at the window, hands behind his back like a soldier in front of a firing line. He doesn’t turn when I enter. Doesn’t need to. He knows I’m here.

But I see the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers flex against the windowsill. He’s been waiting. Anticipating. Just like I have.