Page 16 of Mafia King’s Broken Vow (New York Bratva #5)

NOTES ON A brEAKDOWN

MILA

I stare at my reflection in the guest bathroom mirror, water clinging to my lashes, cheeks flushed with heat that has nothing to do with the temperature.

I look wrecked, but not in a dramatic, mascara-down-the-face kind of way.

Wrecked in the quiet, internal sort of way that comes from knowing that what you’re doing is wrong… and being unable to stop.

Last night shouldn’t have happened.

Not the tea. Not the conversation. And definitely not that bruising kiss, that breathless claim that I can’t stop replaying.

Or the texts after. God, the texts. Already am. I told him I was touching myself, thinking of him.

My clit throbs at the memory, and I have to grip the sink harder to stay upright. My hands are shaking—have been since last night. Since I came so hard I saw stars, his texts glowing on my screen.

My fingers drift to my throat where his lips marked me, and I shiver.

I’m a doctor. I’ve studied for over a decade.

I’ve lectured on ethics. And yet, here I am—heart in my throat, nerves fried, reliving a moment I had no business allowing.

The feel of his breath against mine, the warmth of his skin inches from my own.

The way he looked at me like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to ruin me or worship me.

Probably both.

I grip the edge of the sink, palms flat, grounding myself with pressure and porcelain. “Get a grip.”

If my mother could see me now…God, she’d be appalled. “The moment your patient becomes anything more than a patient, you stop being their therapist and you start being the problem.” Her voice is still lodged in my head, a year after her death.

And still, I don’t pull away from the memory of Yakov’s lips.

I step into the shower, but the hot water only reminds me of his heat. Of his hands. I press my forehead against the tiles, trying not to think about his text: Touch yourself. Pretend it’s me. My hand drifts down before I catch myself. This is insane. I’m insane.

I turn the water to cold, gasping at the shock, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps. I’ve become someone I don’t recognize, someone who masturbates to patient texts, who lies awake replaying a kiss, who’s counting down the hours (twenty-seven) until I can see him again.

“Fuck ethics,” I whisper, then louder, “Fuck professional boundaries.”

I’m already damned. Might as well earn it.

It’s not just about ethics anymore. It’s about him. The way he moves like he’s built from sharp edges and restraint. The way he looks at me like he knows how I’ll fall apart.

I did the right things. Canceled Pablo. Changed my number. Alerted the syndicate. Put distance where it needed to be.

Except where it matters most.

By the time I’m dressed and heading downstairs, I’ve layered myself in professionalism like armor. Crisp, detached, clinical. But it doesn’t settle right. It doesn’t feel like enough.

The mansion feels off. Thinner somehow. The way air gets right before a storm. Fewer guards. Quiet conversations behind heavy doors. The kind of calm that comes before the walls fall in.

I find Igor in the study, Nikolai beside him. Both serious. Both silent.

I know that look.

“What’s up?” I ask, keeping my voice even.

Nikolai gestures me closer. “We confirmed the break-in was Pablo. “

Igor turns the laptop toward me. Surveillance footage. My building. My floor. My apartment.

Time-stamped to the exact hour I was with Yakov.

“He knew you’d be gone,” Igor says. His voice is steel. “He wasn’t guessing. This was planned.”

“He went through your things. Clothes. Personal drawers,” Nikolai adds, his face a mask. “Moved things just enough for you to notice.”

It’s worse than theft. It was a message. A warning. A claim.

“There’s more,” Igor adds. “He’s not just Diaz’s nephew. He’s the cartel’s point of contact. Officially. You weren’t just targeted for proximity, you were leverage.”

The bottom drops out of me.

This wasn’t about attraction. It was strategy. I wasn’t just vulnerable. I was a pressure point. A pawn.

“We’ve added extra security to your building,” Nikolai says, his tone calm and final. “But until this is over, you stay here.”

In this house. With Yakov. Under the same roof as the man who has become the most unpredictable variable in my life.

My thighs clench involuntarily. Last night proved walls mean nothing. Locks mean nothing. If he wants to find me again, he will. My nipples tighten at the thought, and I cross my arms to hide the evidence.

I’m already wet. Have been since I woke up from dreams of him finishing what we started. My panties are soaked, and I shift uncomfortably, trying to ease the ache between my legs. This is pathetic. I’m pathetic.

The words “ under the same roof as Yakov” thunder through my skull before I can stop them. Dread knots with something worse. Anticipation. Sharp and unwanted.

“That’s not necessary,” I start automatically.

Igor cuts me off. “It’s not a request. Diaz escalates. And if anything happens to you, Katarina won’t forgive me. Neither will I.”

Checkmate. I nod. “How long?”

“A few days. A week, maybe,” Nikolai says.

But his eyes give him away. It’ll be longer. It always is. In Bratva time, a week means indefinitely until it’s no longer a liability .

“I should call my patients to rearrange their sessions for this week,” I say, clinging to the nearest exit.

Igor stops me. “About your patients…” His voice is neutral. Too neutral.

My stomach drops. “What about them?”

“Maybe it’s time we suspend the sessions with Gagarin.”

The words hit harder than they should. “Why?”

“Security,” Igor says smoothly. “You staying in the same house changes the parameters.”

He’s not wrong. But it’s not just security. It’s suspicion. Surveillance. A quiet warning.

Has he seen the footage from last night?

I steel my spine. “Therapeutic consistency is critical. Especially now. You interrupt this, you risk destabilizing everything we’ve built.”

They exchange a look I’ve seen before—wordless, deliberate. The kind shared by men who’ve survived by calculating risk.

“Your call,” Nikolai says. “But be careful. Men in confinement fixate. Don’t mistake obsession for emotion.”

It’s a fair warning. Too fair.

“I’m a professional,” I reply, but even I hear the thinness in my voice.

They let me walk away, but I can still feel their eyes on my back, watching and measuring.

I step outside, needing air.

The cold hits my lungs like clarity. I move without thinking, mapping the estate with my steps. East wing: security, Yakov’s quarters, guest suites. West: mine—for now. The center: shared space. Neutral ground.

The gym door is cracked open.

I should keep walking.

But curiosity, a compulsion, a darkness I don’t want to examine pulls me closer.

I step into the threshold.

And there he is.

Shirtless. Hands wrapped. Fists flying.

He’s hammering the heavy bag with a rhythm so exact it looks choreographed. Not wild or angry. But each strike lands with brutal precision. He’s not expelling emotion but chasing stillness.

His body is soaked with sweat. Shoulders broad and coiled, back flexing with each rotation. The muscles across his spine shift like machinery—efficient, powerful, inhuman.

Then I see the ink. Not sprawling, not flashy.

It’s discreet and coded. A stark cross etched low between his shoulder blades.

A pair of wolves, black and jagged, curled beneath his ribs like shadows.

Cyrillic script snakes faintly along his left oblique, part of it broken by a faded scar.

I can’t read it from here. But I know what it says. Bratva. Brotherhood. Blood.

I’ve studied his medical file—nerve damage, spinal trauma, a coma that should have ended him.

And yet here he is.

Moving like survival wasn’t luck, but inevitability.

Like death tried and failed.

And I can’t look away.

Every movement is deliberate, calculated, but not because he’s being careful.

Because he’s rewritten the rules of how his body works.

I can see it now, what he meant about rebuilding neural pathways.

The way he rotates through his core isn’t natural; it’s engineered. Perfected through sheer fucking will.

There’s still evidence, if you know where to look. A hesitation in his left shoulder. The way he favors his right side slightly. Compensation patterns so subtle most people would never notice.

But I do. Because I know what this represents.

Eighteen hours a day, he said. Eighteen hours of refusing to accept what every medical professional told him was permanent. And here’s the proof, not just that he walks, but that he moves like a weapon. Like something forged rather than healed.

The precision isn’t just physical. It’s psychological. Every strike is an affirmation that his body belongs to him, not to the injury that tried to claim it.

Wetness pools between my legs. The way his muscles flex, the control in every movement, the barely leashed violence. I imagine that control snapping. Those hands on me. That strength pinning me?—

“Fuck,” I whisper before I can stop myself.

My fingers twitch at my sides. I want to reach out. Trace the length of that scar down his spine. Feel the heat where sweat beads and slips along his ribs. I want to know if that controlled violence would dissolve under my hands or turn on me.

Desire hits me hard. No warning. No build. Just want, low and sudden and stupid.

I shouldn’t be here. I grip the doorframe, panting—actually panting—like I’ve run miles instead of walked twenty feet. Every nerve ending sparks like frayed wire in the rain.

He stops. Not slowly. Not gradually. Just stills . Listens.

“Enjoying the view, Dr. Agapova?”

His voice is low, smooth, and laced with amusement. Heat blooms at the back of my neck, rushes up to my cheeks, but I don’t step back or look away.

“You’re still doing it,” I say before I can stop myself.

He stills. “Doing what?”

“Rewriting the rules. The way you move, it’s not recovery. It’s reconstruction.”

He turns slowly, and I’m not prepared. Not for the full impact of him up close, chest heaving, skin glistening, those tattoos I want to trace with my tongue.

He advances, and I should back away, but I’m frozen in place.

“We agreed?—”

“We agreed to many things.” He’s close enough now that drops of sweat from his chest could fall on me. “That was before you told me you were aching for me. Before you came with my name on your lips.”

My knees buckle. He catches my elbow, and the touch burns through my sleeve.

“Steady,” he murmurs, but his voice is strained. I can see his erection through his workout pants, and my mouth waters. We’re both hanging by a thread.

“I need—” I start, but don’t know how to finish. Need you? Need this to stop? Need you inside me before I lose my mind?

“I know what you need.” His hand slides up my arm. “Same thing I need. And I’ll find a way.”

It’s a promise. A threat. An inevitability.

“The guards?—”

“Think you’re here for therapy.” His thumb strokes the inside of my elbow, and I bite back a moan. “Shall we discuss coping mechanisms, Doctor? Because I have several in mind.”

My pulse jumps. The air between us crackles, too thick, too charged. Not just chemistry. Risk. The kind that changes everything if you take one step too far.

“We have our next session tomorrow,” I manage, retreating a single step, but it feels like losing ground. “We can address coping strategies then.”

He smiles. A subtle, devastating shift of his mouth that hits low in my stomach.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he says.

And it’s not flirtation. It’s not even seduction. It’s certainty. Like a man who knows exactly what he wants and already knows it’s his.

I turn and walk away with my spine straight and my jaw locked tight, but I feel him watching every inch of me. Not with hunger. With curiosity. Like he’s memorizing me the same way I’ve tried not to memorize him.

I wonder if he thinks about other women. What lovers there were before. The thought makes me want to scream. Or scratch someone’s eyes out. Preferably any woman who’s ever looked at him the way I do.

Back in my room, I slam the door and lean against it, breath shallow.

This isn’t just an ethical breach. This is a collapse.

I splash water on my face. Ice-cold. Useless. The heat is still there, clinging to my skin, curled low in my belly, refusing to leave.

I’m so wet I have to change my underwear. Third time today, and it’s not even noon. My body is in constant arousal, nipples hard, clit swollen and sensitive. Every movement is torture. Every thought of him makes it worse.

I try to sit down with my notebook, but my hands are shaking too badly to hold the pen. I drop it twice, cursing.

Dr. Reyes.

The thought hits like a physical blow. I should call her. Should confess that I’m spiraling, that every professional boundary I’ve spent years building is crumbling in real time. She would know what to do. She’d help me untangle this mess of want and ethics and dangerous fascination.

But what would I say? That I’m obsessing over a patient? That I masturbated to his texts? That I’m counting down hours until I can see him again?

The shame of it makes my chest tight. I reach for the phone, then pull my hand back.

Not yet. I can still handle this. I can still regain control.

This is what he’s reduced me to, a trembling mess who can’t even pretend to work because all I can think about is tomorrow. Our session. What might happen when we’re alone again.

Try to focus. Build a session plan.

But all I see is him. The way he moved, sweat slicked, scarred, impossibly alive. The way his gaze found and held me like he knew I was unable to walk away.

I open my laptop, fingers trembling slightly, and begin calling patients. One by one. Postpone the non-essentials. Shift what I can to virtual.

The boundary isn’t blurred anymore. It’s gone.

And what terrifies me most isn’t how fast I’m falling.

It’s that I want to know what’s waiting at the bottom.