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

OBSERVATION AND OBSESSION

YAKOV

T he cage is comfortable, but only because comfort is a tactic. Hardwood floors. Custom furniture. Floor-to-ceiling glass showing off acres of land I’ll never walk without an escort.

They even gave me a phone. Internet access. Generous—or maybe clever. The Bratva operates on psychology as much as bullets. Let the prisoner think he has connection, let him scroll through a life he can’t touch. Let him make calls to people who won’t take them.

It’s meant to look like freedom. It isn’t. This is containment, Bratva style. No steel bars. Just walls that smile while they tighten around you and technology that whispers promises while recording every keystroke.

By the third morning, I’ve mapped the entire routine. The guards rotate in predictable patterns. Volkov’s night crew moves like ghosts. Sokolov’s morning shift stays alert but relaxed. Olenko’s afternoon team is the weak link—one poses like a peacock, the other can’t keep off his phone.

What they don’t realize is that while they’re watching me, I’m learning about them. Every routine. Every blind spot. Every moment when their attention drifts to their own devices, leaving mine unwatched.

Everyone slips eventually. I’m just waiting for the moment.

It’s not that I’m planning an escape. Not today. That would be idiotic with this level of surveillance. But every system has pressure points. Every guard, a pattern. Every pattern, a crack. And I’m not looking for freedom.

I’m watching for the moment it offers itself.

The grandfather clock in the hallway chimes. Two hours until my next session with Dr. Agapova.

Her name lingers longer than it should. Mila. The therapist with eyes like slate and a voice honed to cut without bleeding. She watches me like she’s mapping coordinates, and I let her because I’m doing the same. She calls it therapy. I call it reconnaissance.

I step into the bathroom, eyeing my reflection in the mirror. The color is returning to my face. The hollow look of post-coma weakness is nearly gone, though sleep still drags heavy beneath my eyes. My body’s not at full strength, but it’s getting there.

I run a hand along my jaw. Stubble. They’ve given me razors. Curious. Either they trust the guards, or they’ve calculated that I won’t waste the opportunity on theatrics. I file it away.

After a shower, I dress carefully. Light blue shirt. Charcoal trousers. Familiar cuts, my preferred brands, everything my father had ordered, an overt way to say this is still your life . He doesn’t understand I left that behind long ago.

A knock at the door. One of Sokolov’s men—young, clean-cut, silent—enters with my breakfast. He doesn’t speak, just sets the tray down and leaves.

Poached eggs. Toast. Fruit. I eat without thought. Fuel, nothing more. The taste is irrelevant. I’m not here to savor. I’m here to survive.

A few minutes before eleven a.m., they escort me down the hall. The therapy room is the same—comfortable in its sterility. Like a hotel lobby pretending to be intimate. Tranquility masquerading as peace.

I spot four guards on perimeter patrol. All moving on repeat. Their paths choreographed. I file that away, too.

The door opens behind me. I inhale slowly; there it is. Vanilla and amber. Expensive perfume that clings to my clothes long after she leaves. My body responds before my mind catches up, muscles tensing with anticipation.

“Good morning, Mr. Gagarin.”

I turn slowly, letting my gaze travel from her heels—chosen for function but still emphasizing those legs—up to eyes that pretend not to notice my appraisal.

A small maneuver in a larger game—a reminder that she’s walking into my territory, not the other way around.

She’s dressed in gray today—a pantsuit and a cream blouse. Her hair is pulled back again, but a few strands have escaped the hold. Rain clings faintly to her coat before she shrugs it off and hangs it with quiet efficiency.

“Dr. Agapova.” I nod. “Punctual. Predictable. Admirable.”

I move to where she’s hung her coat, running my fingers along the damp fabric. “Still warm,” I murmur, bringing my hand to my face as if I could capture her scent. “You rushed here. Why the urgency, Doctor?”

She doesn’t react to the provocation, but I see her fingers tighten on her notebook.

“Shall we begin?” she asks, gesturing to the pair of chairs that face each other across a low table. No large desk. No barrier. A trick meant to simulate intimacy, equality. Neither exists here.

I sit first. Always better to choose your position on the board than be placed. My posture is casual, one leg over the other. A stance that says I’m not hiding anything.

While I hide everything.

She takes her seat across from me, notepad already in hand. Her pen poised. Her eyes steady.

Let the game resume.

“How have you been sleeping?” she asks.

A standard opener. Low-risk, non-confrontational. Designed to ease the patient in while gathering data. It tells me nothing about what she actually wants.

“I don’t sleep much.” I lean forward, invading her space. “I lie awake thinking about our last session. About the way you bite your lip when I say something that excites you professionally. Or is it personally, Doctor?”

Her pen stills, but she doesn’t retreat. I watch the subtle tell, the way her fingers tighten on the pen, knuckles paling. Her chest rises a fraction faster. “We should focus on?—”

“The way your pulse jumps when I get too close?” I stand, circling her chair. My fingers trail along the back of it, just brushing the ends of her pulled-back hair. She shivers, though she tries to hide it. “That’s interesting data, wouldn’t you say?”

I lean down, close enough for my breath to stir the loose strands at her temple.

“Your perfume’s stronger here,” I murmur, my lips a breath from her ear. “Right at your pulse point.”

The flutter beneath her skin is the only thing that gives her away.

“Let me guess. Black Opium ?”

A pause.

“Did you wear extra today…for me?”

Silence.

Most people grow uncomfortable in it. They rush to fill the space, spill themselves open just to avoid the discomfort. Not Dr. Agapova. She sits with it like it’s an old friend. Calm. Patient. The spider waiting at the center of the web.

The clock ticks. One minute. Two. Three.

I break the silence first, not because I’m cornered, but because I’m curious.

“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.

“Your mother,” I continue, voice softer now. “Recent loss. You still reach for your phone to call her sometimes, don’t you?”

“How could you possibly—” She stops mid-sentence, her face shifting from confusion to cold realization. “Oh. Right. Dr. Reyes‘s files. You apparently studied them quite thoroughly.”

The bite in her voice cuts deep. “Yes, I saw it there,” I admit. “But I also know because I do the same with Anastasiya’s number.”

The admission surprises us both.