Page 43 of Ruinous Need
VIKTOR
SOMEHOW, DESPITE MY memories of this toxic house, having Lisette here helps. It’s not just the deep satisfaction of finally having her with me, with my ring on her finger and my baby in her belly — although that’s part of it.
Despite myself, despite the fact that I knew she didn’t love Semyon, that photo of her in a wedding dress threw me off.
Lisette explained that the photo was from three years ago, when she and her mother had gone to the first wedding dress fitting and tried to make the best of the fucked-up situation they were in.
She didn’t understand how Semyon would have access to the picture, which led to me having to explain that the Bratva had her phone cloned for years.
With all that in the past, now it just feels easy and right to have her by my side.
Her smiles. Her laughter. Her cheerful presence.
She’s cleansing the place with her pureness and her absolute disregard for the traditions that the rest of us have been brought up with.
The giant stone building is becoming intertwined with new, happy memories.
Like Lisette’s attempt to wash Chekhov in the bath instead of taking him to a dog groomer, which ended with water all over the hallways when he ran away.
We had to launch a full-scale chase after the wet husky until the kitchen staff lured him in with treats.
Lisette’s growing belly and our child will only bring more light to chase away the dark.
The change she’s wrought over this place gives me the confidence that I can raise a child without the same twisted upbringing I had.
She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She probably thinks she’s annoying me with all the interior decorating requests.
Little does she know that every dark piece of furniture she swaps out for simple honeyed wood, every rug that she sends to the second-hand shop — all of it lifts my mood. Until I barely recognize this place as the shadowy house where the worst years of my life played out.
Right now, she’s humming along to the music she’s blasting at full volume and making waffles. They’ve been one of her main pregnancy cravings, and she’s determined to get the recipe right at home.
We do have a whole team of cooking staff, but Lisette insists on cooking herself.
“I feel weird about having servants,” she says.
But she agreed to keep them on when she realized it would mean them losing their jobs if she didn’t. “Also, there’s no way I’m cooking if you have twenty people over for some boring meeting.”
“Such a bad wife. What did I even marry you for?”
“Definitely not the cooking skills.” Lisette gives me a misshapen waffle which isn’t quite cooked through, and flops into her own chair with a sigh. She prods the sunken waffle with a fork, her lips pursed. “I can never get the batter right.”
“Luckily there’s an excellent diner just down the road. Extra whipped cream?”
“Please.”
When I return with our usual order, there’s something on my mind.
“Lisette, I never asked. Did Semyon touch you? Not that it matters. He’s dead. He got what he deserved. But I need to know, so I know that you’re okay.”
She shakes her head and I can’t help the relief that flows through my veins.
“I don’t think he was ever that interested in me, really. He just wanted to own me.”
That’s what we do in the Bratva. We own people.
This thing between us runs much deeper and more powerful than that.
“Good.”
“I know you don’t like it when other men so much as brush against me,” she says, a smile on her face as she holds out a piece of waffle for Chekhov. “What would you have done to him?”
My eyes darken. “You don’t want to know.”
“But I do.” Her face inexplicably brightens. “Please. It’ll make me feel safe, somehow.”
I think about it for a second.
“I would have saved him for you. And then handed you the knife. And then, if you needed inspiration, I would have suggested that you cut his cock off and feed it to Chekhov, before leaving him to bleed out slowly through the bloody hole in his crotch.”
Her face turns thoughtful. “You really think I could kill someone?”
“You kill me, every day, Lisette.” She shoves me playfully for that. “Besides, you might need to kill someone. This is the Bratva, after all. And now you’re the queen.”
She giggles at that. “I didn’t think I was marrying into royalty. Eventually, you will have to show me to the rest of them, you know.”
Since our marriage we’ve been mostly staying behind closed doors. In bed.
I know Lisette needs to be shown to the rest of the world, as the woman who’s going to be constantly at my side as Pakhan, but I’m just not ready yet.
“What if someone else sees you and decides they want you?”
“Well,” she grins, straddling me. “Then it’s lucky that I have a big scary husband with teams full of armed guards who are going to make them pay if they so much as look at me.”
“I’m big and scary, huh?”
“Oh yes.” Her eyes turn playful as her hand trails down to the waistband of my sweatpants. “The biggest and the scariest.”