Page 11 of The Pakhan’s Bride (Mafia Bosses #3)

ZOYA

T he morning after, he's already at the window, bare torso striped with early light, phone pressed to his ear.

His voice is warm and smooth, the words clipped, some English, some French, sometimes Russian.

I never catch a name. He ends the call and glances back to see if I'm awake.

I close my eyes, fake sleep, but he must know.

He brings me coffee in bed, strong, black, scalding.

He sits beside me, close but not touching.

We watch the city together, silent except for the birds and the muted traffic below.

I study his profile while he stares out the glass—how perfectly still he can be, how nothing gives him away except the muscle ticking in his jaw when he's thinking too hard.

I want to ask what he sees. Instead, I say thank you.

He smiles, the lines around his eyes creasing, and takes my hand like it's the most natural thing in the world.

He calls me Zimushka , likening me to winter, and he much prefers it to Sofia. He's careful with the name, like it's valuable.

The days blur. Dimitri is worried at my absence, but I call him enough to let him know I'm fine and that when the time's up, I'll follow him back home. He loves me enough to believe me, although I know he's afraid of how much I'll hurt myself. The truth is, I can't stop, even if I tried.

Markov drags me through side streets and markets, shows me a Paris tourists never find.

We buy cheese from a stall run by a woman with cigarette teeth and a laugh like a machine gun.

He flirts with her in rapid-fire French, makes her blush.

I ask for the sharpest cheese she has and get a lesson in Parisian insults.

He laughs, but never at me. He holds my hand in public, like we're a real couple, like we have history. I let him.

One afternoon, we walk by the river. He pulls me into an alcove under a bridge and fucks me up against the stone.

It's cold, the rock against my back, but his hands are so hot I barely notice.

He hikes up my skirt, slides my panties down just enough.

The risk of being caught is real, and I think that's part of why I let him, part of why I come so fast, biting his shoulder to muffle the sound.

He holds me up afterward, arms tight around my waist, mouth pressed to my ear. He says nothing, just breathes.

We spend the next hour like vagrants, sitting on the riverbank, passing a bottle of cheap wine and a baguette between us. I lean into him, head on his chest, feeling his heartbeat slow to match mine.

Back in the hotel room, he pins me to the bed and goes down on me until I beg him to stop, then keeps going until I scream.

He kisses the insides of my thighs when he's done, a priest at the altar.

Then he flips me over, fucks me from behind, hands wrapped in my hair.

He finishes with a shudder, then collapses on top of me, burying his face in my neck.

He snores. I find it funny, endearing. I fall asleep with his arm across my stomach, his hand splayed wide, thumb grazing the underside of my breast.

There are rituals. He brings pastries from the bakery downstairs—always the same two, always insisting I try both before he'll have one.

I leave lipstick on his collar on purpose.

He teases me for it but never washes it out.

We shower together, sometimes for sex, sometimes just to stand under the water, silent and easy.

I watch the way he soaps his hands, the methodical efficiency of it. Like everything he does.

He never asks questions he wouldn't want answered.

We talk about books, music, politics. He tells me about Renaissance paintings, how Michelangelo hid self-portraits in the bodies of his sculptures.

I tell him about my favorite Russian poets, how the best ones always died young or in exile.

I mention that I speak seven languages. He grins.

"I've only got five," he says, like it's a contest. It is, a little.

I even forget, for a while, how quickly the days pass. When I do remember, it's a gut punch. Three days left. Then two. Then one.

The night before I have to go, he brings tickets to the ballet.

"You've never been," he says. I realize I must have told him this at some point, probably in the afterglow of sex, when my mouth runs ahead of my brain.

I want to protest, to tell him it's too much, too intimate, but the look on his face, hopeful, almost shy, undoes me.

I say yes and meet him at his hotel. He's impeccably dressed in a black suit, white shirt, no tie.

When he sees me, he stops whatever he's doing, just stands there, staring.

His gaze slides from my shoulders to my waist, down the length of my legs.

He doesn't hide his reaction and lets his eyes linger, dark and hot, before he finally exhales and offers me his arm.

"You're beautiful," he says, simple, without irony.

The words feel different coming from him.

Not a compliment, more like a statement of fact.

We go to the Palais Garnier, a palace from another century, all marble and gold and red velvet.

The chandelier could crush a dozen people if it ever fell.

The lobby is thick with perfume and money.

every woman looks like she could ruin your life, every man like he's already ruined several.

We climb the grand staircase, his hand on the small of my back.

The touch is light but possessive, a claim he makes in front of the world.

Our seats are in a private box, three rows above the stage, view perfect.

The house lights dim. The orchestra tunes.

He reaches for my hand and laces our fingers together.

I watch the dancers, how they move like water, how every gesture is both violence and grace.

The story is a tragedy. Of course it is.

The prima ballerina fights for love, loses everything, dies beautifully.

The theater is silent at the end, not even a cough.

I pretend I have something in my eye, blink hard, will the tears not to fall.

He notices anyway. He leans in, lips brushing my ear. "Don't cry. It's only a story."

"No such thing," I whisper back.

He squeezes my hand, and we sit there until the house lights return and the world starts up again.

Afterward, we walk through the city, both of us overdressed for the hour. I let him lead. The night breeze cuts through my dress, makes my skin tingle, but I barely notice. My mind is running ahead, already mourning the end.

He asks if I want a drink. Food. And I have the perfect diversion, although I know I'll be breaking two hearts.

I ask for French fries, and he goes to get them.

When his back is turned to me, I run. Down the side streets, dress slapping against my thighs, hair streaming out behind me.

I reach my hotel, bypass the lobby, take the stairs three at a time.

In my room, I strip out of the dress, stuff it into the suitcase, pull on jeans and a sweater. Dimitri is in his room.

The next morning, he and I take the plane back home. As it lifts off, I look out the window. Paris is a glittering blur, fading fast. When Dimitri closes his eyes and chases sleep to avoid remembering he's on a flight—he hates flying—I let myself cry.

The Baranov estate appears first as a jag of dark green in the limousine window, armored with rows of imported cypresses and a wall of reinforced granite.

The car shudders over the cattle grid. The guards at the gate—two men in state police black, two in Baranov blue—study my face, then the interior, then the trunk, in that order.

Their eyes linger nowhere. Their hands never leave their weapons.

I used to walk these grounds in borrowed rubber boots, shrieking with laughter as Ekaterina chased me through the mud.

Now I'm a ghost smuggled in plain sight.

The black Mercedes rolls to a stop at the edge of the circle drive.

The house looms three stories above—no whimsy, all intimidation, a Soviet dacha redesigned by a man who believes in blunt force.

The chauffeur opens the door, but I'm already moving.

My suitcase is so light it feels like a trick.

The foyer is a blast of cold marble, gilded only where necessary—door handles, banisters, a candelabra that hasn't held wax in my lifetime.

I breathe the air—cleaning chemicals, gun oil, that faint animal note of cash.

My heels ring off the stone as I cross to the central staircase.

Portraits line the walls, Baranov men with the same heavy jaw and glare, women with the same hooded eyes and shoulders squared to the future.

At the landing, Ekaterina waits. Her hair is smoothed into a helmet of honey, her lips painted the color of fresh bruises.

She's wearing a suit in a shade of blue that exists nowhere in nature, only in the imagination of European tailors.

She looks me up and down, first as a rival, then as an inventory problem.

For a moment, I think she might hug me, but the moment passes.

"Just in time," she says, the words dry as aspirin.

"Missed the weather," I answer. The lie tastes easier than I expect.

She narrows her eyes, then gestures me toward the main hall.

The parquet floor gleams with a new wax, but no one else is here to admire it.

Ekaterina keeps one step ahead, leading me past the old library (locked now, after the Istanbul incident), the trophy room (now rebranded as a "heritage gallery"), and finally, the sunroom where Papa spends his mornings with encrypted calls and thick black tea.

He stands when I enter and kisses my cheek, sits, and gestures for me to join. Ekaterina stays standing, arms folded. "You look well," my father says.

"Paris agreed with me," I say.

He waits, but I give nothing else. The pause stretches. "How was the hotel?" he tries, a test.

"Small. No room for mistakes." I meet his eyes and hold. He's trying to read the afterimage of the city in my expression. I let him try.

He nods, as if that were the answer he wanted.

He sets his cup down, motions to Ekaterina.

She's vibrating with questions but waits until he is gone to pounce.

"You didn't send a single postcard," she says.

"Not even to Nyanya. And you always send her postcards.

" Her tone has just enough edge to suggest suspicion.

I shrug. "Everything I wanted to say, I said already."

I could run , I think. I could go anywhere, be anyone. But I know that's a child's wish. The only way out is through. They'll get the best of me, except one thing. They'll never take Paris from me.