Page 32 of The Pakhan’s Bride (Mafia Bosses #3)

The words settle, acidic and raw. My jaw tightens. I force my hand to relax, fingers unbending with the effort. I step back, let the rest of the conversation blur into the clink of glass and the hiss of steam from the side kitchen.

Ekaterina seems to always be two moves ahead, even when I think I'm closing the gap.

The staff love her. She flatters, she jokes, she makes them feel less like cogs and more like partners.

I don't mind that, honestly, but the idea that she's also making small-talk with Konstantin about house matters is deeply unsettling to me.

He never seemed to have an eye for these matters, and yet, he's listening to her opinions on the choice of tableware?

A dreadful heat creeps up my spine, and I dig my nails into my palms. Why is my husband giving Ekaterina so much room?

I slip into the scullery. The hum of low voices intensifies as I approach.

The scullery is small, cave-like, lit by a single bulb that makes every shadow look guilty.

The same two men from the hall are here, heads bent over a mound of forks and knives.

Their hands move fast, one drying, one inspecting, the other stacking. The rhythm is almost soothing.

"She told the florist to use white, only white. Said it was a symbol. For what, I wonder?"

A short, dry laugh. They're speaking about Ekaterina. I deferred the flower arrangements to her last evening, and now I wonder if I made a mistake. I press myself against the doorframe, listen as they dissect the power structure of the house with surgical precision.

"She's clever. Knows how to get what she wants. And everything she does has an agenda. She probably chose white because it's the Pakhan's favorite color."

Ekaterina knows Konstantin's favorite color?

"Shouldn't the other one be knowing all this?"

"Maybe she doesn't care."

I imagine my hands around their throats, squeezing until the gossip stops. But I don't move. I stand perfectly still, breathing through my nose, keeping my face neutral. The old Zoya might have stormed in, thrown a dish, made a scene. The new Zoya watches, learns, absorbs the slight.

When I finally move, it's a quick retreat down the corridor. I will not give them the satisfaction of knowing I heard. I will not let their words find purchase. Still, my fingers ache from the effort of not breaking something.

By the time I reach the far end of the east wing, my pulse has steadied, my face a mask. I duck into the linen closet, close the door behind me, and lean my head against the cool plaster. I breathe slowly, count to twenty, let the air bleed the anger from my skin.

When Ekaterina returned, I hoped we'd be able to live as sisters do once they're old enough to realize the competition is with the outer world, not among themselves. But I'm not so sure any longer. I adjust the lay of my cardigan, check for wrinkles, then step out into the open.

The winter greenhouse is my favorite lie.

Outside, the garden is dead and the air can snap bone.

In here, a private weather system releases a fog of warmth, the sharp perfume of wet loam, leaves curling under a faint bloom of electric light.

I press a hand to the glass. Steam collects in the cup of my palm, proof of some secret life.

Galina is in the far corner, wrists deep in the tangle of a rosemary bush gone feral.

Her sweater is rolled to the elbows, gray hair loose around her face, hands greened with chlorophyll and the faint stain of something metallic.

She snips a stalk, then lines it up with the others on the workbench—order from chaos, her one true faith.

I enter with a polite cough. She flinches anyway, the shears nicking a fingertip.

She doesn't look up, just wipes the bead of blood on her hip and goes back to work.

"I thought you'd be in the kitchen," I say, crossing to the bench.

She clips another stem, eyes on her work. "Best to cut before the sun sets. The flavor is stronger."

I run my thumb down a stalk. The scent is sharp, nearly medicinal. "For tonight's feast?"

"For the lamb," she says, then glances at my hand. "You remember how to braid the stems?"

"I haven't forgotten," I say and begin—three stalks, fingers nimble, twist and cross and pinch. I learned this as a child while she told stories about wolves in the north and foxes who outsmarted soldiers. It was the only time she ever touched me gently.

We braid in silence. My mind is on the memory of the servers, their words about Ekaterina and the Pakhan . I twist the stalks tighter, pull until the fibers almost snap.

"Do you miss the old house?" I ask, voice casual.

Galina shrugs, a single shoulder lifting. "It was never mine. I only served there."

"But you stayed," I press. "Even when everyone else ran."

She sets the shears down, wipes her hands on her apron. "Someone had to watch over you."

Galina is at home here, that much I know.

Konstantin takes good care of her, makes sure she always has the little indulgences that she enjoys.

Her tea cabinet is stocked with the exact black blend she used to import from Georgia, the one she used to stretch across a month when Papa gave her nothing but crumbs from the estate's opulence.

Now she drinks it from fine porcelain, her name etched in cursive on the rim of the cup. His idea, not hers.

There are fresh preserves in the fridge, sour cherry and apricot, made by someone's grandmother in the south and shipped up weekly because Galina once offhandedly said she missed the taste of real fruit.

Her slippers are always warm, kept by the radiator just as she likes, and the heating in her room is adjusted separately from the rest of the house.

Konstantin noticed once—without her saying anything—that her joints ached more at night and had the system rewired so her floors would stay warm.

He never calls her help. Never speaks to her as though she's staff.

When he passes her in the hall, he greets her with a bow of the head, sometimes even asks after her sleep.

There's a chair in his office that's unofficially hers, worn in and covered with a knitted blanket he had someone find in the exact pattern of the one she lost in the fire that ended the Baranov estate.

She didn't ask for it. She just stared at it for a long time the day it appeared.

Then she sat down and never said a word.

She walks through the house now with a kind of quiet command.

Not from fear, not from rank, but from trust. The guards step aside for her.

The chef brings her samples to taste. She hums when she chops onions.

Sometimes, I think she's more powerful here than she ever was as Papa's shadow.

Here, she is not the old woman in the corner.

She is the keeper of the boy. The guardian of the wife.

Konstantin understands that, respects it in ways Papa never did.

And in his strange, iron-bound way, he gives her more than protection. He gives her dignity.

Galina goes back to her trimming. "You're better than her, you know. Stronger. But you're always chasing, never stopping to see what you already have."

My throat feels itchy. Galina looks up at me, just once, with a small smile playing on her lips. "He loves you, Zoyechka . Perhaps that isn't the worst thing in this world."

With a little nod, I leave the greenhouse, the scent of rosemary still sharp in my throat. I return to my room and have a quiet meal to myself, nothing extravagant. Once I've finished, I read a book, think of Konstantin in my bed with me, and will myself to sleep an hour.

Evening has fallen by the time I wake up.

Lev is back and playing in the nursery. I visit him and ruffle his hair, plant a million kisses on his tiny, sweet face.

When he's had his dinner and gone to take some lessons with the tutor, there's a knock at my door, precisely at 8:07.

A maid waits in the hallway, face composed, hands folded.

She holds out a parcel—tissue paper, a band of navy ribbon, the card tucked under the knot.

"From the master," she says, eyes at my chin.

I take the package. The door closes with a hush, and the isolation is complete.

I weigh the box in my hands, test the give of the paper.

Inside, a slip of silk, a dress the color of midnight, liquid in its drape, cool as water.

The label is Parisian. Of course. Konstantin is not subtle, but he is thorough.

There is a note, handwritten.

Wear this for me.

I set the card aside, touch the fabric. It glides over my skin, almost frictionless. For a second, I am back in the hotel room on the Rue Cler, my fingers in his hair, his mouth against my collarbone, the tastes of wine and rain in the air. I shake off the memory, force myself to focus.

This is not a gift. It is a test. He wants to see if I will bend, if I will perform for him the way his men do, the way his city does. He wants to see if I can be remade in silk and subservience.

But there's a thrill in it, too. The line of the bodice, the engineered curve at the hip, the secret slit that climbs to the thigh.

The cut is exact, every measurement known before I knew it myself.

I try it on just to see. The fabric fits like memory.

It clings where it should, floats everywhere else, a contradiction I can't untangle.

For a moment, I want to believe I could be this woman—elegant, untouchable, a knife so beautiful you'd thank it for drawing blood.

I imagine the dinner—guests in black suits, the wine flowing freely, Ekaterina radiant, the Pakhan at his throne.

I see myself at the head of the table, eyes on every fork, every glass, every traitor in the room.

I see the way he'll watch me, the challenge in his smile.

What would it be like to love the man I once ached to hunt down and kill?

A rush flows through me, hot under the skin.

It's not just the dress. It's the promise of something sharp, the knowledge that I can outplay him if I'm clever enough.

I slip out of the dress, lay it on the bed.

My heart is racing. I pull on a robe, pour a glass of vodka, and stand at the window, letting the cold fight with the heat inside me.

I think of the future—raw, uncertain, but suddenly more possible than before.

The anticipation is almost as good as the kill.