And for one strange, disorienting heartbeat, I had felt seen.
I swallow, push the thought away, and reach for the flour. It poofs into the bowl in a soft white cloud. My wrist aches from whisking, but I don’t stop until the batter is smooth, glossy, obedient. At least something in this house listens to me.
I pour the batter into the tin and smooth it with the back of a spoon. Lemon and thyme cake. My grandmother’s recipe. Her handwriting lives on the dog-eared card propped against the flour jar, elegant little curls and precise notes.
A balm for the soul. Sharp and earthy, to remind us of who we are. Don’t open the oven too soon, let it rise.
“Let it rise,” I murmur under my breath, sliding the tin into the oven. “At least one of us should.”
The timer clicks as I set it. Twenty-five minutes. Twenty-five minutes of busying myself to keep my mind quiet.
I’m rinsing the bowl when the knock comes.
Sharp. Decisive. Three quick raps that send a shiver through the quiet.
I freeze, hands submerged in warm, soapy water. Froth clings to my fingers like pale gloves. For a second, I tell myself I imagined it. Nobody visits us without calling. Not anymore. Not since my mother was murdered. Not since my father’s temper became something visitors had to step carefully around.
The knock comes again. Less patient.
I pull my hands from the water and wipe them on my apron. Foam clings to my wrist. My heart starts to climb, a slow, deliberate ascent that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with some old instinct that’s learned knocking means news, and news is never good.
Maybe it’s one of my father’s men. Maybe it’s a delivery. Maybe it’s—
I push the thought away before it can shape itself.
The hallway seems longer than it did this morning. Each step echoes, the sound swallowed by the old wallpaper and the stern faces in their frames. Ancestors stare down at me as I pass. Dark eyes, set mouths, thin-lipped women who probably never baked a cake in their lives. Women who knew how to bow and nod and obey without poisoning anyone.
I rest my hand on the door handle and let myself take one slow breath. In. Out. Calm.
When I open the door, the world narrows.
He fills the doorway like he belongs there. Broader than I remembered, taller too, though that might be because there’sno incense haze, no distance, no coffin between us now. Just a threshold.
His suit is dark, tailored in the kind of fabric that whispers of money and power and a life lived in rooms my father no longer gets invited into. His hair is neatly cut, his jaw shadowed with the beginning of stubble that makes him look a little less like a carved statue and a little more like a man who’s forgotten to sleep.
But it’s his eyes that hit me.
They’re the same as in the church. Sharp. Watching. Not in the way Piotr used to watch women like they were things to consume, but like I’m a problem he can’t stop turning over in his mind.
That same strange sensation rolls over my skin, like he strips away every layer of politeness and finds the person underneath I thought I’d buried with my mother.
For a second, I forget how to speak.
Then the training kicks in. Good daughters don’t stand and gape. Good Bratva women don’t let powerful men see them unsettled.
“Mr. Agapov.” My voice sounds almost steady. “My father isn’t home. You’ll have to come back later.”
One of Diomid’s brows twitches, just enough to show he hears the dismissal under the politeness. His gaze flicks past my shoulder, into the shadowed hallway beyond, then settles back on my face.
“I’m aware your father isn’t home,” he says quietly. His accent is cleaner than my father’s, smoother. Educated. “His car isn’t outside.”
My fingers curl against the wood of the door. “Then why…?”
“I did come to speak with him,” he says. “But it seems I’ve found you instead.”
The way he says it sends a small, involuntary ripple down my spine. As if finding me was what he wanted all along, even if he didn’t know it.
Heat flickers low in my stomach, shocking in its intensity. Completely, utterly inappropriate. I squeeze my fist until it hurts.
