Where a burner is still on.
"Fire!" I yell, grabbing a dish towel.
Victor is already moving, turning off the burner while I beat at the smoking curtain. Babushka appears with a pot of water and douses the entire thing.
Rasputin, meanwhile, has retreated to the top of the refrigerator, cape askew, looking utterly unrepentant.
There's a moment of stunned silence.
Then Babushka starts laughing. "See? This is marriage! Fire, drama, cat in cape. You handle it together, everything is fine."
Victor and I look at each other—both of us slightly singed, definitely traumatized, standing in a kitchen that now smells like burnt fabric and pelmeni.
Babushka claps her hands. "Good! You work together. You save dinner. Now we sit to eat!"
And somehow, despite the burnt curtain and the chaos and the cat in a cape judging us from his refrigerator throne, we do.
As I settle into my chair, Victor leans across the table to pass me the sour cream, and for just a second—one stupid, dangerous second—his hand brushes mine.
Our eyes meet. And I remember, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, that I just shook hands with this man and agreed to share his penthouse apartment.
His space. His life.
For two whole months.
Just what the hell have I gotten myself into?
10
LATE NIGHTS AND BAD IDEAS
VICTOR
Two days after dinner at Babushka's dinner with Harper, I'm sitting in my office at 11 PM on a Tuesday, staring at acquisition documents and wondering when exactly my life became a game of corporate chess where I'm losing to an invisible opponent.
The city outside my windows is still awake—because Manhattan never really sleeps, but it’s quieter, subdued—heavy with that late-night lull where the noise drops just enough that you can hear everything else.
The low hum of traffic twelve floors below. The distant wail of a siren cutting through the cold. The muted rattle of wind against the glass.
Inside, the office is sterile and dim, lit only by the glow of my monitors and a single desk lamp illuminating the polished surfaces.
The rest of the StreamEats floor is empty at this hour—just the occasional flicker of motion behind glass walls when a night engineer passes through, clutching a paper cup of coffee that’s been sitting on a burner far too long.
And in my brain, the holiday programming schedule for StreamEats is pure chaos. For a food-streaming platform like ours, Q4 is everything.
Thanksgiving specials. Christmas content. New Year's campaigns—it's StreamEats' biggest revenue quarter, and every show needs to perform. Which means Harper's show, Weeknight Wins, with its newly inflated budget and prime-time slot, needs to be worth the investment.
My desk is a battlefield of spreadsheets, projections, contracts, and an alarming number of empty energy drink cans Gina will absolutely comment on in the morning.
Everything is numbers, deadlines, and outcomes—all things I can control, things I should be controlling.
Not that I'm worried.
And yet?—
Fuck.
I'm definitely worried.
