He doesn’t notice me at first. His focus is locked on the spread of ledgers and surveillance reports in front of him, one large hand absently rubbing the back of his neck as if trying to ease a knot that won’t loosen.
For once, the mask of the calm, methodical enforcer has slipped.
When he turns his head slightly, I notice there’s a faint tension in his jaw, a weariness in the set of his broad shoulders that I’ve never seen before. The lines around his brown eyes look deeper in the low light. He looks… human.
Tired, and not the untouchable for a Bratva man who runs an empire, but someone carrying the weight of everything, and protecting me, all the while dismantling Fadir piece bypiece, and now quietly preparing for the child we created in one impulsive night.
The sight hits me harder than I expect. My breath catches, heart suddenly loud in my ears.
The devil I bargained with, the very man whose steady voice promised “this is business, no physical expectations”, is sitting here alone at midnight, quietly shouldering it all so I don’t have to. No complaints. No demands for gratitude. Just the quiet, relentless work of keeping the walls up while the world outside tries to press in.
My old mantra, “all Bratva are evil”, feels suddenly childish and brittle, like cheap glass ready to shatter.
I slip away before he notices, retreating to my suite on silent feet. My heart is pounding so hard it feels like it might crack my ribs. I close the door softly and lean against it, pressing one hand to my chest as if that will steady the chaos inside.
For the next hour, I lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I replay every small moment that has accumulated over the weeks like a film I can’t pause.
My mind rambles on all the quiet moments I've shared with Alexey, and how he seems to calm my nerves without even trying.
It clashes violently with every memory of my childhood home.
Yet here, in this penthouse with its clean lines and soft lighting, the Sokolovs I’m seeing don’t match those memories at all. Alexey never raises his voice to me. He never makes demands beyond the deal we struck. He gives me space when I deflect questions about my past, simply saying “When you’re ready” before returning to his ledgers.
He protects without smothering. He includes without owning.
But the men from my childhood are nothing compared to the fear they inflicted more recently because of my father’s new debts. I’ll never understand how he could continue to rack up debt after everything we lost, how he could keep gambling away whatever scraps remained. Mostly, I’ll never understand why Fadir kept allowing it. Why did he let my father sink deeper, dangling the possibility of “help” like bait while tightening the noose around me? Is it just another way to keep me dependent? Another thread of control?
I roll onto my side, hugging a pillow to my chest.
Still, I haven’t admitted to myself how much I look forward to our late-night strategy sessions. The quiet rhythm of two minds working together, the way his low voice explains the next move without condescension. The strange comfort of knowing he’s only a few doors away, steady and present even when the penthouse is silent.
The attraction I feel is still buried under layers of self-preservation, lingering distrust from Fadir’s betrayal, and the sharp need for revenge. I tell myself the agitation in my chest is just adrenaline from the plan moving forward. Nothing more. Gratitude for the roof, the resources, and the chance to watch Fadir burn.
Yet when I lie awake tonight, the black-and-white world I grew up in feels like it’s slowly losing its edges. The monsters I painted every Bratva man as are blurring into shades of gray I’m not ready to name.
For the first time, I wonder what it would mean to stop running from unknown dangers and people that may no longer exist.
What if the patient, a restrained man sitting at that table under the single lamp, isn’t a cage waiting to close around me, but something safer than I’ve ever known?
The thought terrifies me.
Because if the shadows aren’t real anymore… then maybe I don’t have to keep running. I’m not sure I’m ready for what happens when I finally stop.
***
I wake up gasping, sheets twisted around my legs like ropes trying to drag me back under. The penthouse is eerily shadowed except for the faint glow of city lights filtering through the windows of the guest suite.
My heart is still racing, the dream clinging to me like smoke, memories of boots thudding across old floorboards, glass shattering, my father’s slurred voice begging while I press myself into the corner of the closet, knees to my chest, praying the monsters won’t find me.
I sit up, pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes until stars burst behind my lids. The trauma never leaves. It just waits for the quiet moments to rise up and swallow me whole.
We lived in a squat, peeling house on the edge of town where the cornfields met the railroad tracks. The day my mom left, I came home from school to find her side of the closet empty and a single note on the kitchen table:I can’t do this anymore. Tell your father I’m sorry.
No explanation. No goodbye hug.
Just the smell of her cheap perfume lingered in the air for weeks like a ghost that refused to move on. Dad started drinking more heavily after that. Gambling harder.
The kind of man who chased the next big win like it's oxygen, even when the wins never came and the debts piled up like snow in January.
