Page 27 of Marrying the Pakhan

Nobody grieved him. Nobody looked for a body either. Men in our line of work vanish for a hundred reasons, and a rival simply not showing up anymore was treated as good fortune, not a mystery worth solving.

I never learned his legal name back then. Men like him didn’t hand out names, only reputations, only the fear that spread ahead of them into every room they walked into.

I knew him as a threat with a face, nothing more, and a threat that eventually stops being tracked.

Until today, when that face sat three rows away from me.

Harper’s still watching me when the judge dismisses the room, concern written plainly across her face. I owe her something better than the deflection I gave her earlier, but not yet.

Not until I understand exactly what I’m dealing with myself.

“I need to find Dimitri,” I tell her.

She studies me a moment longer, and whatever she sees apparently convinces her not to push, at least for now.

She lets Denise pull her aside to discuss next steps while I go looking for my brother in the crowded hallway outside.

Across the room, Pavel Ivanov rises from his chair slowly, one hand on his wife’s shoulder for balance, and for one brief second his eyes find mine across the distance.

Nothing in his face changes, no sign that he remembers the man who once stood across a warehouse floor from him with a gun in his hand. Either he doesn’t recognize me the way I recognize him, or he’s better at hiding it than I am.

I don’t wait around to find out which.

I find him near the elevators, checking his phone, and the second he sees my face, he straightens fully, phone forgotten.

“What happened in there?”

“Pavel Ivanov happened.”

Dimitri’s expression doesn’t change immediately, still processing the name against nothing, exactly the reaction I expected.

“The grandfather,” I say. “Ginger’s grandfather. He’s Pavel Ivanov.”

“That name means nothing to me.”

“It shouldn’t. He went by something entirely different and you were barely in this business when it mattered.” I keep my voice low, aware of the crowd still filtering past us. “Eleven years ago, before you were running your own crews, there was a standoff at the old distribution warehouse on the east side.”

“A man nearly ended us that night. We nearly ended him. Neither happened, and within the year he vanished entirely. Everyone assumed dead.”

Understanding dawns across Dimitri’s face slowly, then all at once. “The file said Ivanov.”

“The file said Ivanov. This is on me. I never gave you a name to attach to the face I actually remembered, so you had nothing to flag it against. I didn’t recognize it myself until I saw him sitting three rows away today.”

“I ran a full background check on Harper. I should have run one on the people suing her too.”

“You should have. That’s exactly the piece you missed.” I keep my voice even, but I don’t soften it either. “A common surname and a grieving-grandparents story isn’t a reason to stop digging. You had a name and a custody case that turned aggressive fast. That combination should have earned more than a surface pass.”

Dimitri drags a hand back through his hair, jaw tight. “I know. I got comfortable. I won’t again.”

I nod, but say nothing.

“I still should have thought of it myself,” he adds. “Grandparents suing for custody, coming after Harper hard enough to hire outside counsel, digging into business history specifically. That should have raised something on its own, regardless of the name.”

“Hindsight makes fools of both of us tonight. Don’t waste time on blame, waste it on finding out what he’s actually been doing for eleven years.”

“This changes everything. If he’s alive, if he’s been alive this whole time, sitting quietly under a different life, waiting.”

“I don’t know what he’s been doing. I don’t know why now, why Ginger, why any of it.” I rub a hand down my face, exhaustion catching up with me all at once. “But he sat three rows away from Harper today, close enough to watch her, and I don’t believe for a second that’s a coincidence. Men like him don’t end up in the same courtroom as the woman I married by accident.”