Page 73 of Marrying the Pakhan

“Do you? Forgive me?”

“I’m getting there. Faster than I expected to, watching tonight happen.” I hold his hand tighter. “Watching that hallway, I kept thinking about every version of tonight that could have gone worse. It didn’t. But it could have, and I don’t want to spend whatever time we actually have left being angry instead of together.”

“I’m sorry you had to see any of this.”

“I’m not sorry I was here to see it. I’m glad I was, honestly, instead of finding out after the fact the way I’ve found out everything else these last few months.” My voice steadies further. “But forgiveness isn’t the thing that matters most right now. What matters is that we stop facing this apart. I want in, Viktor. All the way in. No more decisions made for me.”

35

VIKTOR

I’m at the kitchen table by seven, coffee in hand, when Ginger wanders in still half asleep and stops dead in the doorway, staring at my face.

“What happened to you?”

“I had a little accident with my car last night. Nothing serious.” I keep my voice light. “Bumped my nose. It looks worse than it feels.”

“Did it hurt?”

“A little. I’m fine now.”

She studies me, then apparently decides my answer is acceptable, because she climbs into the chair beside me and asks if she can have the syrup for her pancakes. “Does it look cool?” she asks, apparently reconsidering. “Like a scar?”

“Devastatingly cool. I’m considering keeping the bandage forever for the effect.”

“You should. It makes you look tough.”

“I appreciate the endorsement.”

Harper watches the exchange from the stove, saying nothing, letting me handle it my way, and once Ginger’s fully absorbed in breakfast, she catches my eye with a look that says we’ll be having a longer version of that conversation later, just not in front of her.

I’m sore, genuinely, my shoulder aching every time I reach too far, a dull throb behind my bandaged nose that ibuprofen’s only partially managing. But I’m upright, functional, capable of doing everything today requires, which is considerably more than I could say for myself twelve hours ago when I was still half convinced I’d broken something worse than pride.

Dimitri arrives before Ginger’s even finished breakfast, tablet in hand, expression sharp with the particular focus he gets when he’s spent all night working instead of sleeping.

“Mechanic finished the assessment on the car,” he says, once we’re alone in the study. “You want the short version or the technical one?”

“Short version first.”

“Someone tampered with your brake line before you ever left the club last night. Not enough to fail immediately, enough to fail exactly when you hit that curve on Delancey, which anyone who’s driven your usual route home knows requires real braking. This wasn’t a random accident, and it wasn’t opportunistic either. Someone had access to your car, knew your route, and timed this specifically.”

“Show me.”

Dimitri pulls up photographs on the tablet: close-ups of the brake line itself, a clean partial cut that wouldn’t have shown on a casual inspection, engineered to fail under exactly the pressure a sharp curve demands.

“Whoever did this knew what they were doing,” I say, studying the image. “This isn’t amateur sabotage. This is someone with real mechanical knowledge, or someone who paid for that knowledge.”

“My thoughts exactly. Which narrows the list of who could pull this off, even if it doesn’t narrow who ordered it.”

“Who had access?”

“That’s the part I don’t like.” Dimitri sets the tablet down, jaw tight. “The car was parked in the club’s private lot the entire evening. Staff access only. Which means either someone on our own payroll is compromised, or someone got past security good enough that we didn’t notice, which is its own problem entirely.”

I sit with that, the two possibilities equally unwelcome. “Pull employment records. Everyone with lot access, cross-reference against anyone hired in the last six months, anyone with financial trouble we might have missed in the original background checks.”

“Already started. I’ll have a shortlist by tonight.” He studies me for a moment. “How are you actually doing? Not the version you gave Ginger.”

“Sore. Functional. Considerably better than I have any right to feel after a rigged brake line sent me into a curve at speed.”