Page 76 of Marrying the Pakhan

“We handled it. Together, remember?”

“Together.” He reaches for my hand across the counter, and I let him take it, no hesitation left in the gesture at all. “How are you, actually? Not managing everyone else’s feelings for once. You.”

I consider the question honestly before answering. “Tired. Still a little scared, if I’m honest. But steadier than I expected to feel, given everything.” I squeeze his hand. “This house helps. Having you close again helps more.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know.” And for the first time since the reveal, I actually believe it, no guard left up against the possibility he’s wrong.

We eat dinner slowly, talking about nothing important, the house settling into its evening quiet around us, and somewhere upstairs, past the nursery and Ginger’s room and the library I’ve already claimed as mine, the property line holds steady, cameras watching, security walking their rounds, buying us whatever peace tonight’s willing to offer.

37

VIKTOR

Dimitri arrives after dinner, later than usual, and the look on his face tells me before he says a word that whatever he’s brought isn’t going to let either of us sleep tonight.

“I need you to hear something,” he says, setting a small recorder on the desk between us. “Sit down first.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

I sit.

“The housekeeper,” Dimitri says. “The one who’s worked for the Ivanovs for six years, the one I’ve been quietly paying for information since the week after the hearing. She finally got close enough to plant something in the study. Recorded two nights ago. Pavel and the grandmother, talking freely, believing themselves alone.”

“Why now? What made her risk it?”

“Money helps. So does watching an old man she’s worked for start ordering equipment she recognizes from her nephew’s time in the military. She’s frightened, Viktor. She thinks something terrible is coming, and she’d rather be paid to help stop it than caught in the middle of it.”

He presses play.

The recording’s rough and distant, but the voices come through clear enough: Pavel’s low and measured, the grandmother’s sharper, more frantic beneath a thin layer of composure.

“The girl is all we have left,” the grandmother says, voice catching. “Our son is gone. We are too old for another child. If we lose her, the family name ends with us. Everything your father built, everything we sacrificed, gone with two old people in an empty house.”

“We won’t lose her,” Pavel answers, flat, certain. “The husband is a complication, not an obstacle. Men like him die eventually, one way or another. We simply need to be the ones holding her when it happens.”

“And the wife?”

“Expendable. Regrettable, perhaps, given the child she’s carrying, but expendable regardless. Our granddaughter is the only irreplaceable thing in this equation. Everyone else is a variable we can afford to lose.”

I stop the recording before it finishes, my hand not entirely steady on the desk.

“There’s more,” Dimitri says quietly. “About four more minutes. I don’t think you need to hear the rest tonight.”

“Tell me the rest.”

“They’re planning something within the week. Direct, not another surveillance operation. Pavel talks about a window, some event that puts Ginger somewhere predictable, somewhere they can move on her without needing to breach the property directly. He mentions a school function. I haven’t confirmed which one yet.”

“They said Harper’s expendable.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. “Regrettable, given the baby. Expendable regardless.”

“I heard it.”

“They’re planning to kill my wife to get to my daughter, and they’re calling it a variable.”

“I know, Viktor.”