Page 6 of Reckless Bratva Daddy

"This one's for my own sanity. He's just along for the ride."

The buzzer went off downstairs, and every organized thought I had assembled over three days scattered like it had never existed in the first place.

He came up alone, no assistant, no cufflinked lawyer with a leather portfolio, just Dmitri Zolotov filling our doorway in a charcoal suit that had clearly never touched a folding table in its life, the kind of tailoring that made ordinary rooms look slightly underdressed for having him in them. He looked exactly like a man who owned buildings.

I stood so fast my chair scraped the floor loud enough to be its own apology, a sound I would have found mortifying on any other day.

"Mr. Zolotov. Thank you for making time." My voice came out crisp, precise, a full register calmer than the last time he'd heard it, and I felt almost proud of the performance even as some smaller, more honest part of me recognized it for what it was, a woman trying very hard to bury a memory of herself waving a clipboard at a stranger like he worked for her. "Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything? Coffee, water?"

"No."

The word came flat and final. He crossed to the table and sat without so much as glancing at Naomi, who had planted herself three feet to my left with a notepad she wasn't using and an expression she was working very hard to keep neutral.

"I appreciate you coming yourself," I said, sliding the folder toward him with both hands, squared to the edge of the table like precision might disguise how badly I wanted this to go well. "Most clients at this level send counsel for the signing."

"Most clients aren't signing for themselves."

The implication of it stopped me for half a second before I recovered enough to keep moving. "Of course. Take whatever time you need. I'm happy to walk through any section, the vendor allocations, the cancellation terms, the payment schedule, whatever's useful."

He opened the folder and started reading, and I made myself stand still instead of hovering over his shoulder like a nervous intern.

I had built entire rebuttals for this moment. I had a speech ready for the cancellation clause, another for the payment schedule, a third, slightly more aggressive one for the vendor exclusivity language that past clients had always tried to soften. I had rehearsed all three in the shower that morning, out loud, to a shampoo bottle.

He read the whole contract once, start to finish, in under four minutes, without a single pause to double back on anything.

"He's not blinking enough," Naomi whispered, barely audible, angled just far enough toward me that I was apparently the only intended audience. "Is that normal for humans?"

I kicked her under the table without looking away from him.

"Ow."

Dmitri's eyes flicked up, just briefly, something almost amused passing behind them, and then he went back to the page without a word. I felt my face go warm and pressed on before either of us could acknowledge it out loud.

"The cancellation window's sixty days out from the event date. Fairly standard for a contract this size," I said, filling the silence because silence, in my experience, was where doubt went to multiply. "If you wanted it down to thirty, I could adjust the deposit structure to cover the added risk. I'm open to it."

"I'm not negotiating the cancellation window."

"Okay. The vendor exclusivity clause is pretty firm on our end too, that's where most of the budget's tied up, but if there's a specific vendor you want written in, I can make an exception with enough notice."

"I don't have a vendor I want written in."

"Right. Of course." I was talking too fast and I knew it, the words arriving faster than the sense behind them, a habit that had never done me any favors and showed no sign of quitting now. "The payment schedule's thirty percent on signing, thirty at the ninety-day mark, the rest due two weeks out. If that timeline's a problem given the scale of this, we can restructure the milestones. I'd just need to draft an addendum and get it to you within twenty-four hours of us agreeing on terms."

He set the pen down, which I hadn't even noticed him pick up, and looked at me with an expression I couldn't read at all.

"You're negotiating against yourself."

Heat crawled up my neck. "I'm being thorough."

"You're offering concessions I haven't asked for." He tapped one finger against the signature line, measured, like the whole conversation cost him nothing. "The terms are fair. I don't argue with fair."

"Most people argue with fair. It's practically a hobby in this industry."

"I'm not most people."

"No," I said, and something about the flatness of it landed harder than it should have for four words. "I'm starting to gather that."

"Is that a problem?"