Page 40 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

Mikhail considers this. “That’s fair.”

I glare at him.

“What?” He shrugs out of his coat. “You did marry into the bratva.”

“Against my will.”

“That argument would probably only make things worse.”

I exhale sharply and reach for the wine bottle sitting open on the counter. Mikhail watches me pour two glasses.

“It’s not five o’clock yet,” he says.

I slide one toward him. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

He lifts it in acknowledgment. “To catastrophic decision-making.”

“I think that toast applies to my entire life now.”

“Good. Adaptability is important.”

We drift through the apartment slowly as we talk, wine glasses in hand. Or maybe I drift and Mikhail follows because he realizes I’m unraveling more than I want anyone noticing.

The penthouse feels different in the dusk. Colder somehow. I start noticing things I missed before.

Books everywhere. Old New Yorker magazines. Furniture beautiful, but arranged with too much symmetry to feel lived in.

No candles burned halfway down. No abandoned sweaters. No flowers dying slowly in vases. No softness anywhere.

No one has been allowed to live here properly in a very long time. The realization changes what I’m looking at.

“This place feels embalmed,” I murmur.

Mikhail glances at me over his glass.

“That’s because Aleks hasn’t really changed it since Elena.”

The apartment seems to hear her name. He goes quiet afterward. The easy manner he’d been carrying since he walked in disappears all at once.

I turn toward him slowly. “Elena?”

Mikhail swears under his breath.

“Who was she?”

He hesitates just long enough to confirm she mattered. “It was a long time ago,” he says finally.

Now when I look around, I don’t just see restraint. I see preservation. Like the entire penthouse held its breath at the exact moment someone disappeared from it.

“That’s depressing,” I mutter quietly.

“You’re not wrong.”

We move farther into the living room. Rain slides down the floor-to-ceiling windows, Manhattan glowing silver and gold beyond the glass. The city feels impossibly far away from up here.

The large painting above the fireplace catches me. Kandinsky. Or at least I think it is. I step closer automatically.

“Original?” I ask.