Page 213 of Silenced

And he made it all possible.

Every day, he safeguards us. Every day, he shields us from Moscow’s wrath.

The red tide is changing.

The Bratva foothold in the States is shifting, morphing, turning toward us rather than against us. A feat he works tirelessly to ensure—all for our future.

My eyes close. The joy I’m feeling is too much for me to contain.

Even my mother, who moved in with us last week, can’t deny that Nikolai doesn’t justtellme he loves me—he shows me.

Every goddamn day.

When he presses a kiss to my temple, I sigh as I cuddle into him.

“How was Savannah?”

I grin a little at the wariness in his tone. Still, it’s a relationship I know he’s trying to cultivate because it’s a struggle for me to make friends. So far, Savannah and Maria are the only women, outside of my mom, whom I talk to on the regular.

Trust… it’s not easy for either of us. Hell, I don’t even trust the staff atNav.

While resolved, the situation with the Albanians made me paranoid, so I prefer to stay in my office, cooking up recipes rather than trying to play nice with a bunch of bitches who envy the man I get into bed with.

That’s probably why I have one cookbook with a publisher’s editorial team already and another in the works that’ll be a collaborative project with my mom.

“She’s fine.”

“That woman is never fine. She’s a drama queen.”

I hitch a shoulder, unable to deny it. “She told me some interesting news.”

He tenses. “I don’t want to know if it’s from her.”

My lips twitch. “It wasn’t sex-related.”

“Thank God for that. I’m no prude but she shares far too much with you,” he mutters disapprovingly, which only makes me chuckle as I press a kiss to his cheek. “What’s the news then?”

“You know Lodestar is her kind of sister?” I pause. “And her sister-in-law, I guess. Well, almost. When she gets married to Conor O’Donnelly—”

He starts stroking my hair. “I know what you mean, yes,solnyshko.”

“Sorry,” I mumble. “I’m still learning the ropes with her family. There are so many of them.”

“You never have to apologize to me,” he disregards. “Especially as I know you only took an interest in the O’Donnellys because I asked you to.”

I’d happened, one day, to tell him about a woman called Lodestar who was practically Savannah’s sister—in the same way that Maxim and Misha were hisbrothers—after Savannah had spent the entire day bitching about Lodestar’s inability to check all the TikToks she sent her.

Because I could empathize with Lodestar’s dilemma as Savannah sent a ridiculous amount of videos to me too, I’d shared the tale with Nikolai.

When he’d told me that Maxim had only gotten us all into this mess because of a woman called Lodestar, not exactly a common name, I didn’t think it stretched the bounds of my friendship with Savannah to keep a close eye on that situation…

Especially when this Lodestar owed Maxim a favor.

I’d come to learn the importance of favors in this world—they ran deep.

“What did you learn?” he asks, his tone bland, but I know him too well.

The blander his tone, the more curious he is.

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