Page 19 of Bratva Bride
“One thing I’ve learned,” I said, with venom in my voice, “is not to trust the opinion of monsters.”
A wry smile, and then he was gone.
The entire west wall was glass, floor to ceiling, nothing between us and the sky. The sunset had turned Manhattan into something from a dream—buildings like golden teeth, the Hudson River molten copper, the Statue of Liberty small and perfect in the distance like a chess piece waiting to be moved. The light flooded the space, warm and alive, turning everything it touched into art.
But it was the interior that made my analytical mind stutter to a stop.
This wasn't the ostentatious display of wealth I'd grown up with—no crystal chandeliers, no gold fixtures, no petroleum-based furniture that screamed its price tag. This was curation. Intention. Every piece chosen because it belonged, not because it was expensive.
An Eames lounge chair in cognac leather sat angled toward the windows, worn in places that suggested someone actually usedit. The ottoman had a book resting on it—something in Russian, although I couldn’t read it from her. A Noguchi coffee table centered the seating area, its glass top reflecting the sunset like water. The tulip dining set—six chairs but only one placemat set out, lonely and precise—could have been in MoMA.
The color palette was so controlled it had to be deliberate: warm whites on the walls, a charcoal sofa that looked soft enough to disappear into, pillows in forest green and burnt orange that picked up tones from the art. Nothing screamed. Everything whispered.
And the books.
The entire north wall was books, floor to ceiling, custom shelves built into the brick. My mind started counting automatically—a coping mechanism as familiar as breathing. Forty shelves. Approximately fifty books per shelf. Two thousand volumes, maybe more. And they were organized—I could see the pattern from here. Languages first: Russian, English, German, French, Mandarin, Arabic, Italian. Then subject within each language: literature, mathematics, philosophy, history.
He had first editions behind glass—I recognized the spines, the particular way old paper aged. Pushkin. Tolstoy. Nabokov. But also contemporary work, journals, technical manuals. This was a working library, not a decoration. These books had been read, referenced, lived with.
The art made me stop counting, made me actually look instead of catalog.
Not the Dutch Masters my father collected because they held their value. Not even the contemporary pieces that were safe investments. This was art someone had chosen because it moved them. A Rothko print—real, not a reproduction, I could tell by the way the colors seemed to shift in the light—hung where it would catch the morning sun. An abstract expressionistpiece that might have been a de Kooning or might have been an unknown artist Ivan had discovered. A series of black and white photographs along one wall, urban scenes that looked like poetry translated to silver gelatin.
The space smelled like coffee—good coffee, recently brewed—and old paper and something herbal. Sage, maybe. Or rosemary. Clean scents. Real scents. Not the artificial potpourri that filled my father's penthouse, designed to mask the smell of cigars and cruelty.
"Your father won’t bother you again."
Ivan's voice came from near the windows, and I realized I'd been so absorbed in studying his space that I'd forgotten to track his position.
He stood with his hands in his pockets, silhouetted against the sunset. The light turned him into shadow and geometry—sharp angles, clean lines, like he'd been designed by the same aesthetic that had chosen this furniture. He wasn't looking at me. He was watching the city, or maybe watching my reflection in the glass.
"I doubt that," I said, surprised my voice worked at all.
"Your father won't have access to this building—or you—again without my explicit permission," Ivan said, still not turning.
The words should have been comforting. Instead, they reminded me that I'd been transferred from one man's control to another's. Like a book changing shelves. A painting relocated to a different wall.
"It's beautiful," I heard myself say, then immediately wanted to take it back. Stupid. He didn't care what I thought about his penthouse. I was here because a treaty demanded it, because my father had traded my virginity for peace.
"My grandmother chose most of the furniture," he said, finally turning from the window. The sunset painted half his face gold, left the other half in shadow. "She had opinions about moderndesign. Said it was the only movement that understood function could be beautiful."
His grandmother. The mention of her made him seem suddenly human, like someone who'd had a family, a history, people who'd loved him enough to share opinions about furniture.
"The books are yours, though," I said, not a question but an observation. No grandmother had organized that library with mathematical precision.
Something shifted in his expression—surprise, maybe, that I'd noticed. That I'd seen the pattern, understood the mind that had created it.
"Yes," he said simply. "The books are mine."
We stood there, twenty feet apart, the sunset dying between us. In an hour, we'd be in darkness except for the city lights. In a day, we'd have to figure out how to exist in the same space. In a week, the treaty demanded we—
I couldn't think about that. Not yet.
“Come with me.”
I did as he asked.
Thekitchenwasprofessional-grade—six-burnerrange, double ovens, a refrigerator that could have supplied a restaurant. But there were personal touches too. A magnetic knife strip with blades worn from use. A spice rack organized alphabetically in three languages. A cutting board with scars from a thousand meals.
