Page 97 of Bratva Bride
"Congratulations," she whispered against my ear, and when I pulled back in shock, she smiled. "Clara told me. Don't look so surprised—bratva wives have been sharing secrets since before the men learned to count money."
She guided me to a chair with more cushions than necessary, the kind of deliberate comfort that said she understood what bodies needed after trauma. The dining room was nothing like Viktor's mausoleum of crystal and judgment. Warm wood, candles that flickered rather than blazed, photographs on the walls of actual family moments instead of power displays.
Ivan sat beside me, his hand finding my knee under the table—that automatic contact that grounded both of us. Across from us,Alexei and Clara were having one of their silent conversations, while Dmitry poured wine with unusual restraint, and Eva watched everything with the hypervigilance of someone still learning she was safe.
"To new beginnings," Mikhail said, raising his glass of vodka that probably cost more than most people's rent. "And to the end of old wounds."
We drank—me with water that Sofia had provided without asking, Ivan with vodka that he sipped rather than shot, everyone else with whatever armor they needed against the weight of change.
"The community center is already breaking ground," Alexei said, setting down his glass with that precision that meant his mind was already three moves ahead. "Brighton Beach, corner of Neptune and Fifth. Youth programs, addiction counseling, job training. Something useful from all that blood money."
"Converting destruction to construction," Nikolai agreed, and there was something sharp in his tone, like he was arguing with ghosts. "Though some of the older families think we're going soft. Yegorov called me yesterday, said my grandfather would be spinning in his grave if he wasn't still alive to watch his legacy get sanitized."
"Yegorov can fuck himself," Dmitry said with characteristic elegance. "His crew still runs protection rackets on businesses that can barely survive. We're trying to build something sustainable."
"Sustainable," Nikolai repeated, and his phone lit up on the table. He glanced at it, and something flickered across his face—pain, maybe, or the kind of want that came with permanent distance. He turned the phone face-down with deliberate force. "That's the goal. Alexei, you mentioned consulting?"
Alexei launched into his vision—leveraging their intelligence networks for corporate consulting, their understanding ofsystems for legitimate security work, their financial expertise for actual legal advising. It was ambitious and probably impossible and exactly the kind of calculated risk the Volkovs specialized in.
"The FBI will be watching," Nikolai pointed out, but he was leaning forward now, engaged. "Every transaction, every contract. One mistake and they'll use RICO to bury us all."
"Ye don't make mistakes," Ivan said, his strategic mind already running scenarios. "We structure everything through legitimate holding companies. Full transparency where required, careful opacity where allowed. I've already run preliminary models—it's possible."
"Possible," Nikolai echoed, but his phone buzzed again. This time when he looked, his jaw clenched hard enough that I could hear teeth grinding. "Excuse me," he said, standing with controlled violence. "I need to make a call."
He stepped onto the terrace, but through the glass doors, we could see him pacing, running his hand through his dark hair in a gesture that screamed frustration. Whoever was on the other end of that call had power over him—not bratva power, but the personal kind that left deeper scars.
"Leave him," Mikhail said quietly when Dmitry moved to follow. "Some battles we fight alone."
The conversation continued around Nikolai's absence—plans for money laundering operations to become actual laundromats, drug running routes converted to legitimate shipping lanes, protection rackets transformed into actual security services. It was idealistic and probably naive, but after years of destruction, the possibility of building something felt like oxygen after drowning.
Nikolai returned just as Sofia was serving dessert—honey cake that melted on the tongue. He looked composed again, but there was something raw around his edges, like someone had taken sandpaper to his polish.
"My apologies," he said, retaking his seat. "Personal matter."
"The Petrov girl?" Mikhail asked, and the temperature dropped ten degrees.
"There is no Petrov girl," Nikolai said, each word precisely cut. "There's a Petrov arrangement that ended six months ago. Ancient history."
But his hand was white-knuckled around his fork, and when Eva asked about the cake recipe to change the subject, the gratitude in his eyes was naked.
After dinner, Sofia touched my arm. "Come see the garden. The roses are blooming."
We walked through French doors onto a stone patio that overlooked a garden that belonged in a Russian fairy tale. Roses climbed trellises with desperate beauty, their scent heavy in the evening air. Sofia led me down a path lined with lavender, the purple reminding me of my regression room, of safety earned rather than given.
"You saved yourself, you know," she said suddenly, stopping beside a fountain where stone children played in eternal water games. "Ivan helped, certainly. His brothers, the rescue—all of that mattered. But you were the one brave enough to keep existing until help came."
"I barely survived," I said, the words escaping before I could stop them. "I regressed. Sucked my thumb. Let Viktor document everything—"
"You adapted." Sofia's voice was fierce now, a mother's protective rage for someone else's daughter. "You found ways to self-soothe in hell. That's not weakness, Anya. That's the kind of strength men like Viktor never understand, because they've never had to make themselves small to survive."
She pulled me into another embrace, and this one felt like benediction. Like permission to have been damaged. Like acknowledgment that survival sometimes looked like stuffedanimals and counting in Russian and waiting for rescue that might never come.
"Your daughter," she whispered, "will never have to be that strong. Because you already were."
The words cracked something in my chest, and I cried against her shoulder while the roses watched and the fountain played its eternal song. Cried for the girl who'd counted prime numbers in the dark, for the woman who'd learned to color at twenty-six, for the mother I was becoming despite everything Viktor had broken.
When we returned to the dining room, Ivan was immediately at my side, reading my tear-stained face with instant concern. But I smiled, real and whole, and leaned into his warmth.
