Page 22 of Bratva Bride
"I don't understand you," I said.
"Of course not," Ivan replied, and for the first time, something that might have been a smile touched the corner of his mouth. "Understanding me would mean I'm predictable. And predictable men don't survive in our world."
Our world. Not his world or my father's world, but ours. Like I was part of something rather than just currency being exchanged.
I closed my fingers around the key, and Ivan nodded once, then returned his attention to his plate.
"The food really is good at room temperature," he said. "My grandmother used to make it for parties. Said hot food made people eat too fast to really talk."
I picked up my fork with my free hand, the key still pressed against my palm with the other, and took a small bite of the Georgian chicken.
It was delicious.
Theguestroomsheetswere too soft, like sleeping in cream, and I'd been lying in them for three hours watching the city lights paint patterns on the ceiling while the silver key grew heavier on the nightstand beside me. Ivan had shown me this room after dinner—down the hall from his, with its own bathroom that locked from the inside. Actually locked. I'd tested it four times before believing it was real.
The room was like everything else in his penthouse—carefully chosen, deliberately calm. Soft gray walls that reminded me of his eyes. A bed with white linens that smelled like lavender. A single piece of art—an abstract in blues and grays that might have been the ocean or might have been the sky. No personal touches, but also no feeling of emptiness. Just space. Waiting.
My mind wouldn't stop calculating. Twenty-three steps from the bed to the elevator. Fifteen seconds for the doors to open if the car was on this floor. Three floors down to the street. Four blocks to the subway. Infinite possibilities from there.
The oversized t-shirt Ivan had given me to sleep in smelled like his laundry detergent—something clean and uncomplicated. It hung to my knees, making me feel smaller than my five-foot-eight frame. Or maybe that was just this place, this situation, this impossible key that promised freedom I didn't know how to take.
I was planning a new escape. This one would be easy, if I could pluck up the courage to do it.
I picked up the key, the metal warm from sitting beside the lamp. Such a simple thing. Grooved metal that would fit into a lock, send an elevator down, open onto a street where I could disappear. Ivan had promised new identity, money, whatever I needed. And I believed him. That was the strangest part—I believed this stranger.
My feet were silent on the hardwood floors as I moved through the penthouse. The darkness was different here than at my father's estate—softer somehow, less absolute. City light filtered through those massive windows, turning everything silver and shadow. The Noguchi table looked like modern sculpture. The books were sleeping soldiers standing at attention.
Twenty feet to the elevator. I could see it clearly, the brushed steel doors reflecting the city lights. The key was in my hand. Nothing stopped me. No guards, no locks, no one monitoring my movement. It was so easy it felt wrong, like a test I was about to fail.
But what was the alternative? Stay here with a stranger who said he wouldn't touch me but was still a bratva boss who'd taken me as leverage for a peace treaty?Wait for him to change his mind, to decide the treaty mattered more than whatever strange morality had made him give me this key?
I stood in front of the elevator, key raised toward the call panel. Three inches of movement and I'd be free. New name, new life, new everything. No more being Viktor Morozov'sdecoder daughter. No more being Ivan Volkov's treaty wife. Just . . . whoever I decided to be.
My hand wouldn't move.
Not because I was scared—though I was, terror and possibility mixing in my chest like a cocktail that might kill me or set me free. But because something else pulled at me, something I couldn't name.
I turned away from the elevator.
My feet carried me down the hall toward Ivan's bedroom without conscious decision, like my body had plans my mind hadn't been informed of. His door was cracked open—deliberate or accidental, I couldn't tell. But it meant I could see inside without pushing it wider, without making noise that might wake him.
He slept on his back in a bed that looked like snow—white sheets, white comforter, everything pristine except for the way he'd disturbed it with his presence. One arm lay across his chest, the other extended toward the empty side of the bed like he was reaching for something that wasn't there. His face was different in sleep—younger, the harsh angles softened by unconsciousness. The control that defined him while awake had slipped away, leaving something human and almost vulnerable.
His breathing was deep, even. The kind of sleep that came from exhaustion or trust that his security would hold. Or maybe sleeping pills—there was a pharmacy's worth of prescription bottles I'd noticed in the kitchen, though I'd been too polite to read the labels.
He looked like a man instead of the Ice King. Like someone who might actually have given me a key because his grandmother taught him about consent. Like someone who cooked with precision because it was how he showed care. Like someone who had two thousand books because he actually read them, not because they impressed visitors.
Beautiful. I let myself think the word. He was beautiful in the way mathematical proofs were beautiful—clean lines, elegant solutions, everything in its place. But also beautiful in a more human way. The way his dark hair fell across his forehead. The way his lips parted slightly in sleep. The way his chest rose and fell with breath that meant he was alive, real, here.
I could leave. The key was still in my hand. The elevator was still twenty feet away. Freedom was still three floors down and four blocks over.
But Ivan Volkov had given me something more valuable than escape. He'd given me choice. Real choice, not the illusion of it. Not my father's version where choosing wrong meant punishment. But actual choice where both options were possible, where staying or leaving were equally valid, where my decision mattered because it was mine to make.
I'd never had that before.
The realization hit me like vertigo—I wanted to stay. Not because I had to. Not because my father would kill me if I ran. Not because I had nowhere else to go. But because Ivan Volkov had made me dinner and given me a key and told me the treaty could wait. Because for the first time in my life, someone had looked at me and seen a person who deserved autonomy.
Tomorrow I might regret this. Tomorrow Ivan might become the monster everyone said he was. Tomorrow the treaty might matter more than his grandmother's ghost.
