Page 52 of Bratva Bride
The thought still made my chest tight with something between fear and want. But there at my usual spot—the barstool closest to the kitchen so I could watch him work—sat a mug of coffee. Steam still rising. Three creams, one sugar. Exactly as I liked it.
"Morning, kotyonok," he said without turning around, like he had some sixth sense for my presence. The thin pancake in his pan required attention, that perfect moment between golden and burnt that Russian babushkas spent decades perfecting.
I settled onto my stool, wrapped both hands around the warm mug, and watched him work. The week's memories layered over the present like transparency sheets, each one adding depth to the picture of who Ivan Volkov actually was beneath the careful control.
Day two: I'd mentioned, offhand, that I didn't like bread crusts. Childish admission that slipped out when he'd made me a sandwich for lunch. The next day, every sandwich appeared with crusts already removed, cut diagonally the way children preferred, though he never commented on the accommodation.
Day three: The post-it notes started appearing. Pale blue squares with his precise handwriting. "Drink water, kotyonok" on my laptop. "Lunch is in the fridge" on Peanut's ear. "You did well today" on the bathroom mirror after I'd managed a difficultphone call with my father's lawyer about the treaty terms. Never demanding. Never controlling. Just gentle reminders that someone was paying attention.
Day five: The panic attack hit at two a.m., waking me from a nightmare where my father had decided the marriage wasn't sufficient and wanted to renegotiate. I'd stumbled to the living room, gasping for air that wouldn't come, and found Ivan already there—he rarely slept more than four hours, I'd learned. He didn't ask questions. Didn't try to fix it with words. Just pulled me into his lap and held me while my body shook apart, his hand stroking my hair in that four-count rhythm until breathing remembered how to work. When it passed, he made me chamomile tea and read to me from a collection of Russian fairy tales until exhaustion pulled me under. I woke in my own bed, tucked in with Peanut, a glass of water on the nightstand.
The spatula moved with practiced grace, flipping the blini at the exact moment of golden perfection. Ivan had a plate ready—immaculate white porcelain—and began the careful process of arrangement. Three blini, rolled into perfect cylinders, drizzled with honey that caught the light like liquid gold. Fresh berries appeared from a container in the fridge: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries that still held their shape despite their delicacy.
He arranged them with the same precision he applied to financial spreadsheets. Two blueberries for eyes. A curve of raspberry segments for a smile. The strawberry slices became decorative flowers around the edge. A face made of fruit, smiling up from expensive china, created by hands that had probably done terrible things but chose gentleness for me.
"Here you go, malyshka." He set the plate before me with careful ceremony, then returned with his own—identical except for the absence of fruit faces, because apparently those were specifically for me.
We ate in comfortable quiet for a few minutes, the blini melting on my tongue with the perfect balance of sweet and rich. Ivan checked his phone once, frowned at something, then deliberately set it face-down on the counter. Whatever it was could wait. Breakfast was sacred time.
"How did you sleep?" he asked, the same question every morning, though he probably knew the answer from the surveillance he definitely had on my room. Not creepy surveillance—protective surveillance. The kind that noticed if nightmares struck or anxiety kept me pacing.
"Better," I admitted, which was true. Six hours last night, almost consecutive. "The new sheets help."
A small smile touched his mouth. Victory in thread count.
"Plans for today?" Another routine question, though he never pushed if I didn't have any. Sometimes the answer was reading. Sometimes it was coloring. Sometimes it was sitting with Peanut and staring at the wall while my brain processed twenty-six years of trauma at its own pace.
"Maybe the aquarium?" The words came out smaller than intended. Asking for things still felt dangerous, like revealing want was handing someone a weapon.
"Of course." No hesitation. No checking his calendar or calculating the inconvenience. Just immediate agreement, like my wants were valid enough to rearrange his day around.
The normalcy of it—this careful construction of routine and safety—made my chest ache with something I didn't have words for. Not happiness exactly, though that was part of it. More like the feeling when a broken bone finally sets properly. That deep, cellular relief of things sliding into place where they belonged.
This was what marriage could be when it wasn't a transaction. What care looked like when it wasn't conditional. What home felt like when someone actually wanted you there.
Afterbreakfast,Ivan'slaptopemerged like a third party to our morning, and I watched him shift from Daddy to bratva strategist with the subtle recalibration of someone switching between languages. He settled at the dining table—his makeshift office when he worked from home—and I claimed the Eames chair with my own laptop, angling myself for the perfect vantage point.
The pretense was academic papers. Computational linguistics, specifically, a thrilling analysis of syntactic patterns in Russian-English code-switching that would have actually interested me if my attention wasn't entirely focused on the man fifteen feet away. But Ivan didn't need to know I was cataloging every micro-expression, every tell, every small revelation of who he became when the world demanded the Ice King instead of my gentle Daddy.
"Marcus," he said as the video call connected, and his voice dropped a full octave. Not threatening—just commanding. The kind of voice that expected competence and accepted nothing less. "Talk to me about Williamsburg."
I could see Marcus on Ivan's screen, a middle-aged Black man with worried eyes and the kind of exhaustion that came from managing construction in New York City. His shoulders were already defensive, braced for impact.
"We've got a problem with the foundation pour," Marcus said, and I watched him physically steel himself. "The inspection found hairline cracks in the northeast corner. Not structural yet, but—"
"Stop." Ivan held up one hand, and Marcus went silent instantly. But then Ivan did something my father never wouldhave done. "Take a breath, Marcus. Now, tell me what you need to fix it."
The shift in Marcus's posture was immediate. Relief flooding his features as he realized this wasn't going to be a bloodbath.
"Three days to tear out the affected section," Marcus said, steadier now. "New rebar, better concrete mix—I want to use the supplier from the Queens project, not the cheap bastards corporate suggested. Another two days for the pour and cure. We'll lose a week total, but it'll be right."
"Cost?"
"Hundred twenty thousand. Maybe one-fifty with overtime."
My father would have raged about the delay. Would have threatened Marcus's job, his family, his ability to ever work in construction again. Would have demanded he use the cheaper materials and hide the flaw, because completion mattered more than safety.
Ivan just nodded. "Do it. Use the good supplier. I'd rather lose a week than have the building collapse in five years. And Marcus?" He leaned forward slightly. "This wasn't your fault. The geological survey missed the water table issue. Sometimes ground shifts. We adapt."
