Page 79 of Bratva Bride
Then reality detonated behind my eyes. The bombing. The flight home. Today's Council meeting where my father no doubt try to reclaim me like lost property.
I kept my breathing steady, not wanting to wake Ivan yet. These might be our last minutes. Hours, if we were lucky. I needed to memorize everything while I could.
Early morning light filtered through the curtains—New York gray, nothing like the Maldivian gold that had painted our villa. It turned Ivan's skin to marble, all sharp planes and shadows. In sleep, his face did something it never did awake—it softened.The line between his brows smoothed out. His jaw unclenched, no longer grinding through calculations and contingencies. His lashes lay dark against his cheeks, longer than any man's had a right to be.
Even unconscious, his arm stayed wrapped around me. Not possessive but protective, like his sleeping brain still needed to know I was there. Safe. His.
I cataloged details with the desperation of someone about to lose everything. The small scar near his temple from a childhood fall. The way his pulse beat visible in his throat, steady as a metronome. His fingers splayed across my ribs, each point of contact a small anchor. His hair, mussed from sleep, sticking up at angles that would mortify his waking self.
This was Ivan without armor. Without the ice king persona or the strategic distance. Just a man who'd held me through panic attacks and built me a purple room and whispered "I love you" while buried inside me.
His breathing changed—that subtle shift from sleep to awareness. His arm tightened around me first, pulling me impossibly closer before his eyes even opened. When they did, the gray was already shadowed with knowledge of what today would bring.
"Morning, kotyonok," he murmured, voice rough with sleep and something heavier.
We didn't talk about the Council meeting. Didn't discuss strategies or probabilities. We just held each other in the gray light, breathing the same air, existing in the same space while we still could. His hand traced patterns on my back—lazy circles and figure eights that might have been Russian words or might have been nothing at all.
The digital clock on his nightstand counted down our remaining time in violent red numbers. 6:47. 6:48. 6:49. Eachminute closer to when we'd have to get up, get dressed, pretend we weren't both terrified of what came next.
At 7:15, we couldn't delay anymore. Ivan kissed my forehead—lingering, memorizing—then rolled away to shower. I lay there for another moment, pressing my face into his pillow, trying to trap his scent in my lungs.
When he emerged, towel around his waist, water still beading on his shoulders, I tried one last time to find my safe space. I reached for Marina on the nightstand, forgetting she wasn't there. My hand closed on empty air, and something in my chest cracked.
"Where—" I started, then remembered. Marina was in my bag. Downstairs. Waiting.
I pulled my knees to my chest, trying to make myself small the way I did when the world felt too big. Closed my eyes and reached for that soft, quiet place where I could be little and protected and his.
Nothing.
Static filled my head where little space usually lived. Fear too big for any container. Adult terror that no amount of coloring or stuffed whales could soften. I pressed harder, curling tighter, fingernails digging into my shins through the sheets.
"Anya?" Ivan's weight dipped the mattress beside me. "Baby, what's wrong?"
"I can't find it," I whispered into my knees. "The little space. It's just—static. Like bad radio frequency. I can't—"
His arms wrapped around my curled form, pulling me against his chest despite the water still cooling on his skin. "It's okay. The fear is too big right now. That's normal."
Normal. Nothing about this was normal. But I let him hold me until my breathing steadied, then forced myself to uncurl. We had forty-five minutes before the car arrived.
"Clara left a dress," Ivan said, gesturing to the closet. His voice had gone carefully neutral, but I heard what he wasn't saying. Battle armor. Costume. Disguise.
The dress hung like a shadow—severe black wool, high neck, long sleeves despite the August heat. The kind of thing Viktor's daughter would wear. Modest. Serious. Completely erasing any hint of the woman who'd worn purple sundresses and laughed in pools.
Ivan helped me into it with the same care he'd shown undressing me in the Maldives, but this felt like reverse footage. Every zipper pulled up was another wall rebuilt. The fabric was expensive but scratchy, designed for appearance over comfort. It held my body in rigid lines—waist nipped, shoulders squared, posture forced into my father's version of perfection.
"Your hair," Ivan said softly, and I sat at the vanity while he worked. His fingers were gentle but efficient, gathering every strand into a bun so tight my scalp ached. No wisps escaped. No softness allowed. When he finished, I looked in the mirror and saw her—Viktor Morozov's daughter. The useful thing. The asset. The treaty made flesh.
Ivan met my eyes in the reflection, and his expression was stricken. We both saw it happening—me disappearing back into what my father had made me. Twenty-six years of programming reasserting itself with every hairpin.
"We'll fight this," he said, but his voice cracked. "Alexei has a plan. You're not going back to him."
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to point out the probability matrices that said otherwise. Wanted to scream that we both knew my father had orchestrated this perfectly. Instead, I just nodded, adding lip gloss with steady hands while my insides liquefied.
"Wait," Ivan said suddenly, moving to his dresser. He returned with something gold that caught the light—a necklace. Delicate chain with a small Orthodox cross, the gold soft with age.
"This was my grandmother's," he said, and his hands shook as he fastened it around my neck. The cross settled in the hollow of my throat, warm against my skin. "So you remember you're mine. No matter what happens in that room, you're my wife. My Little. Mine."
The words broke something in me. I reached up to touch the cross, felt its edges worn smooth by decades of wear, and nodded because I couldn't speak. If I opened my mouth, I'd start screaming and never stop. Screaming that I didn't want to go back. That I'd just learned how to breathe.
