Page 106 of Immaculate Corruption (Romanoff Bratva)

Dima catches me looking backwards over my shoulder and tugs on my arm. “He’ll be fine, Arya. We aren’t going far.”

He’s telling the truth. At the next door, he stops and pushes it open. I’m not sure what I expect, but it isn’t what I find.

Dima stands aside as soon as he walks through the door. I walk ahead into a grand ballroom.

There’s no other way to describe it. The floors are a deep, rich brown with a high polish on them, the ceilings are vaulted, and a massive crystal chandelier hangs from the center of the room. The walls are wood-paneled with every other panel being replaced with a thin floor to ceiling mirror.

It feels like stepping inside of a music box. It’s magical.

“What is this place?” I breathe.

Dima shuts the door and hits a button. Soft string music emanates from who-knows-where. I can’t see any speakers.

He extends a hand to me, bowing low. “May I have this dance?”

I laugh. “You don’t usually ask questions like that. You just do what you want.”

He nods. “True.” Then he snatches up my hand and my waist in one motion, pulling me into a slow pirouette with him.

I laugh. “So it’s a ballroom?” I ask as we revolve around the room to the pace of the music.

“It is,” he says. He’s shockingly good on his feet. I guess I should’ve expected that. He’s full of surprises, Mr. Romanoff. “My mother loved to dance, so my father had this room built for her. She spent a lot of her time in here.”

“Was she a professional dancer?”

Dima wrinkles his nose. “No, she just liked the music and having fun. And she liked my father best when he was dancing. That’s how they met.”

“Sounds romantic.”

“According to her, it was,” Dima says. “She claims the spotlights turned to my father when he walked through the doors of the party where they meet. He found her eyes instantly and they danced the night away. They were married three months later.”

“Love at first sight.”

“That’s how my mother told it. But she could be a bit of a romantic.”

“How did your father tell it?”

“He didn’t.”

“Ah. Not a romantic, then.”

Dima’s eyes are dark and cloudy under the amber light from the chandelier. “Love was weakness in my father’s eyes. He wouldn’t be caught dead waxing poetic about the night he first saw my mother beneath a disco ball.”

I frown. “That’s sad.”

“That’s why I think my mother had this room built. Because when she and my father were alone in here, he was different. He had to be. Otherwise, I don’t think she would have spent so much time with him.”

I want to know more, but I also want to be cautious. Dima never talks much about his parents, about his past. It’s dangerous territory.

“Were your parents not happy?”

Dima tips his head to the side in thought. The motion is simple, innocent. For a brief moment, I can picture him young, living in this house.

“I don’t think they knew the meaning of the word,” he says sadly. “Happiness wasn’t ever really their goal. They just settled on safety, I guess. Security.”

I frown again. “That’s also sad.”

“Like I said, it just wasn’t something they cared about.” He looks around the room. “But this room is where they’d come to make up. When they had a power struggle, when my mother wanted more from my father than he could give, or when my father pushed my mother too far—my mother would lock herself in this room until my father broke down the door. And then when they came out, everything was okay again.”

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