30. Viviana

Up until the moment we walk through the front door and into the small Colombian café on the corner, I'm positive Mikhail is going to fake me out at the last second and whisk me away to some secret, fancy restaurant.

It would be more believable that a restaurant with three Michelin stars exists in some Mary-Poppins-like fold between buildings than to think that he is taking me to dinner at a place where you order at the counter.

"They call numbers here," I whisper in awe as we wait in line. "They're going to give us a number on a little piece of paper."

"I'm aware," he drawls.

More people come in behind us. A couple of teenagers laugh and shove each other. Half the tables in the cramped dining room are already taken by families or friends sitting around pitchers of beer.

Mikhail didn't rent the building out for us. He isn't trying to pay off the rest of the patrons to hurry up and leave.

And when the woman behind the counter hands him his receipt and tells him to step to the side to wait, he just nods and shifts over to wait for our food.

Huh?

"You've been here before?"

"It's Raoul's favorite spot in the city. He makes us eat here every time we're in the neighborhood. They have great empanadas."

Mikhail doesn't want another man to touch me for the rest of my life.

Mikhail likes empanadas.

I gather up the random scraps of information and tuck them away like a squirrel hoarding acorns for winter. I don't know when Mikhail is going to shut down again and pull away, so I have to get as much out of him as I can while I'm able.

A man calls our number and Mikhail grabs a plastic tray with our plates on it. He places a hand low on my back and directs me to a table. I sit down on a pea-green vinyl chair and pray the mess between my legs isn't leaking onto my skirt.

I forget all about it, though, when I take a bite.

"Holy shit," I moan. "This is incredible."

"I told you."

I wave my empanada in the air between us. "Is this how you apologize for three days of silent treatment? If so, feel free to ignore me more often."

"I could never ignore you," he rasps around a bite. Then Mikhail lowers his empanada and looks me in the eyes until my knees feel a little shaky. "This is how I apologize: I'm sorry."

I push through the shock and give him a silent golf clap. "That was very evolved of you. Night and day from the brute I was just in the car with."

He rolls his eyes. "I'm not sorry about what happened with your neighbor; I'm sorry about Dante. I shouldn't have disappeared on him. It was wrong. I can own that."

"Oh." I breathe quietly. "Why did you?"

"You two come as one. It's hard to ignore you and still see Dante."

"So you were ignoring me! I knew it."

"Trying," he admits, eyes narrowed. "Next time it happens, I'd suggest getting my attention in a way that doesn't endanger the lives of innocent civilians. I was about to burn that coffee shop to the ground."

Why? Is this about his pride? Maybe Mikhail only cares if I'm out with Tommy because of how it would make him look if his wife was openly dating other men.

Or maybe… Mikhail can't handle the idea of me being with another man because he is desperately in love with me.

Might as well go look for that universe tucked inside Mary Poppins' bag because, once again, that is more likely.

As much as I don't want to confront this particular ache in my chest, I can't stop myself from toeing close to the line. "You accused me of liking this possessive side of you, but I think you might get off on being possessive." I take a bite of empanada. With Mikhail's eyes on me, it tastes like sawdust. "I wasn't even your fiancée the night you burst into my bridal suite to save me."

"I wasn't there to save you," Mikhail corrects sternly.

"Right, right. I forgot. You just so happened to show up the night before my wedding to overthrow your brother, even though you could have beat him down and stripped the signet ring off of his hand at any point in the prior six months. He spent more than enough nights drunk off his ass and defenseless, believe me. You had plenty of opportunities."

He sighs like an exasperated parent. I should know—I'm fluent. "At the risk of you throwing yourself at me in gratitude for saving you?—"

"No risk of that," I lie.

"—I will admit that one of the many reasons I chose to eliminate Trofim on that night in particular was because I didn't want to damn you to a life tethered to him."

Okay, I might be more grateful for that than I'll ever be able to fully express. So I don't bother.

"I'm just glad you can be honest. You were there to save me that night."

"I wanted to stop my brother from making an alliance with a powerful mafia family before I could take control from him," Mikhail explains haltingly. "And… I also thought it might be nice of me to do it before the wedding so you wouldn't feel obligated to follow him into his likely exile."

I wince. "I didn't even think of that… My father definitely would have tried to force me to go."

"Then you'd be dead, too." Mikhail says it under his breath, but I still hear him.

My heart jolts. "Dead?"

He studies me for a second, making a decision. Then he nods. "Trofim is dead. Has been for a while, apparently."

I can't even pretend to enjoy my food now. I drop the other half of my empanada on my plate and wipe my mouth with shaking hands. "Do—do you know what happened to him? Who—How it happened?"

"Nothing definitive yet. Raoul and Anatoly are working on it, but he was cremated before there was even an autopsy."

"So there's no way to figure out what happened?"

"A retired detective who worked the scene mentioned some hair tie or clip or something tangled up in Trofim's sheets. They think there was a woman there with him that night."

"A woman?" I feel nauseous. I suddenly wish I hadn't eaten a single bite.

"What's the matter, Viviana?" Mikhail leans forward, and I freeze. I can't move. Can't breathe. "Don't tell me you're jealous of the woman my brother was fucking."

A shaky laugh huffs out of my tight chest. "God, no. I just hope the woman got out of there okay."

"I'll let you know when I find her."

"You're looking for her? Why?"

"Because she may be the last person to have seen Trofim alive."

My heart is wedged firmly in my throat. "You think she killed him?"

"Or she knows who did." Mikhail shrugs. "It's worth looking into."

"Why, though?" I blurt. "I mean, you exiled him. Why look?"

"He's my brother."

"The brother you exiled. The brother who killed Anatoly's mother and treated everyone like shit. I don't want to be harsh, but… who cares if he's dead?"

Forget crossing lines—I'm burning them. I'm eradicating lines and dancing on the other side of decency.

Of course, Mikhail doesn't mind. "He is associated with the Bratva. If someone killed him, I want to know why and make sure it has nothing to do with me and mine." He sits back, a smile playing on his lips. "But I had no idea you were so ruthless. You really hated Trofim, didn't you?"

"I didn't hate him. I just—Okay, yes, I hated him," I admit. "But only because Trofim represented all of the worst parts of this world. He was heartless and brutal for no reason. He only cared about gaining power and he didn't care who he crushed on his way to the top. Men like him are why I didn't want Dante living in it."

"What about men like me?" Mikhail asks with surprising softness. "I got rid of Trofim. I protected you. But you still didn't want Dante in my world."

"It was more complicated than?—"

"He was my son and you knew that," Mikhail interrupts. "Did you think I would hurt him?"

We haven't talked about why I kept Dante away from Mikhail. Not really. Not at length. If the other option wasn't talking about Trofim, maybe I would try to change the subject.

"I didn't know what you would do," I tell him honestly. "I barely knew you, Mikhail. I saw you around at a few parties. Then you burst into that bridal suite the night before my wedding and told me you were bad. You looked me in the eyes and said that you weren't going to be good for me. What was I supposed to think?"

"He is my son."

"Exactly. Your son. The son of the new Novikov pakhan. But I didn't want that for him. I still don't." I tug my lower lip into my mouth, trying to find the words. "It's not about you anymore. I know that you're going to take care of him now. But you can't stop what's coming for him. His future."

"I don't want to stop it," Mikhail declares proudly. "Everything I'm working towards right now, I'm going to pass on to him. He's going to carry on my family's name."

The thought weighs heavy in my chest, but I understand. I do. Mikhail is proud of what he's done and he wants to share it with his son—with our son.

"But not yet." My voice breaks in a plea. "Right now, he's a little boy. I want him to be a little boy."

Mikhail's blue eyes make a slow study of me. "That's why you're the perfect mother for my child, Viviana."

My heart stutters, and I have to remind myself. He didn't say perfect woman or perfect wife.

"We balance each other out," he explains.

"Does that mean you agree to give him more time to be a normal kid before all of the Bratva training?"

"It's not like I'm shipping him off to boot camp." The corner of his mouth twists upward wryly. "Marriage is about compromise, isn't it?"

Just a few months ago—and for the last six years—I had some image of Mikhail in my head. Some idea of the man he was. But nothing I imagined could have come close to doing him justice.

"You're different than I thought you'd be," I find myself murmuring. "Nicer."

"What did I tell you about falling in love with me, Viviana?"

I laugh, but the idea isn't as ridiculous as it was the day we got married. "Would that be so bad?" My face feels warm, but I say it casually. It's just a thought. Not something I'm going to turn over and over in my head while I toss and turn in bed tonight. "I mean, if we're going to be married, we might as well try to be happy."

"Which is why you can't fall in love with me." There's a hard edge to his voice now. He gathers up our plates and piles them on the plastic tray.

"You really think love makes people unhappy?"

"I think letting your emotions dictate your life is the quickest way to losing control. And I have no interest in losing control."

He walks the tray to the trash can, dumping the food and stacking the dirty tray on top of the others. On the way towards the door, he casually slips a hundred-dollar bill into the tip jar.

I'm not sure Mikhail will ever let me close enough to understand exactly how he operates.

Maybe that's for the best.

Sometime in the last half-hour, it started raining. Pouring, actually. Rain pounds on the red awning above the door and flows down the pavement in sheets.

Without a word, Mikhail slips out of his jacket and slides it over my shoulders. It smells like mint and citrus. I pull it tighter around my shoulders even as I ask, "What about you?"

"It would take far more to hurt me." His eyes dip to the neckline of my white shirt for a beat before he turns back to the deserted sidewalk. Then he grabs my hand and pulls me after him. "Come on."

We run out into the rain and instantly, I'm soaked. Rain drips down my back and over my eyes. If my makeup wasn't already ruined from what we did in the car earlier, it would be destroyed now. Mikhail's jacket is heavy and waterlogged. It hangs down into my eyes until I can't see.

Maybe that's why I don't notice Mikhail stop on the curb.

I'm staring down at the ground as I jump over the overflowing gutter and into the street. Then headlights blind me. A horn blares. A car hurtles toward us.

I don't have time to react or panic before Mikhail yanks me back. I smack against his hard chest, his arm banded around my back like iron.

His jacket has slipped down around my shoulders. Rain pelts my face, plastering my hair to my face.

But I barely feel it.

Mikhail is breathing heavily. His eyes are wide. He strokes a warm hand over my cheek, brushing wet strands of hair from my face.

"You almost died."

He says it so softly I'm not sure how I can even hear it over the pounding rain—over my pounding heart.

"But you saved me."

It's becoming a trend: Mikhail saving me. I could almost get used to it.

His thumb presses gently to the corner of my mouth and I turn towards it. I exhale against the calloused pad of his thumb, pressing the barest of kisses there.

His arm tightens around me, pinning me to his body.

"What are we doing?" I breathe.

The question shatters the moment. Mikhail jerks back, putting a safe distance between our bodies. But as he looks both ways to make sure no more cars are coming to splatter me against the asphalt, I hear him whisper a confused response.

"I have no fucking idea."