Don't look at me

[Sofia Vasilieva]

Alina Marveet

Relations between the Bratva and Japanese were fraught at the best of times. She’d heard Sofia talking about a recent death that had muddied waters, but Alina rarely paid attention to those kinds of details. She frowned a little as she placed the wallet back down with his things, and she wondered if it really was her family’s fault this had happened. But it didn’t make sense for Maksim to be targeted if he had been closing the deal with the Japanese. She ought to mention it to Pavel, but for now she only returned to her husband’s side.

“Moscow has many clubs. We live in the centre of the world, and it’s always growing. There will be more deals,” she promised. She winced to see him shuffle aside on the bed, but climbed in beside him when he gestured. The drape of his arm made her smile, and she waited for him to find some gingerly comfortable way of laying against her. When he was settled she pressed a whisper softly into his dark hair. “But there will only be one you.”

She didn’t tell him that when he hadn’t come home after work, she had been immediately afraid the moment the wallet rang. That something in Sofia’s expression had flooded her insides with ice. He didn’t need that burden of her worry on top of everything else.

Scion would be angry. Or worse, disappointed. She knew it. Maksim could leave the job tomorrow, and she would support him to do it. But she also knew he never would. And it wasn’t like she didn’t understand the pressures of family.

“How many times did you sing for me, moya dusha?” she murmured, watching the play of his hand. “How long would you have tried? The effort paid off.”