Page 33 of Mafia King's Broken Vow
Three days since he touched my wrist. Three days, and I can still feel the burn of it.
“You’re late,” he says, his eyes fixated on the rain. “Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds.”
“I didn’t realize you were counting.”
He turns then, and his gaze isn’t clinical; it’s hungry. “I count everything about you, Doctor. The steps from door to chair. The number of times you touch your hair when you’re nervous. The way your breath changes when I?—”
“Shall we begin?” I cut him off, but my voice is in shreds. He smiles.
My pulse stutters. Heat crawls up my neck, and I know he sees it—the flush spreading across my skin. I force myself to look at my notebook instead of the way his shirt pulls across his chest.
I click my pen. He doesn’t sit immediately. His default move. Make me wait. Make me look up. Control the space, even if it’s subtle.
Eventually, he lowers himself into the opposite chair. Not casual. Not submissive. Like he’s choosing to give the chair dignity by occupying it.
“I thought we might talk about your sister today,” I start calmly. “Not how she died. Who she was…before.”
There’s a flicker. He masks it quickly, but it was there. The smallest crack.
“Anastasiya is a memory now,” he says. “To most, she’s either a cautionary tale or a ghost. No one remembers the person. Just the fallout.”
“And you?”
His jaw works once before he speaks. “She was mornings. Books we pretended we had time to read. She was jasmine perfume and off-key singing that never stayed in the shower. She saw through me.” His voice drops. “And loved me anyway.”
The words hang between us, too intimate. He’s just told me more than he’s told anyone in years, and we both know it. The air shifts, thickens. This isn’t patient and doctor anymore. This is two people seeing each other without masks.
“Like someone else I know,” he adds quietly, eyes locked on mine.
My breath catches. We’re not talking about his sister anymore.
My skin feels too tight, every nerve ending aware of him. Of the way his fingers drum against his thigh—the same fingers that gripped my wrist three days ago. The same hands I’ve imagined on my body every night since.
And it lands harder than any threat he’s ever made.
“Damien has her smile,” he continues, not looking at me, looking somewhere behind me, beyond me. “The way the left corner lifts just a little higher. Ana did that when she was trying not to laugh.”
I don’t write. Not a word. The moment’s too raw. Fragile. One wrong move, and he’ll retreat behind the mask again.
“You love him,” I say.
“He’s the last piece of her,” Yakov answers, and when his eyes snap back to mine, they’re no longer distant. They’re cutting. “And you’re going to use that in your notes, aren’t you? Proof that I’m still human. That the monster has a soft spot.”
“I’m not writing anything,” I reply evenly. “I’m listening.”
“No.” He leans forward slightly, voice tightening. “You’re reporting. To the Volkovs. To Sokolovs. Telling them their mercy project is working. That their little experiment didn’t blow up in their faces.”
“Our sessions are confidential.”
He laughs, low and cold. “Nothing is confidential in our world, Doctor. That’s just a word we say to make ourselves feel safe.”
Before I can counter, a knock slices through the tension. The door opens.
Igor.
“Mila.” His expression is all business. “A word.”
“We’re in the middle of a session,” I say, irritation threading into my voice. I don’t like being pulled away, especially not when I managed to get Yakov to open up.
