Page 48 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
She enters my room in a sweep of perfume and confidence, her smile promising familiarity before she even speaks. She doesn’t need an invitation, doesn’t pause to measure the weight of the air. Vika knows what I called her for, and she gives it freely.
I let her in without hesitation, stripping away the distance of weeks with the bluntness of physical proximity. No words, no pretense. Her hands find me quickly, practiced, eager to please. She knows my rhythms, my preferences, the ways to draw sound and reaction.
I respond. My body moves as it should, trained by habit and memory. Every kiss lands where it’s supposed to, every touch triggers the right muscle, the right breath.
My mind drifts.
The comparison strikes before I can stop it.
Annie never moved like this.
She wasn’t predictable, wasn’t measured. She was chaos, sharp edges and fire. She made me forget control, not fall deeper into it. With her, nothing felt rehearsed. Nothing was done out of routine. Every moment burned raw, unscripted.
The thought unsettles me, a splinter I can’t shake.
Vika kisses me harder, mistaking my distraction for resistance. I let her. I let her mouth slide against mine, let her body press close, let her drag me through the motions.
There’s no spark. No satisfaction.
Only the gnawing absence where something vital should be.
I close my eyes, forcing my body to keep moving, to finish what I started. The hollow grows deeper, reminding me with every practiced touch that this—Vika, the perfume, the precision—isn’t enough. It will never be enough.
When it’s over, she curls beside me, whispering soft Russian phrases meant to soothe, to claim intimacy. I don’t answer. I stare at the ceiling, jaw tight, and the only face I see is Annie’s.
The silence feels heavier than before.
Vika curls against me, warm and satisfied, her perfume clinging thick in the air like smoke after gunfire.
She moves with practiced ease, as though we’ve never been apart, as though slipping back into my bed is as natural as breathing. Her arm drapes across my chest, nails grazing lightly over my skin. She whispers something soft in Russian, her voice lilting, familiar words she’s spoken before. A phrase meant to soothe. A phrase that once would have worked.
Now, the sound barely registers.
I don’t answer. My gaze stays locked on the ceiling, the chandelier above me nothing but shadow in the dark. My jaw aches from how tight it’s set. My body doesn’t ease under her touch—it never has tonight, not once. I let her move over me, let her lips and hands perform the ritual we both knew so well, but I didn’t feel it. Not the way I should have.
I think of Annie. I can’t stop myself.
I think of how she would have ruined this silence. She would have scoffed, rolled her eyes, said something sharp and cutting just to watch the reaction flicker across my face. She thrived on chaos, on friction, on breaking through my control. She would never have let this kind of quiet linger between us—not unless she wanted me to squirm under the weight of her gaze.
That’s worse. Remembering how she’d sometimes say nothing at all. How she’d pin me with those dark, unyielding eyes, her silence sharper than any blade. I used to hate it—howmuch power she wielded with nothing but a look. Hate it, and crave it. Because it meant she saw me. Really saw me.
The silence with Vika is different. Heavier. Empty.
Annie filled every room she stepped into. She was the noise, the spark, the disruption I couldn’t ignore. She unsettled me in ways that made me feel alive, ways that forced me to see just how brittle my routines had become. With her, nothing was rehearsed. Nothing was clean. She burned through my carefully laid order like a match to dry paper.
Without her, even company feels like absence.
Vika shifts against me, pressing a kiss to my shoulder. Her lips are soft, practiced, meant to please. “Dimitri,” she murmurs, coaxing. Her voice carries the familiarity of years past, of nights where she was enough to silence the noise in my head.
The sound grates now.
I peel her arms from me, her perfume smearing across my skin like a mark I don’t want. Rising from the bed, I don’t look back. The sheets rustle behind me, and she makes a small sound of confusion, a question threaded through the syllable of my name. I give her nothing.
The sideboard waits across the room, the crystal decanters lined in precise order. I pour myself another drink, the vodka hitting the glass with a clean note. The liquid is cold in my palm, sharp and clear. I throw back the first swallow, welcoming the burn that tears down my throat, grounding me in its sting.
I fix my eyes on the window, on the black stretch of estate grounds washed pale under the moon. The gates are closed. The city is a faint glow at the horizon, its noise too far away to reach me here. This is my world—silent, ordered, secure.
Still, it feels like a cage.
