I stare at the closed door long after Rowan leaves.
I’m just your assistant, remember? Your perfectly professional assistant who schedules your meetings and organizes your files and occasionally lets you fuck her when it’s convenient.
The acid in her voice when she said it… Christ. For a woman who claims not to care, there was enough pain in those words to drown us both.
I slam my fist against my desk, sending papers flying. Something shatters—my glass paperweight, maybe, possibly, probably. I don’t bother to check.
The worst part is that she’s wrong. So catastrophically wrong that I can’t even begin to explain how fucking incorrect she is.
This thing between us was never just convenient. Never just about sex.
It hasn’t been for a long time now.
But how do I tell her that? How do I explain an arrangement with Anastasia that gives us both what we need while maintaining the charade our families require?
I grab my phone, dialing Arkady. “I need everything we have on Daniel Spencer,” I bark when he answers. “Anastasia Kuznetsov’s lover.”
“The surgeon?” He sounds confused. “Why—”
“Just get it. Now.” I hang up before he can ask more questions.
If I’m going to survive this mess with Rowan, I need to understand what I’m getting into with Anastasia. All the t’s need to be crossed and all the i’s dotted. There’s no room to fuck up.
Because if there’s even a sliver of hope that I can have Rowan and still fulfill my obligations…
My phone vibrates twenty minutes later.
“You’re going to want to see this yourself,” Arkady says without preamble. “I’m sending a car.”
“What did you find?”
He pauses. “Your future bride’s boyfriend isn’t who she says he is.”
My blood runs cold. “Explain.”
“Not over the phone. Just get in the car.”
The line goes dead, and I’m left staring at my reflection in the window. It’s never looked grimmer.
Downstairs, the car is waiting. I slide into the backseat, and Arkady hands me a folder without a word.
The first page shows a surveillance photo of a man in his early thirties. Dark hair. Sharp features. Good-looking in a bland, understated way.
“Daniel Spencer,” Arkady says. “At least, that’s the name he’s using.”
“And his real name?”
“Daniil Petrov.”
Petrov.
As in…
“Grigor’s spawn?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“His youngest son,” Arkady confirms. “Hidden in plain sight. They sent him to medical school in America under a false identity years ago.”
I flip through the surveillance photos. Daniel with Anastasia at a café. Daniel entering her building. Daniel in scrubs at the hospital.
“Does she know?” I ask.
Arkady shrugs. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Is your bride-to-be sleeping with the enemy knowingly? Or is she as much a fool as he is?”
I study the last photo. Daniel and Anastasia sitting on a park bench, her head resting on his shoulder and a shy, happy smile on her face. There’s something in their posture, something sincere that doesn’t read like espionage or manipulation.
“Where is he now?”
“Working. Mount Sinai. Trauma center.” Arkady checks his watch. “His shift ends in… thirty-four minutes.”
I nod. “Take me there.”
“Are we going to have a mess to clean up?” he asks carefully.
The old me would say yes without hesitation. Daniil Petrov represents everything dangerous—a rival family member secretly involved with my future bride. In my world, that’s a death sentence.
But something holds me back. Something that feels uncomfortably like understanding.
“We’ll see,” is all I say.
As we drive, I gaze out the window at passing buildings, but all I can see is Rowan’s face. The hurt in her eyes. The resignation in her voice.
She’s given up on us.
The thought burns more than it should.
We park across from the hospital’s staff entrance. Arkady hands me a gun. “Just in case,” he says. “But I left the safety on. Which is also just in case.”
I tuck it into my waistband, hidden beneath my suit jacket, trying to ignore the uncomfortable parallel of my previous visit to this same hospital not long ago.
“There,” Arkady nods toward a man exiting the building. “That’s him. Flawless timing.”
Daniil Petrov looks exhausted as he walks to his car, shoulders slumped from what was likely a grueling shift. He has no idea he’s being watched. No idea that his life hangs in the balance.
“Wait here,” I tell Arkady.
“Vince—”
“I said wait.”
I approach silently, years of training making my footsteps virtually soundless on the pavement. Daniel doesn’t notice me until I’m directly behind him at his car door.
“Dr. Spencer,” I say quietly. “Or should I say, Dr. Petrov?”
He freezes, keys halfway to the lock.
Then, slowly, he turns to face me.
Recognition dawns in his eyes. He knows exactly who I am.
“Mr. Akopov.” His voice is steady despite the fear I can see creeping into his eyes. “I wondered when this day would come.”
“Get in the car,” I order. “Driver’s side. You’re taking us somewhere to talk.”
He hesitates, glancing around the parking lot.
“Don’t,” I warn. “Your father’s men aren’t here. Mine are. This ends one of two ways: We talk, or we don’t talk.”
The implication of the latter choice is clear. He gets in the car.
I slide into the passenger seat, texting Arkady: Follow, but stay back. Track my phone.
“Where are we going?” Daniel asks.
“Just drive. Head toward the park.”
He obeys, pulling into traffic. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
“How long have you known?” he finally asks.
“About you and Anastasia? Or about who you really are?”
“Both.”
“I’ve known about you and Anastasia for weeks. Your true identity? About an hour.”
He swallows visibly. “She doesn’t know.”
That surprises me. “About us talking now?”
“About who I really am.” His voice cracks. “She thinks I’m just Daniel Spencer. Trauma surgeon. No connections. No family history.”
“You’ve been lying to her.”
“To protect her.” He takes a turn toward the park. “And to protect myself. My father would kill me if he knew I was in love with Andrei Akopov’s future daughter-in-law. Some things are too twisted and fucked-up to be useful, you know?”
I study him carefully. There’s no deceit in his expression, just resignation. And something else. Something I recognize all too well.
Desperation. The kind that comes from loving someone you shouldn’t.
“Pull over there,” I direct him toward a secluded spot near the park entrance.
He parks and turns off the engine, then faces me, shoulders squared like a man ready to meet his fate.
I can’t help but admire his bravery.
“I won’t apologize,” he begins. “Not for loving her. You can kill me if you want, but it won’t change how I feel.”
I almost laugh at the absurdity of it. This man—this Petrov—ready to die for a woman. Our families have been at each other’s throats on and off for generations.
Yet here we are.
“Did your father send you to seduce her? Is this some elaborate plot to infiltrate our family?”
He looks genuinely offended. “No. I met her by chance. I didn’t even know who she was at first.”
“And when you found out?”
He looks away. “I should have ended it then. But I couldn’t. She’s…” He trails off, searching for words.
“She’s what?”
“Everything,” he says simply. “She’s everything.”
The word hits me hard, ripping open the wound Rowan left earlier today. Because isn’t that the truth? When you find the right person, they become everything.
Your compass. Your reason. The center of a universe you never even knew existed before them.
That’s what Rowan has become to me, though I’ve been too much of a fucking coward to admit it.
“So what happens now?” Daniel asks. “Are you going to kill me?”
I consider my options. The old Vincent wouldn’t hesitate. A bullet to the head, a body in the East River. Problem solved. The Petrov son eliminated, a message sent, my position secured.
That’s what my father taught me.
That’s the Vincent he raised.
But that Vincent never met Rowan St. Clair. Never felt his chest crack open at the sight of her tears. Never understood what it means to want something so badly that you’d risk absolutely fucking everything to have it.
“What if there was another way?” I say slowly.
He looks at me warily. “What do you mean?”
“Anastasia and I have agreed to an… arrangement. A marriage of convenience. Appearances for our families, freedom in private.”
“She mentioned something like that,” he says. “I didn’t believe it was possible.”
“It’s not just possible. It’s necessary.” I lean back against the car door. “I have someone, too. Someone I’m not willing to give up.”
Understanding dawns in his eyes. “The assistant. Rowan.”
I don’t deny it. “Anastasia and I marry as planned. Our families get the alliance they want. But you keep seeing her, and I…” I pause, thinking of Rowan, of her pulling away, of the distance between us. “Well, that’s my problem to solve.”
Daniel studies me for a long moment. “And what do you want in return? Because there’s always a price.”
Smart man. There is always, always a price.
“Information,” I say. “About your father’s operations. His plans. His weaknesses.”
He stiffens. “You’re asking me to betray my family.”
“I’m asking you to help me create a world where Anastasia doesn’t have to choose between the man she loves and the family she was born into.” I lean forward and lower my gun in the same motion. “I want peace, Daniel. Real peace between our families. Not just a temporary ceasefire.”
“My father would never agree to that.”
“Then perhaps it’s time for new leadership in the Petrov family as well.”
His eyes widen as he understands what I’m suggesting. “You want me to help you overthrow my father?”
“I want you to help me build something better than what our fathers created.” I hold his gaze. “For Anastasia. For all of us.”
He laughs bitterly. “Just like that? Years of blood and violence forgotten?”
“No. Not forgotten.” I think of my own father, of his countless lessons in cruelty. “But maybe not repeated.”
Daniel is silent for a long moment, considering. I can see the conflict in his eyes—loyalty to his family warring with his love for Anastasia.
“If I refused?” he finally asks.
“Then you’d never see her again,” I answer honestly. “And we both know that’s a kind of death all on its own.”
His expression tells me he understands exactly what I mean. Because how many times have I imagined never seeing Rowan again?
The thought is unbearable.
“I need time to think,” he says.
“Take it.” I open the car door and rise. But before I depart, I stoop down. “But don’t take too much. Things happen quickly in this life of ours.”
Then I stride away, gut churning.
Arkady is already waiting down the block. As I slide into his car, he gives me a questioning look. “Well? Do we have a body to dispose of?”
“Not today.” I check my phone—no messages from Rowan. “Take me back to the office.”
“So the Petrov boy gets to live? That’s not like you, Vin.”
I stare out the window, watching Daniel’s car pull away. “Maybe I’m not entirely like me these days.”
“Who’s to blame for that?”
I don’t answer immediately. My mind is on Rowan.
What I feel for her isn’t convenient. It isn’t simple. It isn’t anything I was prepared for.
It’s consuming. Transformative. Terrifying.
And if I lose her because of my father’s antiquated demands, because of arrangements and appearances and obligations…
Then what the fuck am I fighting for anyway?
Because I’m done watching her walk away. Done pretending this is anything less than what it is.
I’m in love with Rowan St. Clair.
It’s time she knew it.
