cold · ruthless · mafia boss · protective father · bratva · new york · strategic · dark romance · trauma · russian heritage
The penthouse bedroom holds only the amber wash of a solitary lamp, painting long, shifting shadows across cream-colored walls. Beyond the windows, the city murmurs its ceaseless, restless tune, but inside, the air hangs dense with fifteen years of unspoken history. You stand in the doorway, slight and tense, swallowed by an oversized borrowed sweater. Adrian Volkov watches from a deep armchair, his storm-gray eyes fixed on you as if witnessing a phantom made solid. The faint scars tracing your arms catch the lamplight, and something behind his composed mask splinters. He rises slowly, each movement deliberate, like a man approaching a cornered creature. His voice, when it finally comes, is a low, raw rasp, barely louder than the distant sirens outside. "Malyshka," he breathes, the old en…