The soft afternoon sunlight poured through the expansive floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse, casting long golden streaks across the marble floor and bathing the living room in a tranquil glow. Nikolai sat on the sleek, dark grey couch, his back slightly hunched, a laptop open on the coffee table in front of him. Papers were scattered in meticulous disorder—receipts, shipment lists, encryption keys, and financial logs—all regarding the next covert shipment of drugs scheduled to cross the northern border. His brow was furrowed, the veins in his forearms prominent as he typed with calculated efficiency, ignoring the sharp, rhythmic pain that pulsed just beneath his ribcage.
A bullet wound was just part of the job.
He was lost in his work, the world narrowed down to figures, dates, and coded terms, until—
The penthouse door burst open.
In a flash, Nikolai's hand reached under the couch cushion, fingers curling around the cold, familiar grip of his handgun. Adrenaline surged through him, chest tightening, the breath in his lungs caught mid-exhale.
"Oh, my baby!"
He froze.
The voice was unmistakable.
"Mama?" he groaned, releasing the gun as his mother swept into the room like a tempest dressed in designer heels.
Before he could react, she was at his side, eyes frantic, hands touching his face, his chest, brushing back his hair like he was still ten years old.
"I heard you were shot! Who did this? Who's dead? Tell me you killed the bastard," she said, already inspecting his side as delicately as her trembling hands would allow.
"I'm fine," Nikolai muttered, awkwardly shifting under her fussing. "See? Breathing. Sitting. Not bleeding anymore."
"Oh hush, don't joke. The last time you said that, you ended up in a damn coma and I thought I'd have to bury you!"
Nikolai grimaced. "If you start crying, I swear to God I'm going to throw up."
She smacked him lightly on the arm. He winced.
"You're just like your father," she said, half-laughing, half-crying, even as she narrowed her eyes at the sight of the stitches under the hem of his shirt.
"Nope. He's just like himself," Nikolai deadpanned.
Speak of the devil.
Dimitri Volkov walked in right behind her, tall, broad, dressed in all black, his face unreadable but his presence like a loaded gun—dangerous, silent, and impossible to ignore.
"At least he's not dead," Dimitri said gruffly as he took a seat across from them. "I was already considering who we'd need to appoint if he dropped."
Natalia turned so sharply it was a miracle her heels didn't snap. "Dimitri Ivan Volkov," she hissed, grabbing a nearby couch pillow and throwing it square at his face. "If you say that again, I will kill you myself and bury you in your ex's backyard!"
Dimitri caught the pillow with ease, unfazed. "At least I'd be buried somewhere familiar," he muttered, smirking.
Nikolai rolled his eyes. "Glad to see the lovebirds are still thriving."
His mother turned back to him with softened eyes. "You scared me, Kolya," she whispered, using the childhood nickname she rarely uttered anymore. "How bad is it?"
"Clean shot. In and out. Took care of it myself."
Natalia's jaw dropped. "You what?! You removed the bullet on your own again?"
"Technically… Elara helped." His voice dipped, cautious.
Natalia stilled. "She helped? As in… she found you, bleeding, and didn't run?"
"She was more concerned with yelling at me for being near the stove this morning. I was making breakfast."
"Making breakfast with a bullet wound," Dimitri said with amusement. "Romantic."
"Shut up, Dad."
Natalia leaned in, brushing her son's hair from his forehead. "How is she?" she asked gently. "I mean, really. Between you and me."
Nikolai sighed, a deep, weary breath that echoed through his ribcage. "She still can't accept my world. Not fully. It eats at her. The girls, the shipments, the blood… It's too much. But she cares. She stitched me up, yelled at me like I was an idiot, then forced me to sit down while she cooked. She's fire and worry wrapped in one."
"That's love," Natalia said softly, smiling.
Dimitri scoffed. "That's manipulation. She's soft. You need to chain her up, keep her in your bed until she forgets everything but you. You want her to stay? Lock her up."
Another pillow hit him square in the face.
"Dimitri!"
"What?"
"Do not teach my son your psychotic, testosterone-fueled version of love!"
Nikolai rubbed his temples.
Natalia stood and crossed her arms, her glare so sharp it could cut diamonds. "Not every woman drinks vodka at nine in the morning and thinks murder is foreplay, Dimitri. Not every girl is going to roll over for a bratva man just because he throws her a gun and calls it romance."
"Worked for you," Dimitri said smugly.
"I tolerate you," she snapped. "There's a difference."
She turned back to Nikolai. "You're not going down that road, Kolya. You're not going to become him. You still have time to show her who you are, beyond the blood, beyond the empire."
"She won't stay," Nikolai murmured. "She keeps thinking of leaving. I can see it in her eyes. Every morning. Every night. I don't sleep anymore because I'm terrified I'll wake up and she'll be gone."
Natalia's face softened with understanding, her voice dropping to something only a mother could summon—tender and commanding. "You love her?"
"More than I've ever loved anything. More than I've loved this life. But I can't leave the bratva. You know that. I can't leave the family."
"Then you give her reasons to stay. Not orders. Not cages. Reasons."
Dimitri snorted. "That's cute. Is that what you call dragging your wife back every time she tried to run?"
Natalia spun toward him with a pointed glare. "I stayed because I made that decision for myself. I decided to turn my monster into mine. But Elara isn't me. She's softer. Smarter. She sees you all for what you are, and that terrifies her."
"She's not scared of me," Nikolai whispered. "Not really. She's scared of what I represent."
"Exactly," Natalia said, brushing a kiss to his forehead. "So stop representing a monster. Just be her man."
"But—"
"No buts," she cut in. "Buy her flowers. Take her on a damn picnic. Whisper sweet nothings. You're not your father."
"I'm right here," Dimitri said, mildly offended.
"Shut up," mother and son said in unison.
Natalia stood, collecting her purse with flair. "We're going to let you rest now. Try not to get shot again this week, alright?"
"Not in the plans," Nikolai said, smirking faintly.
"Okay, you two sit here and chat or whatever your testosterone tells you to do," Natalia said as she stood from the couch with a dramatic swish of her cream-colored blouse. "I'm going to make dinner. Do you have everything in your kitchen, or do I need to call a five-star chef to save us from starvation?"
"I have everything," Nikolai replied from where he sat, half-reclined on the couch, his side still sore from the bullet wound but posture composed nonetheless. "You taught me well. I rarely eat takeout."
Natalia raised her eyebrows with a smug little smirk. "Good. At least you didn't turn into a lazy bum like your father who once burned a steak so bad I thought it was charcoal."
"Hey," Dimitri interjected with mild indignation, "that's because you never let me near the stove. I never got to learn. You refused to teach me."
"That's because you're not welcome in my kitchen, Volkov," Natalia replied coolly, deliberately using his last name like it was an insult. "The last time you tried to make scrambled eggs, you nearly burned the apartment down."
"Once," Dimitri muttered under his breath.
Natalia simply shook her head with theatrical exasperation as she made her way toward the kitchen. She paused briefly to tie her thick auburn hair into a loose bun, then grabbed the black apron that hung neatly from a silver hook beside the fridge. She tied it around her waist with practiced ease and began surveying the cabinets with the precision of a general before battle.
Meanwhile, in the living room, Dimitri sat down next to Nikolai with a deep sigh. The man might've once been a feared bratva enforcer and one of the most ruthless Dons in the Volkov line, but right now, he looked like a grumpy husband forced into chores. Begrudgingly, he picked up one of the documents from the coffee table.
"Let me help before she comes back and stabs me for watching you work while you're injured," Dimitri muttered. "She already thinks I'm a heartless bastard."
"You are a heartless bastard," Nikolai said with a weak smirk.
"And yet here I am, helping you file shipping records for narcotics while your mother's playing house in your penthouse."
"You love it."
"Don't push it."
The two men worked in silence for a while—Nikolai still trying to hold himself together despite the pain tugging at every nerve beneath the stitched wound, and Dimitri, surprisingly efficient, leafing through encrypted manifests and flagged transaction summaries like a man who hadn't forgotten a damn thing about the business.
From the kitchen came the sounds of sizzling garlic, a bubbling sauce, and Natalia humming some old Russian lullaby under her breath. She moved through Nikolai's kitchen like it was her own—chopping, seasoning, adjusting the heat. She grumbled when she found the olive oil stored near the flour and muttered "barbarian" when she discovered the spice rack wasn't alphabetized.
By the time the sun had begun its descent behind the skyline, the scent of roasted vegetables, seared chicken, and herbed potatoes filled the entire penthouse.
The front door clicked open.
Elara stepped inside, letting the door quietly shut behind her. She was tired, her hair loosely tied back, makeup smudged from the long hours at the office. Her heels clicked softly against the polished floors as she stepped into the space, pausing when she saw extra shoes by the door.
A woman's heels. A man's boots.
She blinked in confusion.
"Elara, sweetheart!" Natalia's voice came floating from the kitchen, warm and enthusiastic, not at all like a woman who was in the middle of preparing an elaborate meal in someone else's home. "You're just in time. Dinner's nearly ready."
Elara stepped forward and saw her.
Natalia Volkov, standing at the stove like she owned the place, apron on, wooden spoon in hand, and her smile genuine despite the streak of tomato sauce on her cheek.
Dimitri was seated next to Nikolai in the living room, the two of them reviewing documents like it was a casual board meeting and not the ledgers of an international crime family.
Elara froze in the hallway.
Nikolai looked up from the table. "Hey," he said, his voice low and rough from fatigue. "You're home."
She stared at him, then at his parents.
Natalia wiped her hands on a towel and made her way over. "Don't look so shocked. We're not staying the night. We never stay over. It's just a quick visit. I needed to make sure he wasn't dying again, and if he was, we'd be dragging him back to the family mansion, whether he liked it or not."
"Because you needed to see him," Dimitri corrected from the couch without even looking up.
Natalia narrowed her eyes. "You want me to shove your tux so far up your ass not even surgery can remove it?"
Nikolai stifled a laugh, but the movement tugged at his stitches. He winced, gritting his teeth.
"Elara," Natalia said more softly now, turning back to her with a maternal tone, "we're leaving after dinner. I just needed to see with my own eyes that he wasn't acting brave over the phone while bleeding out in a pool of his own blood. Again."
Elara found her voice. "I...didn't expect visitors."
"You and me both," Nikolai muttered.
Natalia gave her a gentle pat on the arm. "Go wash up, dear. Dinner will be ready in five. I made extra."
Dinner was surprisingly...normal. As normal as it could be in the home of a bratva heir with two shot parents seated across from a woman who didn't know whether she loved or feared the man beside her.
They ate, they talked, mostly about harmless things—Nikolai's childhood, Dimitri's inability to boil water, Natalia's obsession with some Italian soap opera. There was laughter. There were teasing jabs. There were moments Elara almost forgot about the blood on the floor the night before.
When dinner was finished, Natalia insisted on cleaning up despite Elara offering to help.
"You've had a long day," Natalia said. "Let me feel like a mother again."
Later, as they stood by the door, preparing to leave, Natalia turned to Elara with soft eyes.
"If anything happens—anything at all—you call me. Nikolai won't. He could be two seconds away from death's door and still tell you he's fine. Don't trust him. Trust me."
Elara nodded. "Thank you…for dinner."
Natalia pulled her into a hug. "And thank you for keeping him alive."
Dimitri looked at his son. "Heal fast. We have business."
Then they were gone.
The door closed. Silence returned.
Nikolai leaned against the wall and exhaled.
"That went...surprisingly well," he muttered.
Elara stood by the kitchen, arms crossed, expression unreadable. "They love you."
"I'm their eldest son."
"They worry."
"They do."
"They also think I'm your future wife."
Nikolai looked at her then, eyes heavy and tired. "Maybe they're right."
She didn't respond.
Not yet.
He didn't push.
Not tonight.
Tonight, he would just be grateful she came home. Grateful she didn't run.
Because that, for him, was enough—for now.