The knock on the doores when I’m putting Sofiya down for her afternoon nap.


    “Sleep tight, little one,” I whisper. “Mama loves you.”


    Another knock, more insistent this time.


    I slip out of the nursery and close the door gently behind me. Thepound is crawling with security, so whoever’s knocking has already been cleared.


    Still, I’m surprised to find Anastasia Kusov standing in my foyer when I round the corner.


    She looks… disheveled. Not a word I’d typically associate with the polished Bratva princess who once sneered at me across a Michelin-starred dinner table.


    Her normally perfect blonde hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail. Her eyes are rimmed with red, mascara slightly smudged. She’s wearing jeans—Levi’s, not designer—and a simple white blouse.


    I blink. “… Anastasia?”


    “I need to talk to you.” Her voice cracks. “I didn’t know where else to go.”


    I hesitate. Anastasia and I have an unusual rtionship, to say the least. It’s not exactly tense. But I wouldn’t go so far as calling us friends, either.


    “Come in,” I say finally, gesturing toward the living room. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Wine?”


    “Wine. Please. A lot of it.” She copses onto the sofa, a gesture so uncharacteristically vulnerable that rm bells start ringing in my head.


    “Is everything okay?” I ask as I pour her a generous ss of Cabe.


    “No.” She epts the wine and immediately chugs a long swallow. “Everything ispletely fucked.”


    I raise my eyebrows. I’ve never heard Anastasia swear before. “What happened?”


    She stares into her wine ss for a long moment before looking up at me with haunted eyes. “Daniel is Daniil Petrov.”


    Oh.


    “I know,” I say carefully.


    She justughs bitterly. “You knew? For how long?”


    “Vince told me a little while ago.” I settle into the armchair across from her. “I assumed you knew, too, considering your rtionship.”


    “Well, I didn’t.” She takes another sip of wine. “I found outst night. He’s been lying to me for years. Pretending to be this… this normal American surgeon when all along he’s been Grigor Petrov’s son.”


    “How did you find out?”


    “I overheard him on the phone, speaking Russian.” Sheughs like it hurts her to do anything but that. “Fluent, native Russian. About Bratva business.”


    I study her carefully. “And now, you’re here because…?”


    “Because you’re the only person who might understand.” Anastasia looks at me directly. “You married a Bratva man knowing exactly what he is.” She sets her ss down. “How? How do you reconcile it?”


    I suppress augh. Of all the people I expected toe seeking rtionship advice, Anastasia Kusov was at the bottom of the list.


    “It’s not about reconciling,” I say after a moment. “It’s about… eptance.”


    “eptance of what? That the man I love ispletely full of shit and our entire romance is a lie?”


    “That the man you love exists in a world where lying about his identity might be necessary.” I lean forward. “Daniel—or Daniil—is a Petrov. You’re from a Bratva family that’s allied with the Akopovs. Those families have been enemies for generations.”


    “So he couldn’t trust me with the truth?”


    “Could you have trusted him with it when you first met? Really?”


    She falls silent, considering.


    “Daniil risked everything to be with you,” I continue. “He crossed family lines, betrayed his father’s trust, put himself in constant danger—all for you.”


    “He still lied.”


    “Yes. He did.” I refill her wine ss. “The question is whether that lie negates everything else.”


    Anastasia takes another sip of wine, smaller this time. “How do you do it?” she asks softly.


    “Honestly?” I adjust in my seat. “Some days, I don’t know. There are mornings I wake up wondering if this is really my life—if I’m really raising a baby in apound with armed guards, married to a man who kills people in boardrooms.”


    She nods, waiting for me to continue.


    “But then there are moments—Vince reading Sofiya a bedtime story, or when he looks at me when he thinks I don’t notice—that make everything else fade away.” I shrug. “I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s not. It’s messy and terrifying and sometimes, I think I must be insane to have chosen this.”


    “Then why stay?”


    “Because I love him,” I say simply. “Even with all the danger and lies andplications, life with Vince is infinitely better than life without him.”


    Anastasia keeps staring into her wine as if it’s hiding answers from her. “Daniel—or Daniil, whatever; God, my brain is a mess—wants me to meet his father. Officially. As his fiancée.”


    “Meeting with Grigor,” I muse. “I can rte to that particr terror. We sat down yesterday.”


    Her eyebrow floats upward. “Oh? What was it like?”


    “Surreal.” I toy with my fingernails as I think back on yesterday’s meeting. “Like looking into a mirror and seeing parts of yourself you never recognized before.”


    “Were you afraid?”


    “Yes. But not of him, exactly. More of what he represented—this whole side of myself I never knew existed.”


    Anastasia nods, understanding. “I’m terrified,” she admits. “Loving a Petrov changes everything.”


    “Love tends to do that.” I smile wryly. “It reshapes your entire world, whether you’re ready or not.”


    She absorbs that with yet another slow nod, never taking her eyes off her wine. Just twisting the stem in her hands back and forth, back and forth.


    “I thought I was special,” she muses quietly. “I thought our situation—mine and Daniel’s—was uniquelyplicated. But hearing you talk about Vincent…” She shakes her head. “We’re not so different, are we?”


    “No,” I agree. “We’re not.”


    “I was so angry when I found out,” she confesses. “I threw things. I screamed. I told him to get out.”


    “Understandable.”


    “But the moment he walked out the door, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I’ve spent my entire life following rules, meeting expectations. Daniel—Daniil; shit, that’s gonna take some getting used to—is the one thing I’ve ever chosen for myself.”


    “Sounds familiar,” I say with a small smile.


    She looks up at me. “Did I make a mistakeing here?”


    “No,” I shake my head. “Strangely enough, I think I might be the only person who could understand.”


    “I thought you hated me.”


    “I did, at first. When I thought you were going to marry Vince.” Iugh softly. “But that feels like a lifetime ago.”


    “Before Sofiya.”


    “Before a lot of things.”


    We sit inpanionable silence for a moment, the tension between us dissolving into something approaching camaraderie. Two women bound not by friendship but by circumstance—by the shared experience of loving men whose worlds should have remained closed to us.


    “She’s beautiful, by the way,” Anastasia says. “Your daughter.”


    “Thank you.” I smile. “She has Vince’s eyes.”


    “And your strength, I imagine.”


    “God help us all if that’s true.”


    Anastasiaughs for real this time—a genuine sound that transforms her face. As she does, I can see what Daniel must see in her. There’s a person beneath the wless makeup. There’s a heart, a real one, a big one.


    “I should go,” she says, setting down her wine ss. “Daniel is waiting for my answer about meeting his father.”


    “And what will you tell him?”


    She stands, smoothing invisible wrinkles from her jeans. “That I need time to think. But…” She pauses. “I think I already know what I’m going to do.”


    “Which is?”


    “Love him anyway.” She shrugs, a gesture so casual it seems out of ce on her elegant frame. “What other choice is there, really? A life without him would be colorless.”


    I walk her to the door. But she lingers there for a moment.


    “Thank you,” she says at the threshold. “For not turning me away. For being honest.”


    “Anytime.” I mean it, to both her surprise and mine.


    “I hope—” She hesitates. “I hope we can see more of each other. You and Vincent, me and Daniel. Despite everything.”


    “I’d like that.”


    After she leaves, I return to the nursery. Sofiya is still sleeping soundly. I stand there watching her, thinking about what just happened.


    She asked if I regretted loving Vincent. In answering her, I’d been more honest than I expected to be. Because there are moments—fleeting, terrible moments—when I do question the path I’ve taken.


    What kind of mother raises her child in a world of armed guards and blood feuds?


    What kind of wife stands by a man capable of such violence?


    What kind of woman am I to have chosen this life?


    But then I remember the hospital room where Vince held Sofiya for the first time, his hands trembling, his eyes full of wonder and terror.


    Vince isn’t perfect. Our life together isn’t perfect. But it’s ours. We’ve fought for it, bled for it, nearly died for it.


    It’s ours.


    I lean down and leave a gentle kiss on Sofiya’s forehead.


    “Your daddy will be home soon,” I whisper. “And whatever happens, little one, we’ll face it as a family.”


    My daughter smiles in her sleep.