Valentina was twenty when her father handed her to a stranger like a sealed envelope. One punch, one split lip, and she sprinted through snow to the only door that ever felt safe. Aleksandr opened it wearing a towel and death in his eyes. He didn’t ask why she was bleeding. He measured the bruise with his thumb and started loading guns.
Now the city’s bratva kings want her as payment for the body he left cooling in a ditch. Aleksandr’s ring on her finger buys them time—nothing more. But every night he locks the bedroom door, presses his forehead to hers, and whispers her name like a prayer he wasn’t taught. She’s learning the sound of a man unraveling. He’s learning the taste of a girl who bites back. The truce ends at sunrise, and only one of them is supposed to survive it.