THE COMMAND
Isa woke to her mother's voice ricocheting through the apartment. Pots
clanged, the kettle shrieked, and the smell of burnt toast drifted under her
bedroom door like it owned the place.
She groaned and pulled a pillow over her face.
"Carmen Torres, who are you yelling at now?" she muttered, voice muffled.
"The fridge!" her mom called back. "It's ignoring me. Same way you ignored
that handsome man you work for yesterday!"
Isa sat up. "What are you talking about?"
Her mom appeared in the doorway wearing a pink robe, smudged eyeliner, and the
mug that said Mafia Queens Do It Better. Her hair was a glorious disaster. Her
grin was enormous. "Don't play innocent with me, mi amor. I know that look you
came home wearing. I've seen it in every mafia romance novel I own, cold boss,
dark eyes, accent that makes you forget your own name. He's the one."
Isa stared at her. "Mom, Viktor Ivanov is my boss. Not my 'brooding love
interest with a tragic past.' He's just… intimidating."
"Intimidating is good! Passionate men are always a little intimidating,"
Carmen declared, waving her mug like a scepter. "Tell me, did he threaten
anyone? Did he look at you like you were the only real thing in his dark,
broken world?"
"Mom!" Isa buried her face in her hands. "Please stop reading those books
before breakfast."
Carmen leaned against the doorframe, clearly delighted with herself. "I'm just
saying, if he ever proposes, I want a Russian wedding. I've already started
researching the traditions."
Isa stared at her. "You did what?"
Before her mother could launch into what was surely a very detailed answer,
Isa's phone buzzed on the nightstand. She reached for it, and went completely
still.
Viktor Ivanov.
"Why is he calling me this early?" she whispered.
Carmen gasped with the full force of her dramatic soul and clutched her chest.
"He's calling! Oh my God, I need to put on lipstick—"
"Mom! Work call!" Isa shoved her back and answered. "Mr. Ivanov?"
"Be at the main office in twenty minutes," came his voice, low, even, like a
statement of fact. "You'll be accompanying me to a meeting today."
Isa blinked. "A meeting, sir? That's not really part of my. . ."
"It is now. Dress appropriately."
The line went dead.
Isa stared at her phone like it had personally betrayed her.
Carmen's head reappeared around the corner. "He wants to see you! I told you,
love at first paperwork!"
"He's probably firing me."
"If he was firing you, he wouldn't care what you wore." Carmen gave her a
knowing look. "Men only say 'dress appropriately' when they're already halfway
gone."
Isa rolled her eyes, grabbed a blouse, and muttered, "Or halfway unhinged."
✦
Twenty-five minutes later, five minutes late, not that she'd admit it, Isa stood outside a sleek black car, nerves chewing steadily at her composure.
Viktor was already in the backseat, one arm draped across the leather, phone
to his ear. When his eyes flicked up to her through the window, her chest
tightened.
He ended the call and pushed the door open. "You're late."
"Traffic," she said.
"Hmm." He gestured to the seat beside him. "Get in."
She did. The car smelled like expensive cologne and something colder, authority, maybe, or the complete absence of doubt.
Silence filled the space between them. Isa kept her eyes forward, though it
took considerable effort. He was on the phone again, speaking in Russian, calm, deliberate, each word rolling out like quiet authority made audible. She
couldn't understand a single sentence, but she didn't need to. The tone said
everything.
When he ended the call, she asked carefully, "Where are we going?"
He glanced at her. "To collect something that belongs to me."
"And I'm here because…?"
His lips curved, barely. "Because you're useful."
"Useful how?"
He didn't answer. She hadn't really expected him to.
✦
The building downtown breathed old money and polish. Men in suits nodded as
Viktor moved through the lobby; he acknowledged none of them.
In the conference room, something in him shifted. His voice turned colder, more
precise. The meeting wasn't really about business — it was about control, and
everyone in the room knew it. Isa typed notes as instructed, but every few
minutes she felt his gaze pass over her, brief and assessing, like a check-in.
When it was over, one of the investors leaned toward Viktor with a smirk. "You
brought your assistant. Pretty."
Viktor's head turned, slow and unhurried. "She's efficient."
"I didn't say she wasn't," the man, Dmitri, said, chuckling.
Isa wanted to evaporate.
Viktor smiled, thin and cold, the kind that didn't involve his eyes at all.
"Curious men don't tend to last long in my line of work, Dmitri."
The room went still.
Dmitri's smile faded. He looked away. Isa kept her eyes fixed on her notepad.
When they were alone in the corridor, Viktor turned to her. "You handled
yourself well."
"I didn't do anything," she said quietly.
"You stayed quiet. In that room, that's not nothing."
She frowned. "Do you always threaten people in business meetings?"
He studied her for a moment, unhurried, like there was no version of this
conversation where she made him uncomfortable, then smiled, and this time it
reached his eyes just enough to make her pulse trip. "Only when they forget
their place."
His phone buzzed again. He answered without looking at her, dropping back into
Russian, his tone shifting into something low and lethal and perfectly calm.
Isa stood there, notepad in hand, and felt the understanding settle over her
quietly.
Carmen's joke wasn't a joke at all.
Her boss wasn't just powerful. He was dangerous in the specific, deliberate way
of someone who had decided, long ago, exactly how far he was willing to go.
And somehow, inexplicably, she was standing right in the middle of his world.