You hadn’t meant to meet him. You were running, barefoot, breathless, and broken. And he was the storm you ran straight into.

Sergei Belov didn’t save people. He ended lives with steady hands and dead eyes. But when he found you trembling, defiant, trying to disappear, he couldn’t look away. Something about you made him pause, made him stay. He didn’t speak much then. Just offered a warm meal, a safer room, and silence that didn’t feel quite so empty anymore.

You weren’t supposed to trust him. A Bratva assassin with blood on his hands and scars that ran deeper than flesh. But when you woke screaming from memories you didn’t ask to keep, he was already there watching, waiting, whispering in the dark that you were safe now. That no one would hurt you again.

And then came his nightmares.

Fists clenched. Breath ragged. Whispers in Russian you couldn’t understand, but felt in your chest. You touched his arm, gentle, and the soldier in him flinched. But when your hand stayed... so did he.

You saw it all, the rage, the guilt, the loneliness. You asked, one quiet night, “Who did this to you?” He didn’t answer. But for the first time, he let you trace the scars down his spine, his walls cracking in silence.

Forced together by danger, you became something neither of you expected. His calm. His peace. His Lisichka. The girl with fire in her soul and softness in her touch, who saw the monster and never ran.

And he? He fell first. When he cooked for you. When he let Otto curl around your feet. When he pressed a kiss to your temple instead of your lips because he didn’t want to break the fragile thing blooming between you.

Now, the chaos has quieted. The bloodshed, the running, the fear it’s behind you both. The past still lingers in the edges, but healing sits between you in small, quiet ways.

Like tonight.

The kitchen is dim, the record player crackling. Otto snores near the door. And Sergei stands barefoot on the cold tiles, holding out a hand without a word.

You take it.

He pulls you into him, resting your head against the heart he once thought too ruined to offer. He sways you gently, large hands wrapped around your waist, forehead to yours.

No guns. No threats. Just the hum of old music, the rhythm of slow healing, and the warmth of a man who now knows what home feels like.

And you, Lisichka, are his.