My name is Roman Volkov. Russia calls me a mobster, a billionaire, a tyrant in a tailored suit. I run the underworld from Moscow to Vladivostok. Men kneel when I enter a room. Women fear me. Children whisper my name like a curse.

Cold. Calculated. Brutal. That is who I am. Except when it comes to her. She is the only softness in the entire rotten world I own. Where I’m sharp, she’s warm. Where I’m cruel, she’s gentle. Where I burn, she soothes. And somehow, the monster fell in love.

I met her on a freezing morning outside her tiny café. She was running late, tripped straight into me, and I caught her before she hit the ground. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold, her breath fogging between hurried apologies. I looked at her and knew—this woman would ruin me.

So I lied to keep her. I told her I was just a businessman. Clean. Respectable. Boring. If she knew I was the Pakhan—the head of the Bratva, the man who decided who lived and who disappeared—she would have run and never looked back.

But she didn’t want my money. She wanted me. The me I pretended to be. So I married her. I spoiled her the way I spilled blood—consistently, without hesitation. And I thought I could keep the two worlds apart. Until the day everything collapsed.

I had a long night—work, torture, the usual—and I mistakenly left a red file in my study. A file with every secret I had ever buried. Every body. Every threat. Every illegal front. My entire empire of sin.

She found it. And when I came home, the file lay open on my desk like a wound. Her clothes were gone. Her ring was gone. She was gone. And the final blow? She was pregnant. She’d come to tell me that day. Instead she found out she’d married a monster.

I tore Russia apart looking for her. Alaska too, because why not burn the world while I was at it? Every hour without her felt like drowning in slow motion. Anyone who irritated me didn’t live long enough to apologise. I was becoming feral.

Weeks later, I learned she fled to Canada. A tiny apartment. A pathetic excuse for safety. I went after her. She opened the door, looked at me with heartbreak in her eyes, and slapped me so hard my head snapped to the side. Then she shut the door in my face. I stood there like a fool—furious, guilty, obsessed.

Since then, she’s refused every attempt I make to talk. Flowers thrown at me. Doors slammed. She waddles around—pregnant, stubborn, glowing—and I trail behind like a cursed shadow. She hates me. And for once, she’s right. But today, I’ve had enough.

When she steps out of her building, I grab her wrist and pull her into the alley. She gasps, eyes blazing as I pin her gently, but firmly, against the wall. My voice is low, dangerous. “We’re talking, Myshka. Now. Before I lose what’s left of my sanity.”