Bratva Boss Vs. Glitter Glue

Late afternoon, Present Day 

Somewhere in the Catskills NY

Amelia's PoV         

The GPS had stopped working somewhere between the second pine-covered cliff and the absolute breakdown of common sense.

Amelia hadn't meant to end up here. Not really. One minute she was being hugged goodbye by preschoolers with jelly on their faces, the next she was signing a contract from an agency so obscure it didn't have a website. Just a voicemail that sounded like it had been recorded in a basement. But with her power bill pink-slipping her inbox and her last paycheck swallowedby rent, "shady and immediate" started looking less like a red flag and more like a lifeline. This wasn't about career fulfillment anymore. It was about keeping the heat on and not letting herself unravel in the process.

She stared out through the cracked windshield of her borrowed Honda Civic, eyes narrowed against snowfall thickening like cake batter across the glass. The road had long since abandoned asphalt for gravel, and the gravel had surrendered to ice-slick mud. Trees stood on either side like silent judges—towering evergreens cloaked in snow and menace, their limbs bent under white weight like they were holding back breath.

The job posting had said "private estate, child care, urgent placement, competitive pay."

It had not said fortified compound with armed guards, iron gates that looked like it could repel tanks. or wolves?

Real ones.

She'd seen them just before the gate—two figures low against the tree line. Pale gray against darker stone. Watching. Ears twitching once in unison. Not strays. Not wild. Too trained and observant for that. They didn't growl or bare teeth.

They just watched.

Like sentinels. Or soldiers. Or omens.

The gate loomed ahead now, flanked by stone-carved guardians she mistook for decoration until one moved and an intercom so old it looked like it might cough before it buzzed. A thin cloud of breath bloomed against the glass as she leaned in, nerves humming beneath her skin. She pressed the intercom button with fingers gone stiff. A crackle of static. Then a voice. Male, thick with something unmistakably Eastern European, and very unimpressed.

"Name."

She startled. "Hi! Um, Amelia Prescott? I'm with—uh—the nanny agency?"

Silence.

She could hear her own heartbeat. And the sound of snow pelting metal.

Then a mechanical click. The gate creaked open just wide enough for the car to squeeze through.

Her tires crunched across packed snow, winding up the hill beneath those sky-hungry trees. One of the wolves paced alongside the tree line for a few steps, distant but unmistakable. She didn't look again. Not too close. She was too afraid it might look back.

She shoved the gearshift into park, took a breath that felt more like a dare than a decision, and opened the door.

The wind hit her like an accusation.

One foot hit the snowbank wrong. Her ankle wobbled, traction failed, and for one humiliating second, she flailed like a cat tossed at a bathtub. Somehow, miraculously, she landed upright, did a half-spin, and shot both hands into the air like she'd meant to pirouette the whole time.

"Stuck it," she whispered to no one, because if she didn't say it out loud, the shame might kill her.

Her gloves didn't match. One was polka-dotted fleece, the other a cable-knit relic from some lost thrift store bin. Her scarf was on backwards, and her bangs had staged a coup against the bobby pins. She tried to smooth it all down, but her fingers were too cold and her nerves too loud.

A laugh escaped anyway, high, nervous, unguarded.

It bounced off the front of the stone fortress like a dare.

And the house, no, a fortress in front her didn't laugh back. It rose from the clearing like a European fever dream—stone walls, turrets, black iron balconies curled like wrought lace. Lights burned behind tall windows, but none looked warm. It was palatial and cold, like a museum that hated children. Or joy. Or glitter.

It was the kind of place that felt older than the war stories you didn't ask about. Marble floors. Dark wood paneling. A chandelier made entirely of jagged black glass. And silence. The kind that lived in places where too many secrets had been buried under rugs, no one vacuumed.

The bear-man gestured toward a wide hallway. "Wait there."

Then he vanished through another door.

She waited.

And tried not to breathe too loudly in case the house judged her.

The silence stretched.

Then footsteps.

Two sets.

The second she looked up, her spine jerked straight, like some ancestral survival instinct had yanked on it.

Two men stepped into view, the one behind the first, a shade quieter, but somehow sharper. Clean suit. Measured movements. Eyes like he'd already memorized her résumé, criminal record, and shoe size.

He didn't speak. Just paused beside the man in black, murmured something low and now sure its Russian, then walked off without waiting for a reply.

Not muscle. Not staff. Something else. Something higher.

Now there's no mistaking it. This is her would-be employer. She can tell by the way he moved. It was like silence owed him money and it had paid in blood.

The coat was black. The gloves, darker. Even the turtleneck had the grim discipline of a man who didn't just dress for funerals, but hosted them. He was tall in the way that made doorways nervous, pale like old marble left out in the snow, and built like someone who'd won fights without lifting a fist. His face looked sculpted under tension—cheekbones sharp enough to draw blood, jaw lined with shadow, a mouth set in the kind of stillness that made you second-guess breathing near it.

And the eyes—

Blue. But not bright. Not warm.

Glacier runoff. The kind that swept things away when the thaw came too fast.

She couldn't hear anything except the crunch of his boots and the wild, spiking thrum in her ears. Somewhere behind her, wind scraped against the side of the house, but even that sound backed off.

He didn't speak.

Didn't need to.

And somehow, neither did she.

Her throat locked. Her tongue went dry. The word "hello" was in there somewhere, but it curled in on itself like it knew better.

She didn't feel anything at first. Not the cold crawling down her spine. Not the burn in her knuckles from where she'd gripped the steering wheel too tight. Not even the silence radiating off the man like heat from blacktop.

Not until her mouth jumped the gun.

"Sooo... you must be Mr. Dmitri Volkov. I'm Amelia Prescott."

He said nothing.

Not a grunt. Not a nod. Just stood there, dragging the quiet out like it owed him something. It wasn't just silence—it was deliberate stillness. The kind that vacuumed the oxygen out of the room and dared you to breathe wrong.

She reached for moon charm like a shield, even though her throat was already dry. "Look, I know I'm not what you were expecting. Unless what you were expecting was a caffeine-deprived preschool teacher with a glitter allergy and a heroic amount of anxiety—"

"No."

The word cracked across the marble floor like a whip.

Her lungs caught somewhere between inhale and regret. "No... what?"

"I was not expecting this."

She almost turned around. Almost mumbled something polite and ran. Tripped. Back down the icy driveway before her organs froze. But then she saw movement behind him. An angel. Tiny, pale, and watching with the kind of eerie stillness that made Amelia's skin rise in gooseflesh, emerged from the hallway. The hoodie was unicorn-patterned, pastel horn slightly wilted. Her socks were black with cartoon ghosts. She stood half-shadowed behind the wall, eyes, same color as her father yet, far too old for her face. Not curious. Not scared. Just... alert.

Amelia's heart gave a traitorous twist.

She crouched down instinctively, slow, not smiling, just trying not to spook whatever this was between them. "Hi there. You must be the boss around here."

The haunted cherub just stared at her. But gaze flicked downward to her boots. Cracked leather. Purple laces. Salt stains. The kind of shoes you wore when you'd run out of better options.

That reaction was enough.

Amelia let herself smile. Not big. Just soft. "Yeah, they're ugly. But you can slide on hardwood like a champion. Ask my tailbone."

Still didn't elicit a reaction from the give that she thinks is around six or seven. But she hadn't disappeared either. That alone felt like something sacred.

Behind her, the man, the haunted cherub's father, spoke again, voice slicing the air like it owed him answers. "That's Elizabeta, my daughter. She doesn't speak."

The words landed harder than they should've. Not because of what he said, but how he said it like he was reciting fact, not history. Her shoulders jerked slightly, the instinctive kind of bristle that came when someone knocked the air sideways.

It wasn't just his tone. It was the accent. Thick, with those hard, deliberate consonants that curled around the vowels like they were being disciplined mid-sentence. It should've unnerved her. It didn't. God help her, it was almost... disarmingly hot. The kind of sound that made villains in movies say things like "you'll never leave this room" and make you kind of hope they meant it.

"I can work with that."

The words left her mouth before her caution could catch up. Too bold, too close to daring. But it came out that way anyway. Tight, edged, too brave for someone standing in the foyer of a murder-castle opposite a man who looked like he kept his enemies in freezers for later.

"You won't be staying."

The words came low and final, wrapped in that thick accent that curled around her ears like smoke. No room for protest. No hint of question. Just a verdict, casually delivered by someone who'd clearly made decisions heavier than this and had them buried with shovels, not signatures.

Her body registered it before her mind did.

A chill that slid down her spine like a coin dropped down the back of her coat. Every nerve buzzed beneath the skin. Not from fear. Not entirely. And it made her body react the way it shouldn't.

Oh no. No no no. Absolutely not. You don't get to be attracted to the human embodiment of Eastern Bloc tension.

Dmitri wasn't charming, he was carved. Like a cold war statue someone accidentally brought to life and handed a child. This wasn't butterflies. This was neurological betrayal. Whatever this was pinging through her, heat, adrenaline, whatever—needed to go straight back to whatever hormonal void it crawled out of. She was not here for cheekbones and frostbite flirtation. She was here for a paycheck. Juice boxes. Healing a small, silent girl. Not panting over broody Bond villains in cashmere armor.

He turned just as the wind slammed the front door behind her, the force of it making the windows rattle in their frames. The wind clawed at the house, snow flung against the walls like the storm had a personal vendetta. Somewhere in the walls, the house groaned—stone and storm holding their breath.

And then—thunder in the hallway.

The bear-man returned, boots loud enough to register on seismographs. Still wordless. Still built like the reason armor exists. His beard looked like it had survived a knife fight. His coat had bulletproof vibes.

"Storm's locking in," he informed. "Road's iced six ways already. No one's getting out."

She turned her head toward the ice king in the black turtleneck, waiting for the inevitable command to haul her back out into the snow.

Instead, his jaw ticked once. The kind of movement you only noticed if you were already watching too closely.

"She stays," he said, low and clipped, like he was signing a death certificate.

No reaction followed. No glance. No acknowledgment that the words had anything to do with her. He simply locked eyes with the bodyguard. Dismissed the issue as resolved and turned slightly, already closing the door in his mind.

Still, no order came to have her removed. That, at least, was something. That was... something. Right?

Her mouth moved before her brain could warn it. "Well. Looks like I'm your problem now."

He looked at her. Really looked, just for a second. Enough for her to feel every inch of his attention and none of its warmth. Then walked away like it wasn't worth spending another second in her airspace. Not fast. Not dramatic. Just clean, cold efficiency. Like he'd cut her from the equation and gone back to doing algebra with bullets.

No parting insult. No dismissive glare. Just that elegant, infuriating silence that clung in the air after him. Cool leather and smoke, and something metallic underneath. Like gun oil. Or restraint. Or maybe just the warning before a trigger pulls.

The child hadn't moved either. She lingered at the edge of the hallway, half in shadow, half in sight. As if waiting to decide whether the moment was safe enough to enter fully. Pale eyes steady. Tracking everything. Giving nothing. Like she'd seen a dozen arrivals, a dozen departures. And hadn't yet decided which one Amelia would be.