THE DEVIL’S ON CALL

A Shared Appetite

Ivan’s pov

Ivan leaned his hip against the marble kitchen island, twirling a polished silver paring knife between his fingers with a casual, frightening fluidity. The blade caught the morning light streaming through the arched windows, casting sharp, jittery reflections across the high end copper pots hanging overhead.

He couldn't stop grinning. It was his signature look the one that usually made hardened men at the docks drop to their knees and beg for mercy. But right now, the grin was born of pure, unadulterated amusement.

"I’m just saying, Ro," Ivan purred, his voice a low, gravelly rasp as he pointed the tip of the knife toward the elegant blonde woman leaning against the opposite counter. "All those years of Krav Maga, all that money we poured into your tactical training , and you got laid out by a girl who spends her days looking at spreadsheets and holding a stethoscope. She practically turned you into a pretzel."

Rowena glared at him, her chest heaving under her silk blouse, her beautifully manicured hands still trembling slightly with residual adrenaline. Her neck bore a faint, blossoming pink shadow where a pair of fierce, desperate hands had tried to crush her windpipe.

"It isn't funny, Ivan," Rowena snapped, her voice tight with bruised pride and irritation. "That woman is a feral animal. She even didn't blink when the guards pointed their weapons at her. She literally threatened to snap my spine. I was trying to check her pupils, not get assassinated in the guest wing."

"She’s got teeth," Ivan chuckled, his eyes dancing with a chaotic, wicked light as he tossed the knife into the air, catching it flawlessly by the hilt. "I told Kolya last night. You give her a little squeeze, and she doesn't break. She bites."

Across the island, Lev sat perfectly still on a high barstool. He didn't join in the teasing. He held a heavy porcelain cup of black coffee between his palms, his frozen blue eyes tracking the steam rising from the dark liquid. He was a statue of quiet, commanding authority, entirely unmoved by his twin's playful antagonism, though his silence carried its own heavy weight.

"Oh, shut up, Ivan," Rowena huffed, turning her back on him. She looked toward the massive commercial stove where an older woman with salt and pepper hair pinned into a neat bun was methodically dicing potatoes into a sizzling cast-iron skillet. "Mama, tell him to stop. I almost died, and he's treating it like a comedy routine."

Silvia didn't stop her rhythmic chopping. She didn't even look up from the cutting board as she swung her heavy cleaver down. Instead, she shot a sharp, warning glare out of the corner of her eye directly at her daughter.

"You're lucky you didn't kill her, Rowena," Silvia said, her voice carrying the stern, unyielding weight of a woman who had raised soldiers. "You know the instructions. She is a guest. If your clumsy hands forced her to crack her skull open against that plaster, you wouldn't be complaining about Ivan. You'd be answering to the bosses."

Rowena crossed her arms and went sullenly quiet, looking out the window toward the manicured gardens.

Lev finally lowered his coffee cup, the ceramic making a soft, solid thud against the marble. He looked toward the older woman, his expression softening by a fraction of a millimeter the closest he ever came to showing actual warmth to anyone outside his own bloodline.

"Thank you, Silvia," Lev said, his gravelly voice dropping into a respectful register. "For tending to the head injury. I know she wasn't a cooperative patient."

Silvia paused her cooking, a soft, maternal smile tugging at her lips as she wiped her hands on her apron. She looked between Lev and Ivan, her eyes lingering on the heavy white bandages showing through the front of Ivan's partially unbuttoned shirt.

"Do not mention it, Lev," Silvia replied softly. "The girl saved Ivan’s life when he was bleeding out like a slaughtered pig on that sidewalk. Fixing a bump on her head is the least I can do to return the favor. We keep our debts paid."

The mention of the sidewalk sent a sudden, visceral jolt through Ivan’s mind, pulling him right down memory lane to the previous morning.

He remembered the sky that pale, bruised gray color. He remembered the metallic, bitter taste of the cheap mini mart coffee in his mouth. But most of all, he remembered the exact moment the firecrackers had started. He’d been stepping out of his SUV, completely wrapped up in his own amusement, when the dark sedan had rolled up. The sharp pop…pop…pop of the suppressed firearms had torn through his coat before he could even draw his weapon.

He’d hit the pavement hard. He remembered the suffocating weight in his chest, the terrifying sensation of his own blood pooling beneath his shirt, hot and heavy, draining his strength by the second. For a fleeting moment, Ivan had actually thought he was completely done for. He’d survived three gang wars, two prison stints, and countless stabs in the dark, but dying in a suburban school zone seemed like a dark, ironic punchline.

And then, she had come into frame.

Zoya.

She hadn't descended like a soft, weeping savior. She had dropped into his blurred line of sight like a beautiful, terrifyingly angry angel of vengeance. Her eyes had been blazing with a fierce, protective fury that had absolutely nothing to do with him and everything to do with the kid she had hidden behind the concrete planter. She had cursed him out. She had dug her fingers straight into his open flesh with zero hesitation, her touch brutal but entirely precise.

At first, Ivan had just been curious about her. That was the whole reason he’d followed her from the mini mart in the first place. that, and the undeniable fact that he’d been bored to absolute hell. The dock shipments were running smoothly, the rival syndicates were keeping their heads down, and Ivan was starving for friction.

She had provided that friction the second she placed a cold, silver scalpel against his jugular in that filthy basement clinic. No one did that. No one stared into the faces of the Starkov twins and demanded a refund for a ruined invoice while a gun was pressed to the back of her skull. She fascinated him like a shiny, high stakes new toy. And Ivan loved nothing more than feeding his own curiosity, no matter how dangerous the appetite became.

But as he stood in the kitchen, feeling the tight pull of her perfect silk sutures against his skin, he had to acknowledge another truth. She had saved him. When the sirens were wailing, when she could have easily run inside the school to shield her nephew and let Ivan choke on his own blood, she had chosen to drag his massive, dead weight body into her car. She had risked her own freedom, her own hidden life, to keep his heart beating.

Ivan had met hundreds of people in this line of business. The world was entirely populated by rats greedy, desperate parasites who would sell their own mothers for a good payday or cower in the shadows the moment a weapon was drawn.

But Zoya was entirely different. She had a purpose. He could see it in the rigid line of her shoulders, the cold efficiency of her movements. She was driven by something pure, a desperate necessity that was constantly clawing at her own morals, forcing her to do dark things while desperately trying to keep her hands clean. It was a beautiful, tragic paradox.

Ivan had never cared much for anyone in his life. He didn't possess the capacity for empathy; it had been beaten out of him by his father before they ever built their own empire. There was only one person in the entire world who mattered to him.

His brother.

Lev and Ivan were two halves of the same dark coin. They had bled for each other, killed for each other, and raised an empire from the concrete together. Ever since they were little boys they had made a sacred pact: always keep things entirely equal between them.

The business was split down the middle. The money was kept in shared accounts. Even the women they brought into their beds were passed between them without a single shred of jealousy or possession. They didn't mind sharing because they genuinely believed nothing absolutely nothing could ever come between them. They were one mind, one executioner, one throne.

But on the subject of Zoya, the mirror had finally cracked. They didn't agree.

Ivan found her intoxicating something fresh, a wild creature that needed to be caged and studied. Lev, however, looked at her with a cold, analytical detachment that Ivan knew was a complete lie. Lev had claimed she was a distraction, a mere whim that Ivan wanted fulfilled, a temporary toy that would eventually break and be discarded.

But Ivan knew his brother well. Too well. They shared the same blood, the same nervous system, the same depraved appetites. Ivan could see the subtle tightness in Lev’s jaw whenever Zoya’s name was mentioned. He had seen the way Lev’s frozen blue eyes had tracked her across the library last night, mapping the curve of her waist, the defiant tilt of her chin.

Lev was just as attracted to Zoya as Ivan was in every single way possible. Sexually, physically, and whatever dark, twisted thing passed for spiritual inside their hollow chests. His brother was just too proud, too rigidly controlled to admit that a disgraced civilian doctor had managed to slip beneath his armor. It was only a matter of time before the ice melted and Lev admitted the truth.

So, yes. Ivan fully planned on keeping his new toy locked inside this mansion long enough for his brother to finally break and admit she was something extraordinary.

The heavy kitchen doors swung open with a soft, pneumatic hiss.

A guard in a dark suit stepped into the room, his expression completely neutral as his eyes found the twins. He bowed his head slightly in deference.

"Boss," the guard reported, his voice flat. "The doctor is awake."

The words instantly jolted Ivan from his thoughts. The silver paring knife stopped spinning, resting perfectly balanced against the palm of his hand.

Ivan’s lips curled back into that slow, predatory, chaotic grin, his dark eyes flashing with a sudden, dangerous hunger. He flicked the blade into the air one last time, catching it by the tip, and pushed himself off the marble island.

"Well, well, well," Ivan murmured, his voice a low, excited purr as he looked over at his brother, whose blue eyes had already turned into chips of unyielding ice. "Looks like it’s time to go play."

The hallway leading to the guest suite felt longer than it had the night before. Ivan walked with a loose, easy stride, the gold Zippo lighter already out, flicking open and closed against his thigh in a rhythmic, metallic click. Lev walked beside him, his movements silent, rigid, and entirely imposing, like a shadow waiting to drape over a grave.

When they reached the double mahogany doors of the penthouse room, the two guards outside immediately stood at attention, unlocking the heavy brass deadbolt.

Ivan didn't wait for the guards to open it. He pushed the door open himself, his boots clicking softly against the dark hardwood floor as he stepped into the dimly lit luxury suite.

Zoya was sitting on the edge of the massive king sized bed. She looked smaller without her blood stained surgical apron, wearing a pair of oversized silk pajamas that Silvia had provided, her dark hair falling in messy, tangled waves over her shoulders. The skin around her temples was pale, and the dark, violet bruises of exhaustion were deeply etched beneath her eyes.

But the moment her gaze snapped up to meet theirs, the weakness vanished.

Her eyes weren't filled with the tears of a victim or the trembling panic of a captive. They were two pools of pure, unfiltered liquid fire. She sat perfectly straight, her hands gripping the edges of the silk mattress so hard her knuckles were translucent, her jaw set in a line so rigid it looked like marble.

"You're awake," Ivan said, his voice dripping with an insufferable, mocking warmth as he stopped at the foot of the bed, leaning his weight onto one leg. He flicked the lighter open, the small flame illuminating the dangerous, unhinged grin on his face. "We were starting to think Ro really broke you. I was about to be very disappointed, doc."

Zoya didn't look at his lighter. She didn't look at his chest. Her gaze slid past him, locking directly onto Lev, who stood near the door frame with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his frozen blue eyes raking over her form with a terrifying, silent intensity.

"Let me go," Zoya said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried a cold, sharp resonance that cut right through the opulence of the room. "My family thinks I'm dead. My nephew needs his medication. If you keep me here…”

"Your family knows exactly where you are, Dr. Rosvitch," Lev interrupted, his gravelly voice dropping into the quiet space like a heavy iron gate. He stepped forward, his boots making no sound against the floorboards. "Or rather, they know you are under our employment. We have already taken the liberty of clearing your past due medical accounts. Your nephew's oncology treatments have been paid in full for the next three years."

Zoya flinched as if she’d been struck by an electric current, her breath catching violently in her throat. "What?"

"Consider it a sign of our goodwill," Ivan chimed in, stepping closer to the bedside, his shadow completely draping over her small frame. He leaned down slightly, his chaotic dark eyes inches from her face, his voice dropping into a dangerous, intimate whisper. "We like your work, Zoya. We like your hands. And since my enemies seem to enjoy putting holes in my chest, we’ve decided we need a permanent physician on staff. You aren't a black market street doctor anymore."

He reached out, his long, tattooed fingers gently tracing the sharp line of her jawline, his thumb brushing against her lower lip with a slow, possessive heat that made her entire body go rigid with a mixture of terror and fury.

"You belong to the Starkov estate now," Ivan murmured, his grin turning dark and entirely absolute. "Welcome to the family, doc."