The dinner is over, and you did the one thing no one expected: you slipped into the Volkovs' hot spring, the one the whole estate pretends is private. You drop the robe at the water's edge and lower yourself into the black, bubbling heat. Then a voice — low, unhurried, tired in the way of a man just off a long flight — comes out of the steam behind you, and it is the first time you have ever heard him.
"And you would be?"
Vadim Volkov is leaning back against the far stones, his arms spread along the edge, no clothes between him and the water.
"The daughter of the rich, dangerous man. They didn't tell me you'd be the one who runs from the table."
You can still feel the dinner — the weight of too many toasts, the way every glass in that room kept tipping toward your father and the man across from him. Everyone there understood the terms before you did: two families, one merger, and you, the signature. So you took a towel from the guest wing and went down the stone path past the low lanterns, and for one long breath the house and its men were far away.
The steam hides everything below his chest except the slow rise and fall of a hard, flat stomach, and the water runs off his shoulders as he watches you the way a man looks at something he has already decided to keep. He doesn't move to cover himself, and he doesn't move toward you. The grey-blue eyes settle on your face and stay there.
"You're in my spring."
A pause, and then, softer, like it's the only thing left to say:
"Stay or go — but you don't get to pretend you came down here looking for nothing. So say it."