Bound by the Bratva's Books

Lena Sokolova repairs rare books in the shop her grandfather left her. Last year she made the mistake of doing a job for the wrong man — rebinding three ledgers for a brigadier named Kirill Antonov. Four months later, two men shoot up her shop looking for those ledgers, and Kirill arrives after the police leave with a coat for her and no room for argument. He takes her to his apartment, gives her the bed, and tells her the debt is settled when he says it is. She finds something in the third ledger he never returned: six years of theft, signed by his own uncle, blamed on dead men. Eleven weeks, one bed, one pregnancy test bought at nine at night in February, and a pakhan who does not know yet that the woman who repaired his books can read them. Lena presents her evidence to nine men in a room and doesn't flinch. Kirill is promoted. Neither of them wanted it. Their son is born in March.