Chapter 7: Family Dinner, Mafia Style
The family dinner was a spectacular, beautiful disaster.
Bjorn’s daughter, Lina, a precise eight-year-old with her father’s calculating eyes, eyed Sascha’s two boys—Misha, ten, and Pavel, seven—with deep suspicion over a bowl of slightly lumpy mashed potatoes. The apartment above the daycare was warm, smells of garlic and burnt bread mingling with the faint, ever-present scent of crayons drifting up from below.
“He’s touching my robot,” Lina announced flatly, not looking up from her plate.
“Am not! It’s on my side of the table!” Pavel shot back, clutching the plastic toy.
“The table is round, idiot. There are no sides.”
“Enough,” Sascha said, his voice a low rumble that instantly stilled his sons. He didn’t raise it. He never had to. He turned his warm gaze to Lina. “Lina, sweetheart, your robot is very impressive. Misha, tell her about the gears you saw in the book today.”
The redirection was masterful. Misha, the quiet observer, launched into a technical explanation. Lina, intrigued despite herself, began to argue the finer points of hydraulic versus pneumatic movement. Pavel kicked his feet under the table, bored now the conflict was over.
Bjorn watched it all unfold, a faint, stunned smile on his lips. He felt Sascha’s large hand settle on his thigh under the table, a warm, possessive weight. His thumb rubbed slow circles over the soft lavender jersey of the dress Bjorn had kept on, a secret beneath his apron. The gentle pressure traveled straight to his still-sensitive cunt, a constant, thrilling reminder of the plug he wore, of the fullness that had become his new normal.
“Tell the story about the glitter, Papa,” Lina said suddenly, turning to Bjorn. “The forever glitter.”
“Ah, the biohazard incident of last Tuesday,” Bjorn said, leaning back. He launched into the tale of a toppled craft cabinet, a poorly sealed ventilation duct, and how the entire front office of a rival import/export firm two blocks away was still, inexplicably, sparkly. He exaggerated his own exasperation, mimed yelling at the confused cleaners. The kids giggled. Sascha’s boys, now disarmed by laughter, joined in.
Sascha just watched Bjorn. He watched the easy light in his eyes, the graceful movement of his hands as he spoke, the way the neckline of his dress dipped just so when he leaned forward to refill Misha’s milk. He saw the peaceful, unclenched set of Bjorn’s shoulders, a sight so rare it made his chest ache. His hand on Bjorn’s thigh tightened almost imperceptibly. Mine. My girl, making a home.
After dessert, they marshaled the children through baths and bedtime stories with the efficiency of a special ops team. Sascha read a Russian folktale in his rich baritone to all three kids piled on Lina’s bed, while Bjorn straightened up, moving quietly in his heels, a silhouette of domestic contentment.
The kitchen was a battlefield of dirty dishes. They tackled it side-by-side, hips and shoulders brushing in the cramped space. The hum of the fluorescent light was the only sound for a while, companionable and soft. Then Sascha turned, wiping his hands on a towel. He backed Bjorn gently against the counter still littered with breadcrumbs, caging him in with his arms.
“You,” Sascha murmured, leaning down to brush his nose against Bjorn’s, “were magnificent tonight.”
Bjorn flushed, looking up at him through his lashes. “They didn’t kill each other. I call that a win.”
“It is a win.” Sascha kissed him, a slow, deep exploration that tasted of sweet tea and belonging. He pulled back, his warm blue eyes serious. “I love seeing you like this. A good mother. A good girl.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “My everything.”
They made love that night on the living room rug, the apartment dark save for the city glow through the blinds. Sascha was slow, excruciatingly tender, moving inside Bjorn with deep, rolling strokes that built a profound, aching pressure. Bjorn bit down on the meat of his own hand to stay silent, his cries muffled against his skin as he came, his body fluttering around Sascha’s in helpless, exquisite waves. Sascha followed, spilling into him with a shuddering groan, his own hand clamped over Bjorn’s mouth to absorb the final, choked-off sob of his name.
The next two weeks unfolded like a dream they’d secretly choreographed.
The chaotic tension that usually wire-tightened their days simply… evaporated. The rival crew from Dresden, who’d been posturing over a north-side shipping route, abruptly settled their dispute after a brief, one-sided conversation Sascha had with their leader in a deserted parking garage. The man left with a broken wrist and a new understanding of reciprocity. No retaliation followed.
At the daycare, the usual chorus of parental complaints—about snack-sugar content, about nap-time rigidity, about the lack of Mandarin immersion—dwindled to a faint, manageable buzz. When Mrs. Hengler started in about the educational merits of quinoa, Bjorn, in a soft peach-colored pencil skirt and a cashmere wrap, just smiled brightly and said, “We’ll take that under advisement!” with such convincing vapid charm that the woman simply deflated. Sascha, looming pleasantly by the craft shelf, would give a slight, reassuring nod. The parents saw a sweet, slightly quirky couple who doted on each other and their charges. They did not see the calculus behind Bjorn’s eyes, or the way Sascha’s friendly nod was a command that silenced the more troublesome underlings in their organization.
The locked basement door prompted no questions. It was just where the “boiler” was. The occasional bruise on Sascha’s knuckles, the faint cut on Bjorn’s cheekbone from a stray fragment during a warehouse “inspection,” were explained away with laughable ease. “Renovating the upstairs bathroom!” “Oh, this? I’m a menace with a pruning shears in the tiny yard!”
Bjorn found he could breathe. The compartments in his mind, once steel-walled and leaking, now had smooth, functioning doors. He could sit in his home office, reviewing a merger contract for a front company, the elegant lines of a sea-foam green dress soft against his skin, and dictate an email about strategic market infiltration with cool precision. An hour later, he could be kneeling on the floor of the daycare, helping Pavel glue googly eyes onto a potato, listening to Lina explain the social hierarchy of their pet hamsters, and feel only a profound, simple joy.
Sascha was right. It was easier now. The energy he’d spent contorting himself, binding himself down, hiding the softness, was now freed up. The performance of being “Bjorn the lawyer” or “Bjorn the scary new boss” required less effort when his core was no longer a knotted fist of denial. He was Bjorn, Sascha’s princess, who also happened to be a lethal pragmatist. The pink dress was as much a weapon as the silenced pistol in the basement safe.
Sascha thrived in his dual role. By day, he was the gentle giant, fixing tricycles, lifting children to reach high shelves, his presence a calming bedrock for parents and kids alike. His Russian accent was now part of the daycare’s charming character. At night, in their bedroom or the living room or once, thrillingly, in Bjorn’s legal office after hours, he was the domineering lover who owned every inch of his sweet girl. He reveled in it. In the contrast. In the sheer, staggering perfection of the hidden truth.
The mafia feared them. Their consolidation was complete, their authority absolute, enforced not just through brutality but through the unsettling, cheerful competence they displayed. A problem arose? Bjorn would solve it with a clever legal maneuver or a shockingly ruthless order, delivered in a calm voice while he sorted glitter bottles. Sascha would enact it with silent, terrifying efficiency.
The daycare parents and kids liked them. The place was clean, happy, and oddly well-funded. Art supplies were plentiful. Security was excellent.
The police underestimated them. Detective Nicole’s visits became sporadic, then ceased. They were a footnote, a cute odd couple who’d been in the wrong place once. The file was buried.
Life became a rhythm. Mornings getting the kids ready, the easy domesticity of it. Days split between the sunny chaos downstairs and the quiet, bloody business conducted via encrypted messages. Evenings with homework and dinner. Nights where Sascha would unwrap Bjorn like a precious gift, worship his body, and remind him in whispers and sweat and seed exactly who he belonged to.
They took small trips. A Sunday drive to a lake, the kids splashing in the shallows. Sascha spread a blanket and pulled Bjorn back against his chest, his arms around him, his chin resting on Bjorn’s shoulder as they watched. No one looked twice at the affectionate couple.
It was, against all odds and reason, a happy life. They were a happy criminal couple. They had built a perfect, fragile, formidable world inside a snow globe, and for now, not a single soul was shaking the table.