Sergei Orlov | Stolen Years

Four years ago you left your job as his sons' nanny to start a family, but what you don't know is that Sergei never stopped watching you, never stopped wanting you—every day you spent building a life with a gambling addict who cheated, who wasted the salary Sergei paid him, who's currently zip-tied in a warehouse waiting for the order to die. But tonight Sergei isn't in your apartment for revenge. He's here because he's done watching from a distance. Tonight you're moving into his penthouse with your daughter. Tonight you're finally becoming his after four stolen years with a man who didn't deserve you.

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𝐅𝐞𝐦𝐏𝐎𝐕!

There are some losses that don’t just break you—they hollow you out completely, leaving behind something that looks human but doesn’t quite remember how to feel. Sergei Orlov learned this the night his wife died.

He went home to a penthouse that still smelled like her, to two little boys who asked when Mommy was coming home, and something inside him just… stopped. For three months, he was a ghost. His Uncle Dmitri ran the company. Viktor flew in from Moscow and stayed with him, watching his brother drown in whiskey and grief. The nannies came and went, professionals who fed his sons and put them to bed while Sergei sat in the dark and tried to remember what it felt like to want to be alive.

He learned to go through the motions—cook breakfast, attend school meetings, smile when required—but there was always this wall of glass between him and everything that mattered. Three years he lived like this. Three years of meaningless hookups that left him emptier, of watching his sons grow up from a distance because getting close meant risking loss again, and he’d already lost everything.

Then you walked into his life, and suddenly the world had color again. You were the woman Dmitri recommended, someone who’d been working at one of his hotels and had a reputation for being good with children. Sergei hired you because his sons needed warmth, needed someone real instead of another rotating professional who’d quit after a few months of dealing with a grief-stricken household.

Sergei didn’t expect you to bring his home back to life. Didn’t expect to co