Chapter 42 #2
I don’t have the patience for questions right now. Especially not the wrong ones.
I know what she’s probably thinking. That this is about her.
That I’m tightening the leash. That I’m moving her somewhere she can’t run.
It’s not that.
If I wanted her caged, I’d leave her here. Guards at every entrance. Cameras in every room. Her world narrowed down to walls and watches and permission, like the Amatos with their wives—every breath tracked, every step seen, all that obsession dressed up as protection.
The compound is different. The compound is where the Pakhan is supposed to be.
At the center. At the helm. Visible.
Nobody questions me leading from there. Nobody starts sniffing around the woman at my side when I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to do. At the compound, Ayla doesn’t look like a secret.
She looks like a decision.
And decisions made by the Pakhan stop being questions very quickly.
Smart.
Clean.
Too much like Nikolai.
That thought hits like something sour crawling up the back of my throat.
Because I know exactly what this is.
Power.
The kind my father wore so easily it looked like breathing. The kind I told myself I’d never use the way he did. Deciding what truth lived. Deciding what got buried. Deciding what the men did and did not deserve to know.
And now here I am, moving a woman under my roof because I understand exactly how men like mine think. What they’ll ask. What they’ll tear apart if I let uncertainty breathe too long.
So I don’t.
I cut uncertainty off at the throat.
Ayla is still looking at the movement around us when I close my hand around hers and steer her toward the hall.
“We’re moving to the compound,” I say.
She looks up at me.
That’s all.
No argument. No sharp little question. No bite.
Too tired for that.
Or maybe smart enough not to do it now.
Either way, I don’t explain further. I don’t tell her it’s strategy. Don’t tell her the compound makes me look stronger, steadier, harder to challenge. Don’t tell her no one will dig too deep into her if I put her exactly where I want her and dare them to question it.
She doesn’t need that truth.
Not tonight.
I keep walking.
She comes with me quiet, her body lagging by fractions every few steps like everything in her hurts and she’s too stubborn to say it. I can feel it in the way her hand tenses under mine. In the careful set of her shoulders. In the slight drag when she missteps and corrects too fast.
Gabriel put those hesitations in her.
Gabriel put his hands on her face. On her wrists. On what belongs to me.
The thought enrages me so much I nearly stop walking.
He’ll die.
Just not before I finish this. I take her into the bedroom and shut the door behind us.
The lock turns with one sharp click.
The sound lands exactly how I knew it would.
Her breath catches. Small. Quick.
But I hear it.
Her whole body goes still for one rotten second, and when I look at her, I know exactly what she’s doing.
Bracing.
It’s not obvious and that makes it worse.
It’s the kind of stillness that says she’s already measuring what hurts least. The kind that comes from knowing men who close doors before they break things.
Something vicious moves low in my chest.
I cross the room and catch her chin. Just enough to make her look at me.
Her eyes lift to mine, wide and tired and still too guarded to be anything but honest.
“You can stop doing that.”
Her brows pull together faintly. “Doing what?”
“Bracing like I’m about to put my hands on you wrong.”
The words come out flatter than I mean them to.
Her throat works once. She doesn’t answer.
Because what the fuck is she supposed to say to that?
I let her go and head for the bathroom. “Come here.”
Behind me, there’s the smallest pause.
Then her footsteps.
I turn on the water and let the tub start filling. Steam curls up almost immediately, thickening the air. I reach for the bottle on the edge and pour in her marshmallow body wash. Sweet scent blooms fast, warm and soft and unmistakably hers.
I can feel the questions in the room without hearing them. I don’t answer any of them.
I turn back to her and step in close.
My fingers find the hem of her shirt.
She stiffens.
That one movement—small as it is, nearly puts my fist through tile.
I make myself ignore it.
Because if I let myself feel everything I want to do tonight, I’ll leave this room and come back with Gabriel’s blood under my nails before I’ve put her back together.
So I keep my hands steady and pull the shirt up slowly.
She lets me.
Arms lifting because I guide them there, not because she trusts me enough to know what comes next.
The shirt hits the floor.
Then her shorts until she’s just bare legs and the soft skin.
What the bastard did is mostly in her face. That almost makes it worse.
The split lip.
The swelling. The shadowing under one cheekbone.
The raw skin at her wrists.
A bruise darkening at her shoulder where she must’ve hit something hard. And under the plastic at her hip, my name sealed against her skin.
Nothing else.
No spread of damage down her ribs. No fingerprints blooming. No trail to follow lower.
He focused on her face.
On what people see first.
On humiliation.
Rage erupts under my skin. It feels like what it is: a message to me.
I strip out of my own clothes without taking my eyes off her. Shirt. Belt. Jeans. Everything dropped where it lands.
Then I take her hand and lead her with me into the bath.
The water folds around us both at once, heat climbing up our skin as I guide her down carefully, one hand steady at her waist, the other braced under her arm.
She sucks in a breath when the warmth catches at something tender.
I tighten my hold without thinking.
Easy.
I sit and bring her with me, drawing her down between my legs until her back settles against my chest and my thighs bracket hers under the water.
A unit.
That’s what this is now, whether she understands it yet or not.
Not a cage. Not a leash.
A choice.
Mine.
She’s part of me and an extension of me.
Steam curls thick around us. Marshmallow rises soft and sweet from the water, wrapping around the sharp edge of everything else in the room until all I can smell is her.
For the first time since I found her in that apartment, I let myself want something other than blood.
I reach for the washcloth.