Chapter 13 Vera
VERA
I wake alone, which shouldn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is that the sheets beside me are still warm.
My hand reaches out before I can stop myself, pressing against the pillow where Dimitri’s head was. The fabric holds the heat of his body, proof that he didn’t leave hours ago in the dead of night. He left recently. Maybe minutes ago.
The realization makes my heart flutter.
I roll onto my side, burying my face in his pillow, and breathe in. Cedar and smoke and something indefinably him. The scent fills my lungs, makes my pulse quicken, and sends warmth pooling low in my belly despite the delicious ache between my thighs that reminds me exactly what we did last night.
God. Last night.
Heat floods my face as memories assault me. His hands on my body. His mouth everywhere. The way he looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and he even told me so. The words he whispered against my throat makes my toes curl.
It wasn’t just sex or fucking. It was something else and I will die on that hill. It was nothing like our wedding night. But then reality crashes in, cold and vicious, and I’m shoving the pillow away like it burned me.
What the hell am I doing?
I sit up too fast, my stomach rolling with a nausea that has nothing to do with morning sickness. This is different. This is revulsion at myself, at what I’ve become, at how easily I’ve betrayed—
Alexei.
His name lands in my mind like a stone, heavy and accusing. Alexei, who I loved. Alexei, who died less than a month ago. Alexei, whose baby I’m carrying while I'm lying in bed breathing in his brother’s scent like some kind of—
I press my hands over my face, fighting back tears.
How could I? How could I betray him like this? It’s one thing to be forced into this marriage and submit to Dimitri because I had no choice. But last night wasn’t force. It was want. Need. I pulled him back when he tried to stop. I begged him not to leave me alone.
I wanted it. I wanted him.
And that makes me the worst kind of person.
My hands drift to my stomach, to where I swear I’m starting to see a swell. “Please don’t hate me,” I whisper to the baby. To Alexei.
But even as I say it, I can still feel Dimitri’s hands on my skin and hear his rough voice telling me I was beautiful, that the baby and I are both his. I felt so safe wrapped in his arms, and the nightmares couldn’t touch me as long as he was there.
I sigh, yanking on my hair in frustration. I don’t fucking understand Dimitri Volkov. He married me for revenge and made my life hell for three weeks. He’s been cruel and cold and exactly what I expected from a man who blamed my family for his brother’s death.
But then he comforted me last night when I had that nightmare. He held me while I sobbed and stayed even though he could have left. And then we had sex with a tenderness that completely contradicted every terrible thing he’d done before.
Which version is real? The monster or the man from last night?
I need to watch myself more closely. Whatever happened last night can’t happen again. I’m not replacing Alexei. I won’t replace him.
I force myself out of bed. I’m going to put last night behind me and rebuild the walls that came crumbling down in the darkness. I can do it.
Except I’m a fucking liar and a goddamn hypocrite, because instead of watching myself more closely, I find myself watching him differently.
It starts that evening at dinner.
We’ve maintained the new routine of eating together civilly (no more verbal attacks or cruelty). We’re just two people sharing a meal in uncomfortable silence while pretending the tension in the air amongst us isn’t there.
But tonight, I’m not just enduring his presence. I’m noticing things.
The way he listens when Roman reports on some skirmishes.
He has his full attention on his head of security, asking thoughtful questions and considering every angle.
There’s no dismissiveness or arrogance, like I saw in Uncle Marcus.
He respects the man, values his input, and treats him like an equal even though Roman is technically his employee.
“What about Igor’s family?” Dimitri asks, his fingers drumming thoughtfully on the table. “Have we made sure they’re protected?”
“Already handled, boss,” Roman confirms. “His wife and kids are at the safe house. No one knows where they are except you and me.”
“Good.” Dimitri nods, and there’s genuine relief in his expression. “Keep it that way. I won’t have another family suffering because of—” He cuts himself off, jaw tightening, but I know what he was going to say. Because of me. Because of my decisions.
He carries that weight. The responsibility for everyone under his protection. It’s written in every line of his face, in the tension he never quite lets go of, the way his eyes constantly scan for threats.
It’s not just about power. It’s about duty, and that realization unsettles me more than it should.
Over the next few days, I keep noticing small details that chip away at the monster I’d constructed in my mind.
Like when one of the younger guards (barely twenty and new to the organization) mentions his mother is sick. I’m in the hallway outside Dimitri’s office (waiting for him so we can go to yet another dinner meeting) when I hear them talking.
“I hate to ask, Mr. Volkov, but could I have a few days off? My mother, she’s—the doctors say she needs surgery, but the insurance won’t cover it all, and I need to figure out—”
“What hospital?” Dimitri interrupts sharply.
The guard stammers out the name, clearly terrified he’s about to be fired for asking. I lean forward, desperate to hear what Dimitri will say next.
“I’ll handle it,” Dimitri says. “The surgery, the hospital bills, whatever she needs. You focus on being with your mother. Take a week.”
My jaw drops open and it shocks me as much as the guard who immediately starts sputtering.
“Mr. Volkov, I can’t—that’s too much!”
“You can and you will.” There’s no room for argument in his tone. “Your mother took care of you your whole life. Now let me take care of this. That’s what family does.”
Family. He called his organization family.
The guard leaves Dimitri’s office with tears in his eyes, passing me in the hallway without even noticing I’m there.
When Dimitri emerges, he sees me standing there and I know from his expression that he knows I overheard, but he doesn’t say anything. He just offers me his arm—a gesture that’s become routine when we walk anywhere together—and leads me toward the car.
“That was kind,” I say quietly once we’re settled in the back seat.
He shrugs, looking out the window. “His mother needs surgery. I can afford it.”
“It’s more than that. You didn’t have to do it.” I study his profile in the fading evening light. “You did it because you care.”
“I take care of my people,” he says gruffly, still not looking at me, but I can tell he’s embarrassed by this based on the slight pinkening of the tips of his ears. “That’s the job.”
But I heard the way he called them family. I saw the immediate decision to help without even considering the cost.
This isn’t just about duty or obligation. This is about something deeper.
The next day as I walk toward the kitchens, I overhear Mrs. Kozlov mention her grandson.
“The surgery, it went well, thank God,” she says, and I nearly trip over my feet hearing how tearful she sounds.
I didn’t know Mrs. Kozlov knew how to feel anything but irritation.
“They say they got all of it. He will need treatment still, but surgeon was best in the country.” She pauses, then adds quietly, “Mr. Volkov, he arrange everything. Would not even let me thank him proper. Said it was nothing.”
I stop short, pivot, and hurry away before Mrs. Kozlov realizes I’m there. My heart pounds. This is who Dimitri is. Not the cold, cruel man who locked me in this house, but someone who protects his people ferociously and completely without expecting gratitude or recognition.
That night at dinner, I watch him differently, and I see things I’ve been too angry or scared to see before.
The way his men look at him is not just with fear or respect but with genuine loyalty, the kind that can’t be bought or forced. They’d die for him, I realize, not because he pays them well (though I’m sure he does) but because he’s proven again and again that he’d die for them too.
He notices me staring and a dark brow quirks up. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly, looking down at my plate, feeling my face flame at being caught.
But it’s not nothing. It’s everything shifting, realigning, becoming something I don’t know how to process.
He carries the weight of every decision and every life under his protection.
Every risk he takes and every enemy he makes in the process of keeping his people safe.
I can see it in the tension that never leaves his shoulders, in the way he checks his phone constantly for updates, how he looks exhausted because he’s too busy making sure everyone else is secure.
This isn’t the monster I'd imagined. This isn’t the cruel tyrant who married me for revenge.
This is a man trying to lead. To protect. To honor his dead brother by keeping everyone who matters safe.
The realization makes everything infinitely more complicated than simple fear or hatred ever was.
But with that realization comes guilt. So much guilt I feel like I’m drowning in it.
I loved Alexei. Right? I loved him.
He was charming and sweet and made me feel special, like I was the only person in the world when he looked at me with those bright blue eyes. He made me laugh and made me feel safe. He promised me a future where our families didn’t matter, where love could overcome anything.
He was my fairy tale. My escape from the darkness of the world I was born into.