MAKSIM
Karpov asks the question like he’s discussing security, not a woman standing ten feet away with fury written all over her face, and I understand at once that the conversation has already spread farther than I wanted.
I turn toward the door and keep my voice flat. “Yes.”
Karpov’s eyes narrow slightly. “Yes, Pakhan?”
I take one step closer. He’s been with my family a long time, long enough to know when I’m in the mood to explain and when I’m not. Tonight, he’s pushing. “Yes,” I say again. “I’m claiming her.”
The words leave my mouth clearly, and once they do, the choice feels obvious. It was always going to come to this. Sergei built the structure to force my hand, and every man worth worrying about will understand exactly what I mean by it.
No one touches her.
No one approaches her.
No one interprets her status for me.
Karpov studies my face for a second, then nods once. “I’ll have it understood.”
“You’ll have it understood inside this house,” I correct. “Outside this house, nothing changes. No loose mouths. No creative versions. No one carries this beyond my walls until I say so.”
His jaw shifts, but he nods again. “Understood.”
I dismiss him with a look, and he takes the door with him. The latch clicks shut.
The silence behind me lasts half a second and then Elena says, “No.”
I turn back to her.
She’s standing stiffly, one hand braced on the edge of the chair, the other curled so tightly I can see the strain in her fingers even from here. Her face is flushed, her split lip angrier than it was a minute ago, and there’s enough fire in her eyes to make a sane man take a step back.
I’m not a sane man where she’s concerned.
“No?” I ask, feigning ignorance though I know what she’s after. If she says what she’s thinking out loud, she’ll give herself more clarity than I ever could.
“No, you don’t get to do that.” She takes a step toward me, and I stay where I am because she’ll come to me if she wants this fight badly enough. “You don’t get to stand there and decide I’m yours because some old bastard with a ledger said so.”
I fold my arms and watch her. “That’s not what I said, and that bastard is your father.”
Her eyes blaze. “He’s a cunt, and that’s exactly what you said.”
“It’s exactly what you heard.”
Her mouth opens, and for one split second I think she might throw something at me. I’d almost enjoy that. It would be simpler than the way she’s looking at me now, furious and cornered and still too proud to show the fear sitting under all that steel.
“You are in no position,” I tell her, “to reject the only protection that means anything tonight.”
Her chin lifts. “Watch me.”
I nearly smile at that but check myself just in time before moving, slow enough that she has time to brace herself, and I stop in front of her with just enough space left between us to be respectable if a priest walked in and not nearly enough to feel comfortable.
She doesn’t step back. Good, very good. “Protection,” she says, her voice tightening. “That’s your word for it.”
“It’s the right word.”
“For what? Claiming me before someone else can?”
“Yes.”
Her nostrils flare. “That’s disgusting.”
I let my gaze drop to her mouth for half a second, then back to her eyes. “Fair enough. I say it the way it is, and right now, it’s looking like you’re in a corner, and corners don’t care whether the answer offends you.”
Her shoulders draw tighter, and she presses her lips together before she speaks again. “You think that gives you the right to decide for me?”
I cock my head at her. “I know it does tonight.”
Her laugh is short. “God, you really are unbearable.”
“And yet,” I say, keeping my voice even, “here you are.”
For one second, something flashes over her face that isn’t anger. I don’t have time to sort it before she shoves forward another step, and now the front of her coat almost brushes my hand.
“Do you plan to marry me by force too?” she asks. “Is that in the ledger? Listed girl, transferable claim, wife by coercion, signatures on demand?”
I stare at her for a moment, then let out a breath through my nose.
There’s a dark kind of amusement in this, and I don’t fight it. “I’m old-fashioned,” I say, clearing my throat. “I don’t marry women unless they want me enough to walk into it themselves.”
Her eyes widen just slightly, and something in them drops before she drags it back up and locks it away again. It’s small and interesting, and it goes through me hot enough to make my hands flex at my sides.
Hmm. She looked crestfallen for a second there.
I push my smile down and keep my expression still because I don’t need her knowing what I just saw. She recovers fast, which I expected. “That might be the first decent thing you’ve said all night.”
“No,” I say quietly. “That’s the first answer tonight you wanted to hear.”
Color rises higher in her face. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
I lean in just enough to make her decide whether to hold her ground or give me an inch. She holds it, which is exactly why my attention keeps returning to her no matter how inconvenient that is.
“If I wanted to flatter myself,” I tell her, “I’d mention the look that crossed your face before you remembered you’re supposed to hate me.”
Her breath catches once, and color climbs into her cheeks. She’s beautiful past the body men notice first, though I notice that too.
She speaks again, though her voice is shaking. “You’re making that up.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re insufferable.” She shoves a hand through her hair, then turns away from me sharply, and the movement drags her coat open enough for me to catch the line of her throat, the tremor she’s trying to hide, the fact that she’s shaken and refusing to let it weaken her.
That brain of hers is bad enough. Paired with that mouth and that body, it’s becoming a problem.
I watch her for a second too long. Then she turns back and stabs a finger at me. “This changes nothing. I don’t accept it.”
At that precise moment, I take her wrist before the finger gets anywhere near my face. Her eyes fly to mine.
“No,” I say, and my thumb shifts once against the inside of her wrist where her pulse is running too fast. “It changes everything.”
Her lips part, and for one clean second, all that anger drops out of her expression. Interesting. Up close, there’s a little beauty spot over the right side of her lip that I hadn’t noticed before.
The knock at the door cuts straight through the thick heat that’s built up between us.
I don’t move at first, and neither does she. Her wrist is still in my hand, her pulse still fast under my thumb, and her mouth is parted in that brief way that makes a man want to keep her exactly where she is and let the rest of the house burn.
Then the door shakes once more, and duty comes back with teeth. She jerks her hand free and glares at me as if I planned the interruption myself. “If that’s another man here to discuss my market value, I’m going to start biting.”
A rough laugh nearly gets out of me, which is irritating in its own right, because nothing about this night is amusing.
I step back and straighten my cuffs. “You can stay here and keep insulting the furniture, or you can walk the ground floor until the housekeeper takes you upstairs. She’ll show you your rooms.”
She frowns once, then folds her arms. “My rooms.”
“Yes.”
The frown quickly builds into a scowl. “I don’t accept your claim, and I definitely don’t accept your rooms.”
I move in before she can say anything else, catch her by the waist, and pull her close enough that the next breath she takes touches my throat. Her eyes fly to mine, furious and startled, and I lean down until my mouth is just beside her ear.
“You can reject me all night,” I murmur, keeping my voice low and rough enough that I feel the shiver run through her before she can stop it.
“You can refuse the word, the room, and the house, but you’re staying under my roof until I say otherwise, and you’re not giving any man in it the pleasure of seeing you fall apart. ”
Her fingers catch in the front of my shirt by instinct.
I let my hand slide once over her side, feel the tight line of her body, the fight still in it, then step back before she can recover enough to slap me.
Her breath is wrong now, shallow and quick, and her eyes are brighter than they were a second ago.
“Enjoy the house,” I tell her, and I let the corner of my mouth lift because I know she’ll hate it. “Try not to threaten anyone. The staff are already nervous.”
Her jaw drops, then tightens, and I leave while she’s still gathering words sharp enough to throw at my back. The door closes behind me, and I let out a short breath that almost becomes a chuckle.
The situation is filthy, the timing is worse, and still I find myself wanting to go back in there and keep pushing her just to see what else slips through that beautiful, furious mouth of hers.
The corridor cures me of that fast enough. Abramov is posted outside my study, broad and hard, still under the current security chief, with an old soldier’s habit of standing like trouble keeps appointments. He straightens when I step out.
“Senior men are asking for you downstairs.”
I look back at Elena, then at him. “Watch her.”
Abramov nods. I step into the corridor, where Leonid and Petrov are already waiting. Leonid works the legal-financial side of the machine Sergei has spent years threading his poison through. Petrov handles movement and freight.
“What?” I ask, already walking.
They fall in behind me without a word, and we take the back passage toward the downstairs office because I’m not bringing house business to the front hall where half the estate can smell it.
Petrov answers that one. “Balkan intermediaries pushed again. They’re asking if the Sokolov woman is still live collateral or already under Volkov control.”
I keep my face still. “What was said?”
“Nothing. We held the line.”
Good. I nod briefly. “And Italy?”
“The Morettis made another approach through Trieste. They’re asking for formal talks.”