Chapter 4 - Anton
Today, more than ever before, Darya looks like she’s made to be touched.
She’s as close to unkempt as she could ever get—which is to say, her raven-black curls are windswept, a few stray tendrils fallen out of the half-up style she’d secured them in, and her face is flushed.
Her lipstick is gone from the center of her mouth, leaving an inner circle of slaughterhouse pink where red used to be.
It looks like the innermost part of a rose petal.
In this moment, I almost forget that it was only last night that someone set fire to multiple warehouses—both Zakharov and Yuri—at the same time.
The mole, whoever this motherfucker or motherfuckers are, is getting bolder the more we hunt for them.
I almost forgot the furious back-and-forth between Trifon and me for an hour after.
I wonder if I look as wrung out as I feel.
For her part, I’ve never seen this woman look so shocked. I suspect a feather could really knock her over. Having to catch her could be as good an excuse as any to touch her.
For the sake of some fucking self-preservation, I stuff my hands into the pockets of my slacks instead.
The action seems to rouse her.
“Mr. Zakharov,” she says, and it comes out sounding strained.
I’d been hoping to catch her off-guard a little, just to even the playing field a bit. But this is beyond that. She looks stricken and dazed.
It probably isn’t healthy that it makes me want to grin. Smugly.
I manage to refrain, as I say, “Darya. Forgive the intrusion.”
“You asking for my forgiveness is almost as astonishing as your invading my home.” This is how I learned that, no matter what is unfolding within her emotional landscape, nothing can leash her smart mouth. It’s really something.
She’s really something.
She meets my gaze head-on, almost convincingly unfazed. Except—I look at her too closely to be fooled by it. I look at everyone closely, and I look at her, this woman I have no business being so helplessly fascinated by, closer than anyone. I clock every inch as the shock recedes from her features.
I can see the moment she manages to fully steel herself, barricading her truth away from my prying eyes. “How did you get my address?” she demands.
“You do realize my rank?” I challenge, cocking a quizzical brow.
Darya arches one of her own, as much a response as mimicry. It’s refreshingly juvenile of her. “Nepotism doesn’t account for anything but good fortune,” she counters.
Wryly, I ask, “And how would you know that?”
If only her wrathful expression made her less irresistible. But no. She lifts her chin and narrows her eyes at me, and an unmistakable want stirs within me.
“You’re braver without watchful eyes on you,” Darya notes, no offense betrayed by her calm, even tenor. “I wonder if you’d be loose with your tongue with my brothers as an audience.”
I offer her a wan smile. “Probably not.”
If my honesty startles her, she is adamant about not letting me see it.
And that’s fine. That’s expected enough.
My showing up here may appear spontaneous—impulsive, even—but it isn’t, really.
I haven’t had a lobotomy, for all that she’s eyeing my head like I’ve got some screws loose.
I can only imagine, and I have, how she will react when I unveil my proposition to her.
That is, if I get the chance.
I doubt it when she startles me with her volume, calling out, “Vera!”
That’ll be the housekeeper, then. A brusque, but kind-faced, woman in her 40s whom I’d had to charm my way past. It had taken more work than one would think.
Regardless, my palm twitches towards the gun in my holster on instinct.
I have to forcibly restrain my hand. It isn’t like she’s summoned her security.
“You’re dismissed for the night, thank you,” Darya orders.
Just like that, it’s my turn to wear the shock. Darya Yuri doesn’t bother to staunch the smugness in her own smile when it sprawls. Her eyes gleam with satisfaction. She doesn’t pay Vera any mind, but I don’t miss the way the woman looks utterly taken aback.
It’s none of my goddamn business what the answer to the question is, but I still can’t help but wonder how rare it is or isn’t for Darya to have visitors of the male variety in her house.
I have no right to feel any type of way about the answer to that question, one way or the other.
Then again, it’s probably best if I do not board that train of thought to begin with. As evidenced by my obviously unwanted presence in her home, the list of things I’d do that I’ve got no right to may quickly grow endless.
It’s pretty generous of Darya to extend her arm, as she does, and invite, “Are you just going to stand there and stare at me, or would you like to sit down and tell me what the hell you’re doing here?”
It’s a fair question. It also happens to be one of those occasions where knowing me a little better, as if I am wont to give people that opportunity, would not help the hint of disbelief that never vacates her expression entirely.
I am not this man. I am not a man who shows up at places unannounced and alone. Yet here I am.
This woman is perfectly within her rights to tell me to fuck off, and we both know it. It’s a commendable power move to do the opposite. Keeping me on my toes is definitely an entry on the list of talents. That list, too, is likely to be endless.
Would she be flattered to know she’s the one who’s inspired the plan in my mind? Somehow, I doubt it.
But I’m here now. And wild horses couldn’t stop me from following after her as she leads the way back into the sitting room; my eyes have already mapped every inch of it over the past half hour.
Unfortunately, nothing—not even gentlemanly decency, apparently—can stop my eyes from chasing the swish of her gloriously flaring hips either.
Amusement isn’t quite the word for the look on her face when she whips around. No, it’s an emotion that’s significantly more feral than that; it’s darker.
“My,” she laughs right at me, throaty and rich, “you really are bolder without a chaperone, aren’t you, Anton?”
I say nothing. Nothing is the best thing I can say. I pivot on a heel and walk my ass back to the Queen Anne chair I’ve been waiting for her in all along. It’s a much safer perch from which to watch her pour herself a glass of merlot.
It stains her mouth. I swallow thickly at the sight.
Her eyes follow me. Her attention is palpable as a laser, boring holes through the back of my skull.
I look away from her face. I find safety in the decadent trappings of this room. I’ve never wondered where a woman like her would live, because I’ve never let myself. I never let myself do many things.
But there’s nothing nefarious about admiring her white marble fireplace and the obsidian built-in shelves flanking it on either side, as floor-to-ceiling windows flank those. The symmetry of it all scratches an itch in my brain.
So what if I’ve clocked her tastes in literature as expansive, and that she’s potentially fluent in more than three languages? I spotted volumes in Russian, French, and Italian, as well as in English.
It feels like getting away with something to know something about her that she doesn’t realize I’ve learned.
“Tell you what,” Darya adds when I don’t respond, “I’ll let you stay for the next ten minutes. However, you should know that’s purely because this is the most interesting you’ve been since I’ve had the displeasure of meeting you.”
It won’t help my case to tell her it hasn’t helped my life any to meet her, either. It’s easier, for now, to look around her space. Just being here, I’m learning something new about her.
Ten minutes aren’t enough.
To look at her, dressed in a cashmere sweater-dress concoction that has no right to look so fucking good, who would expect the walls of her living room to be lacquered in the deepest oxblood?
For her curtains to be a rich, nearly black shade of green?
Who else has been privy to the sight of her bare feet padding across a Persian rug, an intricate work in maroons, navies, and an unexpected haunting of gray?
It feels nefarious, though, especially when I have to look back at her and find her looking guarded—as if she is sure that I will have something unkind to say about her marvelous haven.
Fuck, I hate that idea.
It fucks with me, how much I hate that idea.
Whatever my expression betrays, she doesn’t appreciate. I can see that, and I can’t blame her. I just know it isn’t enough to stop the putsch that’s in motion now.
“Well?” Her foot taps impatiently, irascibly, against the ground. “What do you want?”
“For you to marry me,” I blurt.
That isn’t how I was meant to propose this.
I am not a man who blurts anything. But that is what this is.
The way Darya is left staring at me isn’t too much of a departure from the way Uncle Boris looked at me only yesterday, telling me to double-cross the Yuris before they have the chance to do it first. She, too, harbors disgust and detestation in every line of her devastating face.
She chokes on a mouthful of wine. She jabs a finger angrily in my direction when I stand to help her. Don’t you fucking touch me, is the subtext of that finger. I can translate that much when she manages to glare despite her watering eyes.
Eventually, “What kind of sick joke is this?” she manages to spit. Any remnant ounce of her humor is nothing more than a memory now.
“It’s not a joke,” I say woodenly.
“No, you don’t get to scowl at me. Your options are to speak clearly or get out of my house. I am in no mood for—”
“If you want to know, then stop talking and listen.”
Giving a woman like Darya an order is a shot in the dark. I am lucky because she obeys it this time. Of course, the look she shoots me as she does so could kill.
I clear my throat, taking the moment to collect myself.
It doesn’t really work.
Options, I suppose, are as good a place to start as any.
“Things have progressed,” I begin. “We are at a crossroads here, Darya. This alliance is the only variable that has changed after years of loyalty. As a result, there are two options in front of us—we strengthen the alliance or break it. I have no desire to clean up the bloodshed that would almost certainly ensue as a result of Option Two.” I hold up a hand to silence her when her mouth opens.
I can tell by the way she clutches at her glass that she’s entertaining the thought of tossing her drink in my face.
“Viktor isn’t an heir, but both Yuri's daughters wearing the Zakharov name will still count for something. It will put more at stake for both parties, making them even more entwined. Whoever is behind this is counting on this alliance being fragile. They’re getting bolder with their attacks.
I have to believe that’s because they honestly believe one good push will splinter it.
The strongest argument against that is making it unbreakable.
Rein in your emotions, and please consider this logically. I know you are capable of that.”
All of them are. I’ve gotten to know the Yuris better over the past few months. I have seen firsthand the kind of loyalty and zeal they can inspire. This alliance may just cost them that. Darya will have to see that.
Even if she doesn’t, I have another million ways to justify this ask. It’s a matter of no consequence if none of them is the whole truth. I’m already used to carrying that for myself, like a fucking boulder where my heart once lived.