Chapter 5 #2
I love that he asked. When it mattered most, when the thing he wanted was the thing he couldn't take, he asked. Clumsily. Reluctantly. Like a man learning a language he'd never needed before. But he asked.
I love that he chose me first.
Not because I was beautiful or valuable or strategically useful. Because something in him recognized something in me across a room full of people, and he followed that recognition off a cliff, and he's been falling ever since, and he doesn't want to stop.
That's not a trauma bond. That's not conditioning. That's not a response to being fed and sheltered and sexually devastated on a nightly basis, although those things don't hurt.
That's love. Messy, dark, inconvenient, impossible love. The kind that doesn't fit in a greeting card or a romantic comedy. The kind that blooms in the cracks of broken things, the way wrens build nests in the cracks of abandoned buildings.
I look up at him. He's talking to someone, another man in a dark suit, but his hand hasn't moved from my back. It hasn't moved since we walked in. Like he needs the physical contact to confirm I'm still here. Still real. Still his.
He glances down at me. One eyebrow lifts slightly. You okay?
I nod.
He turns back to his conversation, and his thumb traces a single line down my spine, and the gesture is so small and so private and so utterly devoid of performance that my heart swells.
He does that. These tiny, invisible acts of tenderness that no one else can see.
The way he pulls the blanket up over my shoulder when he thinks I'm asleep.
The way he cuts my fruit into smaller pieces because he noticed I eat more of it that way.
The way he put a reading light on my side of the bed so I could stay up without disturbing him, and then stayed awake anyway because he likes watching me read.
He takes care of me.
Nobody has ever taken care of me.
I took care of my father. I took care of the apartment.
I took care of the bills and the groceries and the vomit on the bathroom floor.
I took care of everything and everyone except myself, because there was never enough left over.
Never enough money, never enough time, never enough energy.
I poured myself out like water for a man who never once asked if the pitcher needed refilling.
Dominik doesn't pour me out. He fills me up.
That's what it comes down to. For twenty-three years, I was last. Last in line for food, for attention, for safety, for love. I was the leftover. The afterthought. The thing that existed to serve someone else's needs and wasn’t allowed needs of her own.
Dominik put me first on the night we met. He put me before the reason he was even there in the first place. Before a business rival. Before a million dollars. Before logic and strategy and every rule he's ever operated by. He looked at me and said, this one , and he hasn't looked away since.
Being put first. Being wanted. Being looked after. Being chosen.
These are the things I'm in love with. And the man who gives them to me is standing beside me in a room full of killers with his hand on my spine, and I don't want to be anywhere else.
There’s a commotion near the entrance. Voices. The sharp, angular sound of an argument in Russian that gets cut short. I feel Dominik tense beside me. Not much. Just a slight hardening of his posture, a shift from relaxed to ready.
Three men are being led into the room. Not walking in freely.
Being led by Ilya and two others I recognize from the penthouse security detail.
The three men look uncomfortable. Scared.
They're scanning the room with the frantic energy of people who don't know why they're here but suspect it isn't good.
I recognize one of them.
Not personally. But something about his face triggers a memory. The auction. The chairs. The paddles. He was there. He was one of the men who bid on me.
Dominik steps forward. He doesn't rush. He moves with that unhurried, devastating calm, and the room rearranges itself around him. People step back. Conversations evaporate. The candles flicker as bodies shift.
He stops in front of the three men.
"Gentlemen," he says. His voice is conversational. Pleasant. The voice of a host welcoming latecomers to a dinner party. "Thank you for joining us."
The men say nothing. One of them is sweating visibly.
"You know who I am," Dominik says. "And you know the woman standing behind me."
The men look at me. I feel their eyes land and skitter away.
"You bid on her," Dominik says. Still conversational. Still pleasant. "At Morozov’s auction, you raised your paddles and placed a monetary value on the woman who is now wearing my ring."
Silence. The kind of silence that has weight.
"I don't hold grudges," Dominik says. "Grudges are inefficient. But I do believe in clarity. In making sure everyone understands the rules of the world they're living in."
He takes a step closer to the three men. They don't retreat because they can't. Ilya is behind them.
"The rule is simple," Dominik says. "She is to be my wife, and as such, is entitled to your respect."
The sweating man opens his mouth. "Mr. Voronov, I didn't--"
"On your knees."
The room stops breathing.
"On your knees," Dominik repeats. "You looked at her like she was something you could buy. You raised a paddle and put a price on her body with no intention of cherishing her. You will kneel in front of her, and you will apologize, and you will mean it, because I will know if you don't."
They kneel.
All three of them. One by one. Suits hitting the concrete floor, heads bowing, and the room watches.
"I'm sorry," the first man says. Directed at me. Eyes on the floor.
"I'm sorry," says the second.
The third man, the sweating one, looks up at me, and his eyes are wet with fear. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Voronova."
Mrs. Voronova. Not my name. His name. Given to me by a terrified man on his knees in a room full of criminals, and the sound of it settles into my psyche like it belongs there.
Dominik looks at me. Raises one eyebrow. Satisfied?
I nod.
They scramble to their feet. Ilya escorts them away. The room exhales.
Dominik returns to my side. His hand finds the small of my back. His thumb traces that single, private line down my spine.
"Mrs. Voronova," he says quietly. Testing it. Tasting it.
"I haven't married you yet."
"You will." His grin is wolfish, and we both know he is right.
"You're insufferable."
"You love me."
I look up at him. He's not asking. He's not even guessing. He's stating a fact with the same flat certainty he states everything.
"I do love you," I say.
First time. Out loud. In a room full of people who will never understand how a girl who was sold became a woman who chose. But we understand it. And that's enough.
His expression doesn't change. But his hand on my back trembles. Just once. A single vibration that runs through his palm and into my spine and tells me everything his face won't.
"Say it again," he says, pulling me behind a door and out of sight of the other guests.
"I love you."
"Again."
"Dominik."
"Again, Wren."
"I love you. I'm in love with you. I love being wanted by you and fed by you and protected by you and wrecked by you. I love that you chose me. I love that you asked. I love that you're insufferable and terrifying and you wash dishes and grow rosemary on the balcony. I love you."
He pulls me against his chest but he doesn't say it back.
He doesn't have to. He said it on the first night with his actions, his jacket over my shoulders. He said it every night spent between my thighs. He said it with a million dollars and a forkful of food and the way he covered by eyes so I didn’t see the carnage that had found its way to the penthouse
Dominik Voronov has been saying I love you since the moment he stood at the auction.
He just didn't have the words for it until I gave them to him.