7. Sofia #2
My uncle’s voice turns low. “Choose your next words carefully.”
“I always do,” Damir says.
I almost laugh. I don’t, mostly because my life expectancy feels fragile enough without adding poor timing.
Damir continues, “The only way this stops is if Sofia marries me. And you want to make it go away, don’t you?”
The church goes silent. Even the injured men seem to stop breathing.
I turn my head very slowly and stare at Damir.
For a moment, all I can see is his profile.
The hard line of his jaw. The silver at his temple.
The faint smear of blood on one white cuff.
His expression gives away nothing, as if he has not just suggested the most insane thing any man has ever said in a building already full of insane men.
“What?” I say. My voice comes out thinner than I want.
Damir looks down at me. His eyes are pale and steady. “You heard me.”
“No, I heard sounds,” I say. “I’m waiting for them to become reasonable.”
A flicker crosses his face. It might be amusement.
If it is, I may actually hit him.
My uncle explodes before I can say anything else. “Absolutely not.” The force of his voice makes several guests flinch. “No niece of mine will marry you,” he says, taking a step forward. “Not today. Not if you put every gun in this church to my head.”
Damir’s body moves half an inch more in front of mine.
Shielding me. Owning the space.
Both things at once.
“You preferred Sokolov,” Damir says.
“I preferred order.”
“You preferred a sale.”
My uncle’s jaw clenches.
Dmitri steps forward, blood still staining his mouth, humiliation turning his face cruel. His gaze runs over me from veil to ruined hem, then pauses at the mark on my neck again.
His lip curls. “Let him have her,” he says. “She’s already spread her legs for him in a hallway, hasn’t she?”
The words hit me so hard I forget to breathe.
Not because I care what Dmitri thinks of me.
I don’t. I truly, deeply don’t. But because the whole church hears him, and for one second I’m not a woman.
I am an object being inspected after damage.
A bride whose value has been lowered. A thing men can discuss because they were already planning to exchange me anyway.
My uncle says nothing. That hurts more than Dmitri’s words.
Because I look at him, waiting for something. Anger on my behalf. One sharp word. One sign that I am still his niece before I am his political arrangement. But Sergei Antonov only stares at Dmitri with a face like stone, and I see the calculation moving behind his eyes.
What insult can be survived?
What alliance can be salvaged?
What does Sofia cost now?
Something inside me goes very still. Not calm. Something colder than calm.
I look past them, past the men with guns, past the flowers and the broken candles, and see the women crouched between pews.
One girl no older than ten is crying silently into her mother’s side.
Another woman shields a little boy’s face with her hands while he shakes against her lap.
Katya has one arm around Anya and one around the twin beside her, all three of them pressed low as if making themselves smaller will make the bullets forget them.
This is because of me.
No. Not only because of me.
Because of all of us. Because of men who build cages and call them alliances. Because of pride. Because of old blood. Because I invited a monster into the room and every other monster decided to show his teeth.
But I’m the one standing in the center of it.
I look up at Damir. He’s already watching me.
Waiting.
Not begging. Not reassuring. Not promising safety, because at least he is not enough of a liar to offer me that.
Just waiting.
I take one breath. Then another.
“Okay,” I say.
My uncle turns toward me slowly.
Dmitri goes still.
Damir’s eyes sharpen.
I lift my voice so it carries past him, past the men with guns, past the ruined flowers and frightened guests. “I’ll marry you.”
The words move through the church like a second gunshot.
My uncle’s face drains of color. “Sofia.”
I don’t look at him. I keep my eyes on Damir because if I look anywhere else, I might lose my nerve.
“I will marry you,” I say again. “But this stops. No more shooting. No more men bleeding on the floor. No more women and children cowering in pews because every man in this room would rather die than lower his pride.”
For a second, nothing happens.
Then my uncle says, “Are you insane?”
I finally turn to him. “What does it look like?”
“It looks like you have lost your mind.”
“No,” I say. “It looks like I found the only exit.”
His expression hardens. “You don’t understand what you are choosing.”
I glance around the church deliberately. At Damir’s men, standing steady. At my uncle’s men, pushed back and outmaneuvered. At Dmitri’s men, uncertain and angry. At the guests frozen in their seats.
“I understand enough.”
“You understand nothing.”
I step toward him, but Damir’s hand closes around my wrist before I make it two steps.
“No,” he says.
I look back at him. “I need to speak to my uncle.”
“No.”
My laugh comes out sharp and disbelieving. “You just proposed a forced wedding in the middle of my forced wedding, and now you are denying me a conversation?”
“Yes.”
“At least you’re consistent.”
His expression doesn’t change.
I lean closer, lowering my voice. “Two minutes.”
“No.”
“Damir.”
His eyes narrow faintly at the sound of his name.
“You asked me to marry you in front of half the criminal world,” I say. “If you want me walking back to that altar beside you, give me two minutes with the man who raised me.”
His gaze moves over my face. For one second, the room around us fades into the background.
I don’t know what he sees when he looks at me.
Anger, probably. Fear, definitely. The bite mark on my neck.
The ruined veil. The bride who invited him here and is now pretending this was ever under her control.
Finally, he releases my wrist. “Two minutes.”
I don’t thank him. I gather the front of my dress and walk toward my uncle. Two of Damir’s men shift with me, not touching me, but making it obvious that nobody is taking me anywhere without permission.
My uncle notices. His mouth tightens.
Good. Let him know how it feels to have his freedom managed.
I stop near the first pew, far enough from the others to pretend we have privacy, though there is no such thing in a church full of armed men.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks. His voice is controlled again, which means he is more dangerous than when he was shouting.
I smile without humor. “What does it look like? I’m saving your ass.”
His eyes flash. “Don’t speak to me like that.”
“Then stop earning it.”
“Sofia.”
“No.” My voice drops. “You don’t get to use that tone right now. Your men fired first.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I heard the shot. Everyone heard the shot.”
“You invited him.”
I say nothing.
His mouth tightens because we both know my silence is the answer.
“I know what you’re doing,” he says.
I lift my chin. “What?”
He stares at me, and for one strange second, I think he’s going to say it. That I’m choosing Damir because I can’t stomach Dmitri. That I’m using this disaster the way he used me, as leverage. That I would rather throw myself into his enemy’s hands than walk meekly into the life he chose for me.
But he doesn’t say any of that.
His gaze drops to my neck. To the place where Damir bit me.
My skin heats before I can stop it.
My uncle’s face shifts with something dark and almost painful. “I may be a monster,” he says quietly, “but he is worse.”
The words hit harder because he doesn’t sound angry now. He sounds certain.
“Do you know he killed his wife?”