9. Damir
DAMIR
The priest’s hands shake so badly the pages of his book whisper against each other.
Good. A man should tremble when he realizes God is not the most dangerous presence in his church.
Sofia stands beside me in another man’s wedding dress, her hand caught in mine, her veil crooked around her shoulders and the mark of my mouth blooming against her throat. She looks pale beneath the careful bridal makeup, but not broken. Not submissive. Not even properly afraid.
Furious, yes.
Shaken, certainly.
But her chin remains lifted, her spine straight, her eyes fixed ahead as if she can force the entire church to behave by sheer stubbornness.
Beautiful girl. Reckless girl.
Mine now.
The thought moves through me with a savage satisfaction I don’t bother denying. It’s not civilized. It’s not clean. It’s not the sort of thing a man admits if he wants to sound noble.
But I have never been noble.
I look over the church as the priest clears his throat and tries to remember how to speak.
The old families stare back at me from behind overturned flowers and half-lowered weapons.
Women clutch pearls at their throats. Men who have whispered my name in private now sit frozen in their pews, watching me take Sergei Antonov’s niece and Dmitri Sokolov’s bride in front of every witness who matters.
This is better than killing Dmitri.
Killing him would have been quick, but this humiliation will live for years.
His wedding. His church. His alliance. His bride. And now she stands at my side, my mark on her neck, and my hand wrapped around hers while the priest prepares to give her my name.
Dmitri howls somewhere to my right, clutching his leg while two of his men try and fail to drag him back without angering mine.
“Get up,” one of them mutters. “Dmitri, for Christ’s sake—”
“Don’t touch me,” Dmitri snarls, though the words break into a groan when he shifts his weight.
I don’t look at him. That is the worst insult I can offer.
The priest swallows. “We are gathered here today—”
“We know why we’re here,” I say.
His mouth shuts.
Sofia glances at me from beneath the edge of her veil. There is irritation in her face despite everything, bright and furious enough to make something near amusement move through me.
“Let him speak,” she says under her breath.
I look down at her. “You are suddenly fond of ceremony?”
“No. I am fond of finishing things before more people bleed on the flowers.” Her voice is low enough that only I hear it, but there’s no tremble in it.
Good.
Very good.
The priest tries again, his eyes darting once toward Dmitri, once toward Sergei, and then very quickly away from both of them. “We are gathered here today, in the sight of God and these witnesses, to join…” He stops, his throat bobbing. “To join Sofia Antonova and—” He stops and clears his throat.
“Damir Volodin,” I say, not missing a beat.
He gulps. The priest knows me; people in my world rarely don’t.
“To join Sofia Antonova and Damir Volodin in holy matrimony.”
There’s a sound from the pews. Not a gasp. Not quite. A collective intake of breath, as if the whole room realizes at once that this is truly happening.
Sergei Antonov stands near the front pew, face carved from cold stone.
His men have been pushed back, his control broken in front of everyone, but he is not a fool.
He understands the arithmetic of the room.
My men have the exits. His men are either disarmed, injured, or trapped beneath too many guns to move without dying.
The Sokolovs are worse off. Without Dmitri standing properly, they don’t know whether to attack, bargain, or pretend this disaster can still become victory.
Sergei’s eyes meet mine. Hatred burns there. I give him nothing except the sight of my thumb moving slowly over his niece’s knuckles.
His jaw tightens.
Sofia’s hand twitches in mine, perhaps because she notices the small cruelty, perhaps because she hates being used even now.
Too bad. She invited me into this church. She should have known I would not enter quietly.
The priest’s voice wavers through the vows. “Marriage is a solemn covenant, entered into with reverence—”
Dmitri laughs. It’s a ragged, ugly sound, wet with pain and humiliation. “Reverence?” he spits. “She was moaning against him in the hallway ten minutes ago.”
Sofia stiffens beside me.
The church goes still again.
I turn my head slowly. Dmitri is on one knee, blood spreading dark from his thigh, his face pale and shining with sweat. Pain has stripped the polish from him completely. Without it, he looks younger. Meaner. Smaller.
“You’re not marrying her,” he says, his voice breaking around the edges. “You’re taking my leftovers.”
I release Sofia’s hand. Her fingers catch the air for half a second, as if she didn’t expect the sudden absence.
Mikhail shifts near the aisle. “Damir.”
I ignore him.
Dmitri sees me move and reaches blindly toward one of his fallen men. I glimpse metal before the others do—a blade, not a gun. Small, sharp, desperate. He lunges badly because of his injured leg, but rage gives stupid men speed.
He comes for my side, and I catch his wrist in my bare hand. The knife bites across my palm. Sofia gasps. For a moment, Dmitri and I are close enough that I can smell the blood on his breath.
I look at the blade pressed into my hand. Then at him. “Still confusing noise with courage,” I say.
His eyes widen.
I twist his wrist until the knife falls. Then I hit him.
The first punch knocks him sideways into the aisle.
The second catches him before he can fall properly, cracking against his cheekbone with enough force to send blood across his mouth.
Someone shouts. A woman screams. One of Dmitri’s men makes the stupid mistake of stepping forward, and Mikhail’s gun is against his head before he completes the movement.
“Stay,” Mikhail says.
The man stays.
Dmitri tries to rise again. I kick the knife away, grab the front of his jacket, and pull him up just enough to hit him a third time. There is no elegance in it. No performance. Only the blunt satisfaction of putting my fist into the face of a man who has called Sofia used, filthy, less.
His head snaps back. Blood marks my knuckles now.
Dmitri groans, sagging in my grip, but rage still keeps his mouth alive. “She’ll never be yours,” he chokes.
I hit him again. This time, his knees almost give out completely.
“Damir.” Sofia’s voice cuts through the room.
I stop.
My fist is still drawn back. Dmitri hangs half-conscious in my grip, blood running from his mouth and nose, one eye already swelling. I could finish this. Part of me wants to. A simple twist. A final strike. The Sokolov heir broken permanently at the altar where he expected to own her.
But Sofia has spoken.
I look back. She stands exactly where I left her, one hand pressed to her stomach, veil slipping from her hair, eyes wide but steady on mine. There is horror in her face, yes, but not for Dmitri. Not exactly. It’s for the room. For the children. For the way violence grows once fed.
“Stop,” she says. The word enters me more deeply than it should.
I hold Dmitri for one breath longer. Then I let him drop. He hits the stone with a broken sound. “Take him away,” I say.
Two of my men move immediately.
Sokolov’s guards protest until Mikhail lifts his gun half an inch. Then they remember wisdom.
Dmitri is dragged back, howling now, half from pain and half from the humiliation of being moved like a ruined thing in front of his own guests. His fingers scrape across the stone once before one of my men kicks his hand away.
Sofia doesn’t look at him. She looks at my hand. Blood runs from the cut across my palm, dark against skin, gathering at the base of my thumb before dripping onto the church floor.
Her lips part. “Your hand,” she says.
“It’s still attached.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
I step back toward her. Every eye follows me.
The priest looks as though he might faint.
Sergei looks as though he might age a decade from hatred alone.
The Sokolovs look like men discovering too late that power borrowed from Dmitri is worth less now that he’s bleeding and being dragged from his own wedding.
Sofia watches me approach with a wary expression, but she doesn’t move away.
Smart enough to fear me.
Proud enough not to show too much of it.
I stop in front of her and lift my injured hand. Blood shines across my palm.
For one second, I simply look at her. White dress. Pink mouth. Marked throat. Furious eyes. The sight does something ancient and brutal inside me.
I press my bloody thumb beneath her lower lip, and her breath catches.
The church disappears. She stares up at me as I drag my thumb slowly along the corner of her mouth, leaving a red mark against the softness there. Not enough to hurt. Not enough to frighten.
Enough to claim. Enough to ruin the perfect bridal image they made for another man. A smear of blood where innocence was supposed to be.
Her eyes widen, but not with fear. With shock. With something darker beneath it.
I lower my mouth close to her ear. “Hello, wife,” I whisper.
She inhales sharply. “Not yet,” she says, but the words barely make sound.
My mouth curves. “Soon enough.”
Then I kiss her.
Not like I kissed her in the corridor. This is not hidden. Not rushed. Not stolen against a wall while bullets tear apart the ceremony behind us.
This kiss is in front of everyone.
Sergei. Sokolov. The old families.
The women with pearls and the men with guns.
Every witness who came to watch Dmitri Sokolov take a bride now watches that bride open beneath my mouth.
At first she goes still, shocked by the blood, by the church, by my hand at her jaw. Then her fingers lift and catch my sleeve, not pushing, not pulling, simply holding on as if her body has not yet decided what survival requires.
I decide for both of us.
I deepen the kiss. Her lips part. The sound she makes is so small no one else could hear it, but I do. It burns straight through me.
When I lift my head, her eyes are wide and dazed, her lips marked red from my blood and swollen from my mouth. For the first time since I entered the church, she looks truly shocked.
Good. I prefer honesty on her face.
The priest makes a strangled noise behind us.
I turn toward him without letting go of Sofia. “Continue.”
He looks at my bloody hand, then at Sofia’s mouth, then at the ruined aisle. “I-I need—”
“You need to ask the question.”
His voice cracks. “Which question?”
I stare at him.
He remembers quickly. “Do you, Damir Volodin, take Sofia Antonova to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“Yes.” The answer leaves me before he finishes the sentence.
Savage satisfaction moves through me again, hotter this time. There are old victories men celebrate with champagne. There are others that settle in the blood. This one settles in mine.
The priest turns to Sofia.
She’s still looking at me.
“Sofia Antonova,” he says, voice trembling, “do you take Damir Volodin to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
The entire church waits. Sergei’s silence presses against my back like a blade. Mikhail stands ready near the aisle. My blood cools on Sofia’s mouth. For one second, she looks toward the pews. Toward her friend. Toward the injured men. Toward the children still huddled against their mothers.
Then she looks at me again. There is fury in her eyes. Fury, fear, and reluctant intelligence. She understands the room. She understands exactly what her answer buys.
“I do,” she says.
The satisfaction that tears through me is almost violent.
The priest swallows hard. “Then by the authority vested in me, I pronounce you husband and wife.” His voice falters.
I look at him.
He rushes on. “You may kiss the bride.”
Sofia’s mouth opens, probably to make some sharp little comment about how unnecessary that instruction is after the last several minutes.
I don’t let her.
I kiss her again, and this time, she doesn’t freeze. This time, she grips my jacket and kisses me back like she hates me for making her want anything in front of these people. Her anger is in it. Her relief too. Her fear. Her reckless, furious life.
I take all of it.
When I pull away, her breath is uneven and her cheeks are flushed.
I look over her head at Sergei Antonov. His face is ashen.
Good.
Then I bend and pick Sofia up. She makes a startled sound, hands flying to my shoulders as her dress spills over my arms in a rush of white silk and lace.
“What are you doing?” she hisses.
“Taking my wife home.”
Her eyes flash. “You are unbearable.”
“Yes.”
I turn with her in my arms. The church parts.
No one stops me.
Not Sergei, who stands with murder in his eyes and no room left to move. Not the Sokolovs, who are too busy watching their heir bleed and curse while my men drag him away. Not the old families, who understand power when they see it carried down an aisle in a ruined wedding dress.
Mikhail falls into step beside me, his expression unreadable except for the faint irritation that tells me he will have many opinions later. “Car is ready,” he says.
“Good.”
Sofia’s fingers tighten on my shoulder. “Put me down.”
“No.”
“I can walk.”
“I know.”
“Then put me down.”
“No.”
She stares at me, furious and flushed, my blood still marked across her mouth.
Christ. My wife is going to be a problem.
A magnificent one.
I carry her through the ruined church, over crushed flowers and broken glass, past women who stare and men who don’t dare raise their weapons. Cold air rushes in when my men open the doors.
Behind us, Sergei Antonov finally speaks. “Volodin.”
I stop at the top of the steps but don’t turn fully.
Sofia goes still in my arms.
Sergei’s voice is low now. Controlled again. That makes it more dangerous.
“This is not finished.”
I look back over my shoulder. “No,” I say. “It has just begun.”
Then I carry his niece—my wife—out into the cold morning before anyone in that church can remember how to stop me.