10. Sofia #2
“I’m sorry,” I say. The words feel too small.
They always do.
Damir’s gaze shifts to me. “Don’t be. You didn’t light the match.”
My stomach tightens.
There’s more in that sentence. A lot more.
“Who did?” I ask.
His eyes hold mine. Then he looks away. “That depends who tells the story.”
My uncle’s warning returns again.
He killed his wife.
Damir begins walking again, and this time I follow more quietly.
“After that,” he says, “there was little left. The house. Some money. Enemies waiting to see whether a burned family could still bite.” His voice remains calm, but the calm itself feels like scar tissue. “I rebuilt from ashes because there was no one else to do it.”
I believe him. And that frightens me more than if I didn’t.
At the end of the hall, a set of double doors opens before we reach it, and two men step out. They are not guards. At least, not only guards.
The first is tall and broad, with sandy-brown hair, a crooked nose, and the relaxed posture of a man who has probably broken bones and considered it exercise. The second is leaner, dark-haired, with sharp eyes and a mouth that looks like it knows too many jokes and tells too few of them.
Both look at me. Then at Damir. Then at my dress.
The sandy-haired one grins. “Well,” he says. “You brought a wife home.”
Damir’s expression doesn’t change. “Careful, Grigori.”
The man’s grin widens. “I said wife. Very respectful.”
The darker one sighs. “You said it like you were announcing a stray cat.”
I blink.
Damir gestures with mild impatience. “My cousins. Grigori Volodin and Kirill Volodin.”
Grigori gives me a small bow that is almost polite until the grin ruins it. “Welcome to the family, Sofia.”
Kirill inclines his head. “Ignore him. Everyone tries.”
“I’m standing right here,” Grigori says.
“Yes,” Kirill replies. “That’s usually the problem.”
For some reason, that makes me laugh.
Only once. Small and surprised.
All three men look at me, Damir longest of all.
I immediately stop. “Sorry. I have had a strange morning.”
Grigori glances at the blood on Damir’s sleeve, the ruined hem of my wedding dress, the missing shoe, and my crooked veil. “So we heard.”
Mikhail enters behind us, followed by three other men. They arrange themselves naturally, not like servants, not like guests, but like pieces of a machine that has worked together for years.
Damir introduces them without ceremony. “Mikhail Lebedev, my second. You met him briefly.”
“I was being kidnapped at the time,” I say. “My manners suffered.”
Mikhail’s mouth twitches. “Understandable.”
“Nikolai Baranov,” Damir continues, nodding toward a broad man with close-cropped dark hair and a scar along his jaw. “Security.”
Nikolai inclines his head.
“Lev Orlov. Operations.”
Lev is younger than the others, maybe early thirties, with cold blue eyes and a face that gives away absolutely nothing.
“And Anton Sokol,” Damir adds.
Anton is the man who was shot in the church. His arm is bandaged now, his face pale but alert.
My guilt flickers. “You were hurt,” I say.
Anton looks surprised that I’m speaking to him. “It’s only a graze.”
“That’s what men say when they want women to stop asking questions.”
Grigori laughs.
Anton looks briefly helpless.
Damir watches me with an expression I can’t read. Then he says, “Enough. We will speak downstairs later.”
“Downstairs?” I ask.
Damir turns toward the staircase. “Come.”
“I would love to stop hearing that word.”
“You prefer being carried?”
My mouth shuts.
Grigori coughs into his fist.
Kirill looks at the ceiling like he is praying for strength.
I gather the front of my dress and follow Damir up the stairs, mostly because I have no idea where the exits are and because walking voluntarily feels better than being hauled over his shoulder like a morally complicated sack of flour.
The upstairs corridor is wide and dim, lined with more portraits and tall windows facing the sea.
The waves crash below, white against black rock.
It’s beautiful in a way that makes running feel impossible.
Where would I go? Down the cliff? Into the water?
Through a house full of armed men who all seem deeply loyal to the husband I acquired during a firefight?
My life has become very inconvenient.
Damir opens a door at the end of the hall. A bedroom.
My entire body goes alert.
It’s enormous, of course. Dark wood floors. A fireplace. A bed large enough to host a diplomatic conference. Windows overlooking the cliff. Heavy curtains. A sitting area near the fire. Nothing soft except the bed, and even that looks more expensive than inviting.
I stop at the threshold.
Damir continues inside like he doesn’t notice my hesitation.
He notices. He notices everything.
“This is your room,” he says.
I step in slowly. “Mine?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“For now.”
My head snaps toward him. “For now?”
He removes his cuff links with calm, devastating indifference. “You need clothes. Food. A doctor to look at your wrist.”
I look down. There are faint marks where Dmitri held me.
I close my fingers over them. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” The simple certainty in his voice makes my throat tighten.
I hate that.
I hate him a little for noticing.
He places the cuff links on the dresser. “Mikhail will arrange for your belongings to be collected from Sergei’s house.”
“My uncle will allow that?”
“No.”
I wait.
Damir looks at me. “Mikhail will arrange it anyway.”
“Of course.”
He walks toward a side door and opens it, revealing an enormous wardrobe. Mostly empty shelves. A few hanging garments covered in cloth. No dead wives, thankfully.
I really need to stop thinking about Bluebeard.
“You will be given staff,” he says. “A guard detail. A phone.”
“A phone?” I repeat. “How generous. Will I be allowed to call people, or is it decorative?”
His gaze cuts to me. “You may call your friend Anya.”
I blink. He knows about Anya.
“Have you had me investigated?”
“Yes.”
“At least pretend shame,” I say.
“No.”
“You and shame really are strangers.”
“We were not introduced.”
I hate that I almost smile.
He begins speaking again, calm and practical, as if we are discussing ordinary domestic matters rather than my abduction-marriage. “You will not leave the house without security. You will not speak to Sergei privately. You will not answer calls from Sokolov. You will not—”
“Are you making husband rules already?”
“Yes.”
“Should I be taking notes?”
“If it helps you obey.”
I stare at him. He looks back. The audacity of this man is large enough to require permits.
“I have spent all day being passed from one controlling man to another,” I say. “If your grand plan is to become Dmitri with better cheekbones and more murder rumors, you are going to be disappointed.”
His eyes narrow. Then, very slowly, his gaze drops to my mouth.
“To be clear,” he says, “I don’t plan to be anything like Dmitri Sokolov.”
The air changes. I feel it immediately. Heat, low and unwanted, gathers in my stomach.
“Good,” I say, but my voice is not as steady as I would like.
Damir steps closer. Not touching me, but somehow worse. “There is also the matter of the consummation.”
I stop breathing. “The what now?”
“Consummation,” he repeats calmly. As if he has said tea service.
I lift one hand. “Absolutely not.”
His brow rises.
“No,” I say again, waving my hand between us like I can physically sweep the word out of the room. “No, no, no. We are not doing medieval paperwork sex.”
For half a second, he only looks at me.
Then he says, “Medieval paperwork sex.”
“Yes. That. Whatever legal barbarian nonsense you are about to suggest, cancel it.”
“I didn’t suggest anything yet.”
“You said consummation. That is never followed by something reasonable.”
The left side of his lip lifts slightly.
I point at him. “Don’t almost-smile at me. This is serious.”
“I am serious.”
“You are impossible.”
“You married me.”
“Under gunfire. My judgment was compromised.”
“Was it?”
My face heats. Because he’s looking at my neck now. At the bite. At the place his mouth marked me in a corridor while I held on to him like the world was ending, which, to be fair, it kind of was.
I clear my throat. “Also, I don’t even have a ring.”
The demand is ridiculous. We were married in a church; a ring is inconsequential. But I latch onto the thought because panic is making my brain search for any available exit.