12. Sofia
SOFIA
The phone arrives with coffee.
That feels suspiciously generous.
Not the coffee. The coffee feels necessary for my continued survival and for the safety of everyone within conversational distance. But the phone is unexpected.
A young woman from the staff brings both on a silver tray, along with a small pot of cream.
She is maybe in her late thirties, dark-haired, neat, careful, and clearly trained to move through this house without making unnecessary sound.
She sets everything on the small table near the window of my bedroom and offers me a polite smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Mr. Volodin said you may call your friend.”
I stare at the phone on the tray. It’s sleek, black, and new enough to make me think it has either never belonged to anyone else or has been wiped clean of every trace of the last unfortunate woman who used it.
Bluebeard, please leave my brain.
“He said that?” I ask.
“Yes, madam.”
Madam.
I nearly choke on nothing. “I’m sorry, did you say madam?”
Her expression does not change. “Yes, madam.”
“No. Absolutely not. Madam is what you call women who own unpleasant little dogs and complain about hotel towels.”
A tiny flicker touches her mouth. There. Human.
“What should I call you?” she asks.
“Sofia.”
“I’m not sure Mr. Volodin would approve.”
“Mr. Volodin and I are going to have a long and terrible life together if he thinks I answer to madam.”
This time, she actually looks amused, though she hides it quickly by arranging the cream pot half an inch to the left. “My name is Marina,” she says.
“Thank God. A name. I was beginning to think everyone in this house came labeled by function.”
“Not everyone.”
“Just the terrifying men downstairs?”
“Mostly.”
I like her immediately.
This is dangerous because liking people in a cliffside murder castle feels like the first step toward making poor decisions.
Then again, I married Damir Volodin yesterday after inviting him to my wedding as an act of spite, so perhaps the poor decisions train has already left the station and crashed into several villages.
“I hope you like your coffee,” she says. “I made it just the way your husband wanted.”
My husband. What an odd thought.
Marina leaves after telling me breakfast is ready downstairs whenever I am dressed.
I consider eating in my room out of pure defiance. Then I taste the coffee, and I pause. It’s strong, hot, dark, and bitter in exactly the right way. There is cream on the side and no sugar.
I take another sip.
Damn him. He knew exactly what I needed without even asking about it.
I sit at the small table by the window, wearing a borrowed dark green dress that Marina brought from somewhere in the house.
It fits better than I expected, which is alarming for reasons I’m choosing not to examine before caffeine.
My hair is loose around my shoulders because I have not had the strength to do anything with it, and the massive Volodin ring is still tied to my finger with black thread.
I tried to ignore it when I woke up.
Impossible. It’s heavy enough to have opinions.
Every time I lift my cup, the ring shifts slightly, dark and enormous against my hand, the family crest catching the morning light. It looks ridiculous. It also looks like a warning, a promise, and a small piece of history I have no business wearing.
I should remove it.
I don’t.
Instead, I pick up the phone and call Anya.
She answers on the first ring. “Sofia?”
The sound of her voice nearly undoes me.
I grip the phone harder. “Hi.”
“Oh my God,” she breathes. “Oh my God. You’re alive.”
“For now.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I joke when traumatized.”
“You joke when awake.”
“Also true.”
There’s a rustle on her end, then a door closing, then her voice drops.
“Where are you? Are you safe? Are you hurt? Did he hurt you? Do you need me to call someone? I don’t know who I can call because every person we know is either afraid of him, paid by him, or currently trying to understand how your wedding became a hostage opera, but I will call someone. ”
I close my eyes. For a second, all the sharp edges inside me soften. “I’m okay.”
“You are not okay. You married Damir Volodin.”
“Yes, but apart from that.”
“Sofia.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know. Nobody knows. The whole city is losing its mind. Katya called me six times after we were sent home. Mila is convinced you have either been kidnapped into a sex dungeon or installed as queen of the underworld.”
“I’m in a bedroom.”
“That doesn’t eliminate either possibility.”
I glance toward the door. Closed.
I look at the corners of the room, then at the ceiling, as if I might spot a little black listening device blinking at me.
The house is too quiet, too controlled. I have no idea whether this phone is clean.
I have no idea whether anyone is listening.
I have no idea whether Damir is the type to allow privacy or the type to offer it as bait.
Probably both.
“I don’t know if anyone can hear this,” I say carefully.
Anya goes silent.
Then, very softly, “Understood.”
“That being said,” I continue, because caution and I have a complicated relationship, “I need you to find out something.”
“If you ask me for divorce lawyers, I’m going to kiss you.”
“Not yet.”
“Tragic. What do you need?”
I stare at the water beyond the window, black and restless beneath the cliff.
“His wife.”
Another silence. This one colder.
“Whose wife?” Anya asks, though we both know.
“Damir’s.”
“I didn’t know he had one.”
“Neither did I.” My fingers tighten around the phone.
My uncle’s voice comes back to me, low and certain. Do you know he killed his wife?
The words have been crawling through my head all night.
They followed me into sleep, into waking, into the strange room with the sea outside and the giant ring on my finger.
They follow me now, even as I drink coffee he somehow ordered correctly and wear a dress from his house that smells faintly of cedar and soap.
“My uncle said he killed her,” I say.
Anya inhales sharply.
“I don’t know if it’s true,” I add quickly. “I don’t know anything. That’s the problem. I have never heard this before.”
“I haven’t either,” she says. “And I’ve heard everything. Or at least enough to be extremely unwelcome at dinners.”
“Can you find out?”
“I can try, but Sofia, if this is old Volodin history, people will be careful.”
“Then ask someone who is both terrified and expensive.”
“That narrows it down to everyone we know.”
“Anya.”
“I’ll look.”
“Quietly.”
“Obviously.”
Anya sighs. “You are adapting disturbingly fast to being married to a crime lord.”
“I was raised by one.”
“Good point.”
A floorboard does not creak. There is no dramatic sound. No shadow falling beneath the door. No knock.
Still, I know.
The awareness comes first as a feeling at the back of my neck, then as warmth along my skin. My body recognizes him before my mind accepts it, which is both humiliating and inconvenient. I look toward the door.
It’s open.
Damir stands there. Black suit. White shirt. No tie. Bandaged hand at his side. Silver at his temples. That calm, unreadable face that makes every room feel like it has been forced to behave.
My heart stutters.
I have no idea how long he has been standing there.
Worse, I have no idea how much he heard.
Anya is still speaking in my ear. “Sofia? Are you there?”
I keep my eyes on Damir. “I have to go.”
“Is he there?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let him murder you before lunch.”
“I’ll put it on my schedule.”
“Sofia—”
I cut the call. Then I place the phone on the table with exaggerated care, because if I do anything too quickly, I may reveal that my pulse has decided to start sprinting.
Damir’s gaze moves from the phone to my face.
Then to my left hand. The ring.
Still there.
“Good morning,” he says.
I stare at him. “Absolutely not.”
His brow lifts slightly. “No?”
“No. You don’t get to stand in doorways like a gothic tax collector and wish me good morning after yesterday.”
“I didn’t know gothic tax collectors were a category.”
“They are now. You are their king.”
His mouth threatens that almost-smile again. Infuriating man.
“You slept?” he asks.
“No.”
“You ate?”
“No.”
“You drank coffee.”
“Yes. I’m not a barbarian.”
“The coffee was acceptable?”
I narrow my eyes. “Did you come here to check on my beverage satisfaction?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should. I am very invested in domestic peace.”
I look around the room, then back at him. “You shot my fiancé in a church.”
“Former fiancé.”
“You shot my former fiancé in a church.”
“He insulted my wife.”
My stomach does something stupid. I take another sip of coffee to punish it.
“Your wife was doing fine insulting him herself.”
“Yes,” Damir says. “I noticed.”
For some reason, that annoys me more than it should.
“You notice too much,” I tell him.
“Not possible.”
“Deeply possible. You are basically a surveillance state with cheekbones.”
This time, he does smile. Devastating.
I hate him immediately.
He steps into the room without asking permission, which I suppose is one of the many rights a man assumes when he owns both the house and the armed men outside it.
He stops near the table, close enough that I catch the faint scent of soap, smoke, and expensive fabric.
No cologne this morning, or if there is, it’s subtle enough to feel accidental.
Nothing about Damir Volodin is accidental.
“You asked for Anya,” he says.
“You allowed it.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because you asked.”
I laugh once. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend this is simple. You don’t strike me as a man who does things because people ask nicely.”
“You didn’t ask nicely.”
“Exactly.”
His eyes move over my face, unreadable and far too attentive. “I’m not trying to cut you off from the people you love.”
“Really?” I say, ignoring the little flip in my stomach when he said it. “Then may I call my uncle?”
“You don’t love him,” he says matter-of-factly.
I look away first.
Mistake.
The window gives me the sea, and the sea gives me nowhere to hide.
“I wanted proof she was alive,” I say.
“She is.”