16. Sofia #2
The doors open again behind me, and for one stupid second, I think Maksim has come back. Instead, one of Damir’s guards steps out.
“Madam,” he says.
I close my eyes briefly. “Sofia.”
He hesitates, then chooses cowardice and continues, “You should come inside.”
“Why?”
“The wind.”
I look at him. He looks back without expression.
“The wind,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“This house has the worst liars.”
His jaw tightens.
Before I can push further, noises rise from downstairs. Not from the terrace. From inside.
Voices. A door opening hard enough that even from here I hear it strike the wall. The sound of men entering with urgency they are trying and failing to hide.
My entire body goes cold.
Damir.
I move before the guard can say anything.
He steps in front of me. “Madam—”
“If you call me that one more time, I’m going to throw myself off this terrace and haunt you specifically.”
That seems to startle him.
Good.
I slip past him into the house.
He recovers quickly, following me down the corridor. “You can’t go downstairs.”
“Watch me.”
“Mr. Volodin gave instructions.”
“Mr. Volodin gives many instructions. It seems like a hobby.”
“Madam—”
“Sofia.”
I reach the staircase and look down. The foyer is full of men.
Not crowded, exactly, but active in a way that makes the house feel suddenly smaller.
Mikhail is there, face tense, jacket torn at one shoulder.
Nikolai stands near the door with blood on his sleeve.
Lev speaks into a phone. Two guards carry a man I don’t recognize toward a side hall, his arm hanging at a bad angle.
And then I see Damir. He stands near the center of the foyer, removing his coat with stiff, impatient movements while Marina hovers nearby with towels. Blood marks his shirt near one arm. There’s a cut on his cheek, another smear near his jaw, and his bandaged hand is red again.
For a second, I forget how to breathe.
He looks up, and our eyes meet. There’s something in his face I have not seen before.
Not fear. Not weakness. But the controlled mask is cracked around the edges. His eyes are colder than usual, his mouth harder, his body held too still, as if whatever happened out there has followed him inside and is still standing behind him with a knife.
Shaken. Damir Volodin looks shaken.
The realization is so wrong that I start down the stairs before I decide to.
“Sofia,” the guard behind me says sharply.
Damir’s gaze cuts to him, and the guard shuts up immediately. That would be funny under different circumstances.
I reach the bottom step. “What happened?”
“No,” Damir says.
Not an answer. An order.
I stop in front of him. “No?”
“You will go upstairs.”
I stare at him.
He’s bleeding.
He’s standing in front of me, bleeding, after disappearing all day and coming home with half the house moving like something has gone terribly wrong, and he thinks I’m going upstairs because he uses his voice.
“No,” I say.
Mikhail appears at his side. “Sofia, this is not—”
“I swear to God, if one more man tells me what is not my concern inside the house I was dragged into, I am going to start biting.”
Damir’s eyes drop to my mouth.
For one insane second, heat flickers through the fear. His expression changes too.
“You’re hurt,” I say to Damir.
“It’s nothing.”
I laugh. It comes out sharp and frightened. “Men only say that when something is bleeding.”
“It’s handled.”
“By whom? The towel committee?”
Marina, still holding the towels, looks like she wants to disappear into the floor.
Damir takes one step toward the side hall. “Mikhail.”
Mikhail moves to block me before Damir even finishes saying his name.
I turn on my heels, go around Nikolai instead, duck under the arm of a guard reaching too late, and follow Damir down the hall.
“Sofia,” Mikhail calls.
“I am wearing borrowed shoes and rage,” I say without looking back. “Don’t test me.”
Damir stops outside a room near the end of the corridor and turns. I nearly collide with him. He catches me by the waist with his good hand. For one second, all my anger scatters into useless sparks because his hand is warm and firm and exactly where it should not be if I want to think clearly.
Then I see the blood on his sleeve again, and my fear returns harder.
“You are impossible,” he says.
“You married me.”
“That argument will become tiresome.”
“Not to me.”
His eyes hold mine. Up close, I see the cut on his cheek is shallow but angry, a thin line with blood drying at the edge. His lower lip is split. There’s soot or dirt along his collar. His shirt is torn near his left arm, where fresh blood has soaked through the fabric in a dark, ugly patch.
I make a sound before I can stop it. Not quite a gasp. Not quite a hiss. Something furious and horrified.
His gaze sharpens. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like it matters.”
My chest tightens.
For a moment, neither of us speaks. The hall is full of distant voices, footsteps, the low murmur of men trying to organize the aftermath of whatever violence he has brought back with him. But right here, between us, everything is strangely quiet.
“It does,” I say. The words come out before I can protect them.
Damir goes still.
So do I.
Excellent. Wonderful. I have apparently chosen emotional honesty as today’s self-destruction method.
He opens the door behind him and pulls me inside.
The room is some kind of private medical room, or at least a room men like him use instead of hospitals when they can’t explain bullet wounds to normal doctors.
Cabinets line one wall. A leather examination chair sits beneath a harsh overhead lamp.
There are metal trays, bandages, antiseptic, and one exhausted-looking doctor already washing his hands near the sink.
The doctor glances up, sees me, and freezes.
Damir says something in Russian too fast for me to catch. The doctor nods and leaves immediately.
“Did you just dismiss medical help because I followed you?” I demand.
“I dismissed him because you were about to argue in front of him.”
“I can argue in front of anyone.”
“I know.”
“That was not a compliment.”
“It was not meant as one.”
He shuts the door. The click sounds very final.
We are alone.
My heartbeat changes. I hate that it does.
Damir starts unbuttoning his ruined shirt with one hand, movements precise despite the blood and exhaustion. I stand there for three seconds pretending I’m not watching the slow reveal of his chest.
This fails spectacularly.
He is built like violence given human form. Broad shoulders, hard chest, old scars crossing skin in pale lines. Some are clean, some rougher. One near his ribs looks like a knife wound. Another along his shoulder looks older, almost silver now.
My mouth goes dry.
He glances at me. “Are you staying to stare?”
“No. I’m staying to judge.”
“Of course.”
His fingers catch on one button because of the bandage around his palm.
I step forward automatically. “Move.”
His eyes narrow.
I ignore him and reach for the button. For once, he lets me.
That should feel like victory, but it doesn’t. It feels dangerous.
The fabric is warm from his body. My fingers brush his chest once by accident, and the contact snaps through me like static. His breathing changes, not visibly enough for most people, but I’m starting to understand the small shifts in him.
The monster is not made of stone.
How inconvenient.
I finish the last button and push the shirt open. Then I see the wound.
It’s not as terrible as my imagination made it. A graze along the outside of his upper arm, bloody and raw, ugly enough to make me wince but not deep enough to be fatal.
Still.
Blood is blood.
And his is on his skin, sliding slowly down the muscle of his arm.
I hiss under my breath. “You absolute idiot.”
His brow rises. “I was ambushed.”
“Did you try not being ambushed?”
“I will consider that next time.”
“Don’t make jokes while bleeding.”
“You make jokes constantly.”
“I’m not bleeding.”
His gaze drops briefly to my mouth. “Not currently.”
Heat rushes into my face.
I hate him. I hate him so much.
I reach for a towel, but he catches my wrist. “Sofia.”
“What?”
“This is not your concern.”
Something inside me snaps. Maybe because I have heard some version of that sentence all day. From guards. From Mikhail. From the house. From men who think marriage gives them rights but not explanations.
I step closer. “You made me your wife in front of half of the Bratva,” I say quietly. “You don’t get to bleed in front of me and then tell me it has nothing to do with me.”
His expression goes still.
The blood on his arm slides lower, following the curve of muscle toward his elbow. Without thinking too much, because thinking would ruin everything, I catch his wrist and lift his arm slightly.
Then I lean in.
His whole body stills.
I touch my mouth to the blood on his skin. Just once.
Light. Careful.
The taste is metallic and warm, salt and iron against my tongue. It should disgust me.
It does not.
Damir’s breath leaves him slowly. I look up at him through my lashes, my mouth still close to his arm. His eyes are dark now.
Very dark.
“Sofia,” he says.
This time, my name sounds like a warning to himself.
I lick the blood again, slower, following the red trail over hard skin, my tongue barely touching the edge of the wound but cleaning the smear beneath it. His hand opens and closes once at his side. A small sign. Almost nothing.
But from him, it feels like a confession.
“You’re making it worse,” he says.
“The wound?”
“No.”
My pulse jumps.
I look up. He’s watching my mouth.
The room grows hotter.
I should stop. The wound needs cleaning, bandaging, whatever else a responsible person would do in this extremely normal situation.
Instead, I press one more kiss to his arm, just below the blood.
His jaw tightens. I see it, and I feel powerful for exactly one second.
Then he moves. His good hand catches my waist and turns me, walking me backward until my hips hit the edge of the examination table. The impact is soft, padded leather against my body, but my breath still catches.