18. Sofia
SOFIA
When I wake up, Damir is gone.
For one stupid second, I don’t understand that.
I wake slowly, the room pale with morning light, the sea throwing itself against the cliff somewhere beyond the windows. The sheets are tangled around my legs. My body feels heavy and strange in a way that makes my first breath catch before I fully remember why.
Then I move.
My thighs ache. My breasts feel tender. There’s a delicious soreness low in my body, one that makes heat rush into my face even though there’s no one here to see it. I stare up at the ceiling, perfectly still, while last night returns in pieces.
Damir in the doorway.
His voice saying, I promised you.
His hands under the silk. His mouth on my breast. His body over mine, inside mine, patient and brutal and careful in ways that should not belong to the same man.
I close my eyes. The moment I do, I feel it again. The weight of him between my thighs. The stretch of him. His mouth against my neck. His voice near my ear, low and rough, calling me wife like it’s not a legal status but a secret he has bitten into my skin.
My body responds immediately. Shamelessly. Heat gathers low in my stomach, sliding into a slow, molten ache between my thighs. I press my knees together beneath the sheets and make a small sound of pure outrage.
Apparently my body has converted to the Volodin religion overnight.
I turn my face into the pillow and groan. This is humiliating.
This is also, unfortunately, extremely nice.
I lie there for another minute, breathing in the faint scent of him on the sheets, before I force myself to sit up.
The blanket slips down to my waist. My hair is a disaster over one shoulder.
The old ivory dress is ruined somewhere near the foot of the bed, half-torn, wrinkled, and abandoned like evidence of a crime I participated in enthusiastically and will still be blaming entirely on him for legal reasons.
The room is quiet. Too quiet.
No sound from the bathroom. No movement near the wardrobe. No dark suit jacket thrown over a chair. No husband standing near the window brooding at the sea like a villain in need of weather.
He is gone.
The realization feels strange.
Not painful. Not exactly. Just… strange.
I should be relieved. I have spent the last several days being carried, cornered, ordered, married, kissed, questioned, watched, and touched by Damir Volodin. A sensible woman would wake up alone and thank every saint still willing to take her calls.
Instead, I stare at the empty side of the bed and feel oddly hollow.
Then I become irritated because apparently one night of sex has turned me into a tragic widow with access to excellent pillows.
“No,” I tell the room.
The room offers no argument.
I get out of bed carefully, wincing a little because my body has opinions. There’s a tray on the small table near the window: water, a folded note, and coffee in a silver pot that is somehow still warm.
The note is short.
Eat.
That’s all. No signature. No good morning. No apology for leaving. No explanation. Just one arrogant little command written in black ink.
I stare at it. Then I pick up the coffee pot.
“I’m only obeying because caffeine is bigger than pride,” I mutter.
By the time I bathe and dress, I feel almost human.
Marina has left another dress for me, soft gray wool this time, high-necked and elegant, with sleeves that cover my wrists.
I eye it suspiciously before putting it on, mostly because everything in this house seems to come with a history and probably a curse.
The ring is still tied to my finger with black thread.
I think about removing it. Briefly.
Very briefly.
Then I imagine Damir noticing its absence, looking at me with that calm, infuriating patience, and saying something like, Did it become too heavy, wife?
So I leave it on.
Not because of him. Because I enjoy not having arguments before breakfast.
This is a lie, obviously. I enjoy arguments immensely. I just don’t know what this particular argument would cost.
Downstairs, breakfast is set in the morning room overlooking the sea. The table is too long for one person and too formal for eggs, but the coffee is perfect again, so I decide to forgive the furniture.
Damir is not there. I knew he wouldn’t be.
Still, I look.
Marina appears with toast and fruit. “Good morning, Sofia.”
I glance at her, pleased despite myself that she doesn’t call me madam. “Good morning. Has my husband been abducted by his own brooding?”
Her mouth twitches. “Mr. Volodin left early. He had business.”
“Everyone in this house has business. It’s like a disease.”
“He asked that you eat.”
I lift the note from beside my cup. “Yes, I received the royal decree.”
“He also asked that you rest today.”
I take a sip of coffee. “That sounds fake.”
“It does?”
“Damir Volodin doesn’t ask. He orders and then stands there looking expensive until reality obeys.”
Marina very wisely busies herself with the cream pot.
I look back at the empty chair.
Fine. That’s fine.
We’re not a normal married couple. Normal married couples don’t begin with church shootings, improvised vows, and sex in a dead woman’s dress. Normal married couples probably have cheerful breakfast conversation and matching towels.
Damir and I have blood, secrets, and a cliff.
So yes. Fine.
I’m buttering toast with unnecessary violence when someone appears in the doorway. At first, I think it’s Anya, which is impossible but briefly wonderful.
It’s not.
It’s Grigori’s wife.
She stands at the entrance of the morning room in a pale blue dress, her blond hair pinned back again, her posture careful. Today, without panic sharpening her face, she looks younger than she did on the terrace. Still composed. Still cool. But tired around the eyes in a way I recognize.
I set down the knife.
“Good morning,” she says. Her voice is formal.
Mine becomes formal in response because I was raised in a house where politeness often came armed. “Good morning.”
For a moment, neither of us moves.
Then she steps inside. “May I?”
I gesture to the chair across from me. “Of course.”
She sits.
Marina quietly withdraws, because Marina is a genius and understands when a room is about to become uncomfortable.
The woman folds her hands in her lap.
I wait.
I have learned that silence makes people speak. My uncle taught me that, though he would probably be horrified to see me using any of his lessons without permission.
“I owe you an apology,” she says.
I was not expecting that.
I blink. “You do?”
“For yesterday. On the terrace. I was rude.”
“You were worried about your son.”
“I was.” Her gaze drops briefly to the ring on my finger, then returns to my face. “But that does not excuse it.”
I study her more carefully.
She’s still guarded. Not warm exactly. But the coldness from yesterday has thawed enough to show something human beneath.
“I’m sorry too,” I say. “I didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“He likes to escape.”
“He has military aspirations.”
Her mouth softens. “Unfortunately.”
“I like him.”
“That was obvious.” She pauses. “He likes you too.”
“Excellent. I have secured the approval of the most reasonable Volodin.”
This time, she almost smiles.
Definitely related by marriage, then. Apparently nobody in this family believes in full smiles. They ration them like wartime sugar.
“I’m Irina,” she says. “Irina Volodina. Grigori’s wife.”
“Sofia,” I say, then glance at my own hand. “Also Volodina now, apparently. Against all early predictions.”
Irina’s eyes flicker.
Not amusement. Something more complicated.
“Yes,” she says. “I suppose you are.”
The air shifts slightly. There it is again. The strange awareness everyone in this house carries around me. Curiosity, suspicion, pity, calculation. Sometimes all of them at once.
I reach for my coffee. “You don’t have to like me,” I say. Her brows lift. “I know I arrived in a dramatic way.”
“That is one word for it.”
“I had limited luggage and no time to prepare a better entrance.”
This time, she does smile, small but real. Then it fades. “I was frightened yesterday,” she says. “When I saw Maksim on the terrace.”
“He was not close to the edge.”
“I know.”
Her fingers tighten in her lap. “But that terrace…” She stops, then looks toward the windows, where the sea glints darkly beyond the glass. “It has history.”
My hand stills around my cup. A cold feeling begins at the base of my spine.
“What kind of history?”
Irina looks back at me. For a second, I think she will not answer. The Volodin talent for shutting doors is apparently hereditary, marital, and possibly airborne.
Then she says, “Elena fell from there.”
The room goes quiet. Even the sea seems farther away.
“Elena,” I repeat.
Damir’s wife. The woman in the photograph.
The woman whose dress I wore last night.
The woman my uncle said Damir killed.
Irina’s face closes slightly, but she doesn’t stop. “Yes.”
I set my cup down carefully. “She fell?”
“From the terrace.”
Simple words can hide terrible things.
“Was it an accident?” I ask.
Irina looks away. That’s answer enough, though not enough at all.
“I don’t know,” she says finally. “Nobody truly knows except the people who were there, and one of them is dead.”
My mouth goes dry. “And Damir?”
“He doesn’t talk about her, and it was a long time ago. But from what I’ve heard, he was in the house when it happened.”
That’s why Sergei said it the way he did. Not merely gossip. Not some distant rumor about a dead wife found in a locked room. Damir was there when Elena fell.
Or jumped.
Or was pushed.
My stomach twists.
Irina sees my face and speaks quickly, softer now. “I’m not saying he killed her.”
“But people say it.”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
She hesitates. That matters too.
“I believe,” she says carefully, “that grief turns people into strangers. And Damir was never easy to know, even before.”
“Before Elena died?”
“Before everything.”
I look at her. “Tell me.”
Her mouth tightens. “You asked,” she says.
“I know.”
“It doesn’t mean you will like hearing it.”
“I rarely like hearing anything in this house.”