18. Sofia #2
Irina’s gaze drifts to the empty chair at the head of the table. Damir’s chair. I hate that I have already assigned it to him in my mind.
“They met when they were very young,” she says. “Younger than you are now. Elena came from an old family, not as powerful as the Volodins, but respected. Beautiful, educated, very controlled. The kind of woman every mother wanted her son to marry.”
“Did he love her?”
Irina looks at me. “Yes.”
Something in my chest folds inward.
Stupid. Absurd. Completely unreasonable.
Elena was his wife. Of course he loved her. What did I think? That he had emerged from the sea at forty-six years old fully formed, silver at the temples, untouched by any woman before me?
Still. The word hurts.
He loved her.
He loved her so much.
Irina continues, perhaps because I don’t know what to say. “They were married for years. Not easy years. Nothing with Damir is easy. But he loved her. Everyone knew that. Even when they fought, even when things became…” She stops.
“Became what?”
“Complicated.”
I almost laugh. That word. Men with guns use it to describe betrayals, murders, marriages, and probably breakfast orders.
“How did he change?” I ask.
I regret the question immediately. It sounds too revealing. Too hungry.
But Irina answers. “After Elena died, he became quieter. Colder. Before, he was still dangerous, of course. They all were. But there was more of him in the room.” She searches for the right words.
“He laughed sometimes. Not often, but enough that people remembered it. Afterward, he built walls inside himself and then punished everyone for noticing them.”
That sounds like Damir. Too much like him.
I look down at my hands. At the Volodin ring tied to my finger. At the black thread. He gave me his father’s ring. He kissed my forehead after taking my virginity. He left before I woke. He ordered me to eat with a note, like emotional availability might kill him.
Maybe it would.
Maybe someone already died trying to get too close.
I feel awful. Not because I asked.
No, that’s a lie. Partly because I asked.
I wanted information. I pushed for it. I sent Anya digging. I questioned Grigori. I snooped in the study. I looked at Elena’s photograph like I had the right to inspect a dead woman’s face for evidence.
And now I have a piece of the story, and it feels less like power than theft.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
Irina’s expression softens. “You didn’t know.”
“No, but I wanted to.”
“That is different from cruelty.”
“Is it?”
“Sometimes.”
We sit in silence for a few moments. The sea moves beyond the windows. Then I remember something, and because I am me, my mouth opens before my better judgment catches it.
“Thank you, by the way.”
Irina looks confused. “For what?”
“The clothes.” I glance down at the gray dress. “Marina said some were available, and I assumed… I don’t know. That they were yours, maybe. Or someone sent for them. I couldn’t exactly bring my bridal trousseau with me while being carried out of a church by your husband’s cousin.”
Irina’s face changes.
Only a little. But enough.
My stomach drops before she speaks.
“They’re not mine,” she says.
I already know. The house has been telling me all morning, in little ways I didn’t want to understand.
“They belonged to Elena,” Irina says.
For one second, I can’t move. The gray wool against my skin becomes unbearably present. The collar at my throat. The sleeves at my wrists. The seams fitted too well because Marina must have adjusted something quickly or because our bodies are close enough in size to make the thought worse.
Elena’s dress.
Elena’s room, maybe.
Elena’s photograph.
Elena’s terrace.
Elena’s husband.
My coffee sits untouched in front of me.
I think of last night. The ivory silk. Damir’s eyes when he first saw me in the doorway. That brief, unreadable stillness I had thought was desire, or control, or some strange combination of both.
He recognized the dress. He knew. He said nothing.
Heat rises to my face, but it’s not desire this time.
It’s embarrassment.
No. Worse.
Something like shame.
I’m wearing a dead woman’s clothes in her husband’s house, sleeping in his bed, asking questions about her death over breakfast like curiosity makes me less monstrous than everyone else here.
“I didn’t know,” I say. The words come out thin.
Irina reaches across the table, then stops before touching my hand. “Of course you didn’t.”
I close my eyes briefly.
Of course he knew. And he still touched me last night. Still took the dress off me.
Still looked at me like—
No.
I don’t know how he looked at me. That’s the problem.
I know how his mouth feels. I know the weight of his body, the sound he makes when control slips, the way his hand closes around mine before pain can show on his face. I know he likes coffee black and notices everything and turns jokes into household orders.
But I don’t know what lives behind the locked doors.
Maybe Elena does.
Did.
My stomach turns. I push the plate away.
Irina watches me with quiet understanding that somehow makes it worse.
“I should change,” I say.
“You can,” she says softly. “But Sofia?”
I look at her.
“Elena is gone.”
The words are gentle. They don’t comfort me.
I look down at the dress again, at the ring tied to my hand, at all the things in this house that belonged to someone else before they were placed on me.
“I know,” I say.
But I don’t feel like I know anything.
A car sounds somewhere outside. Far below, near the front gates. Both of us turn toward the window. My heart betrays me immediately.
Damir?
Her expression shifts, not pity exactly, but close enough to make me hate myself a little.
“It may not be him,” she says.
“I know.” I stand anyway. Too quickly, my chair scraping against the floor.
For a second, I imagine him walking in again, blood on his sleeve, eyes cold and tired, carrying some new disaster with him. I imagine demanding why he let me wear Elena’s clothes. I imagine asking whether he loved her. Whether he killed her. Whether he thought of her when he touched me.
Then I imagine him giving me that blank, locked expression.
No. Not now.
I force myself to breathe.
“I’m going to change,” I say.
Irina nods.
I leave the morning room with my spine straight, because I have been trained to exit rooms while falling apart internally. Another one of my uncle’s useful little gifts. But halfway up the stairs, my hand curls into the fabric of the gray dress.
Elena’s dress.
My skin prickles beneath it.