30. Damir
DAMIR
The photo comes while Sofia is still in the clinic. I look down at my phone and see the man from the club walking through Sergei Antonov’s side gate.
His face is swollen. His shirt is stained with blood. His right arm hangs wrong at his side. He’s barely steady on his feet, but he has enough strength left to go back to the man who sent him. It’s as I expected.
My men did exactly what I ordered. They beat him, threw him into the street, then followed from a distance.
Dead men don’t lead you anywhere.
This one led us to Sergei.
I close my hand around the phone. Sofia is sitting on the examination bed, watching me. Her blouse is unbuttoned at the collar, and the marks on her throat are clearer under the clinic light. Red pressure. Broken skin near the side. A faint line where his arm pressed in.
She thinks I missed it. But I rarely miss anything when it comes to her.
I saw it in the club. I saw it in the car. I saw it last night when my mouth moved too close to her throat and her whole body went still for half a second before she hid it.
The man didn’t just grab her. He tried to cut off her air.
He tried to kill her.
“What is it?” Sofia asks. Her voice is calm, but her eyes are not.
I put the phone away. “I need to step out.”
Her face closes immediately. That reaction hits harder than I expect.
Because she expected this. I touched her, took her to bed, promised a doctor and a conversation, then walked away the moment violence called.
Again.
“I’ll be back,” I say.
She looks away. “Sure.”
I want to stay. For one second, I almost do.
Then I think of the man’s arm around her throat, his face swollen in the photo, Sergei’s gate opening for him.
I leave before I give myself another chance to stop.
Mikhail is in the hall outside the clinic door. He turns as soon as he sees me. “What happened?”
I show him the photo.
His expression hardens. “I’ll come with you,” he says.
“No.”
“Damir—”
“You stay here.”
His eyes move toward the clinic door. “With her?”
“Yes.”
He understands then.
I don’t say that Sofia already thinks I abandoned her. I don’t say that if I take Mikhail too, she will wake up to another empty room and another explanation from someone else.
Mikhail watches me carefully. “And if she asks where you are?”
“Tell her I had to deal with Sergei.”
His jaw tightens. “That will not make her feel better.”
“I know.”
“You still want her told?”
“Yes.”
No more convenient lies. Not from me.
Mikhail nods once. “I’ll stay.”
“Nikolai comes with me.”
“I’ll call him.”
“From here.”
His mouth almost moves, but he doesn’t argue. He takes out his phone and makes the call while standing in front of the clinic door. I leave him there.
Nikolai meets me at the parking two minutes later. He already knows enough not to ask useless questions. He gets into the front passenger seat. I sit in the back. Two cars follow behind us.
“Sergei’s house?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “This fucking ends today.”
That old bastard has spent years keeping his hands clean by putting other men between himself and the damage. He raised Sofia the same way he runs his business: controlled, hidden, useful, never free enough to become a problem.
Then he sold her to Dmitri.
Maybe Sergei gave the order directly. Maybe he let Dmitri use his men. Maybe he’s only stupid enough to shelter a man who touched my wife.
All three are punishable.
We reach his house before noon. The gate opens because my lead car doesn’t slow. Sergei’s guards are armed, but none of them wants to make himself the first dead man of the day. They step back. My men enter behind me.
Sergei is waiting in the main hall. He has a glass in his hand, a dark suit on his back, and that polished expression men use when they still believe manners can delay consequences.
“Damir,” he says. “You should have called.”
I walk toward him. “Where is he?”
His brows lift. “Who?”
Nikolai places the photo on the table beside him.
Sergei looks down. One second too long. Then he looks back at me. “I can’t be expected to know every man who comes to my property.”
“You will know this one.”
“He is not mine.”
“He ran here.”
“Wounded men run to safe places.”
“He put his arm around Sofia’s throat.”
Sergei’s face changes. Barely. But I see it.
Not surprise. Calculation.
He knew. Maybe not every detail. Maybe not the club, the timing, the way the man failed. But he knew enough.
“Sofia has created a great deal of trouble recently,” Sergei says.
Nikolai’s hand moves toward his weapon. I lift one finger, and he stops.
Sergei notices and takes a slow drink, as if my restraint belongs to him.
“She ran from your house,” he continues. “She involved Arman Chekonov. She disappeared for three days. If she found danger while hiding from her own husband, perhaps you should ask why she was there at all.”
I move before he finishes. My hand closes around his throat, and I drive him back into the wall hard enough to crack the frame behind him. His glass falls and breaks across the floor.
Weapons rise around the hall. Mine rise faster.
Sergei’s men freeze. They are loyal, but not eager to die for him in his entrance hall.
I lean close. “Say one more thing about my wife.”
Sergei breathes hard through his nose. His face reddens under my hand.
I could end him here. It would be simple. One turn of my wrist, one command to Nikolai, and this house would belong to the dead before the hour changed.
Sergei knows it. For the first time since I entered, he looks afraid.
“Who gave the order?” I ask.
His mouth pulls tight. “You think killing me fixes this?”
“No. But I think killing you would be satisfying.”
His eyes flick toward Nikolai.
Wrong direction. Nikolai will not save him.
No one will.
“You sent him,” I say.
“I didn’t.”
“But you knew.”
His silence is short. Enough.
My grip tightens. He chokes once.
Sofia’s face cuts through my anger. The way she shut down when I said I had to leave. The way she looked away and accepted disappointment like it had arrived on schedule. The way she expected me to choose this before I chose her.
My hand loosens. I hate that it does.
I love her.
The thought is not dramatic. It’s not soft.
It’s a fact, and once it’s there, everything else makes sense.
The last three days. The city locked down.
The men waiting on orders. The way my house felt wrong without her in it.
The way I stopped myself at her throat last night and changed my hands before she had to ask.
I love Sofia.
That is why Sergei remains alive. Not because he deserves it. Because she deserves better than being left in a clinic while I come back covered in her uncle’s blood.
I release him. Sergei bends forward, coughing, one hand braced against the wall.
No one moves.
I step back. “You will give me the name.”
He straightens slowly. His collar is crushed. His face is still red. He looks older now.
“I told you—”
“Bullshit,” I bellow.
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I take your life apart while you are still alive to watch.”
His jaw tightens. I step closer again, and this time he can’t hide that he wants to step back.
“I’ll go through every man standing between you and me, not matter how many, until there are none left,” I tell him.
Sergei says nothing. He doesn’t need to.
He believes me.
I turn to leave.
Sergei’s voice is rough now, but steady. “I spent years raising her.”
I stop and turn to face him. Sergei straightens slowly, one hand still at his throat, his breathing not quite even. His collar is crushed, his face red where my hand was, but his eyes have sharpened again. He is afraid. He is also angry enough to forget some of that fear.
“She was a child when her parents died,” he says. “Do you remember that part, Damir, or have you reduced her whole life to the version that begins when you walked into a church and decided she belonged to you?”
Nikolai shifts near the door. I don’t move.
Sergei looks at the armed men in his hall, then back at me.
“Yes, I controlled her. Yes, I made decisions for her. Yes, I arranged the Sokolov marriage because that alliance mattered and because Sofia was old enough to be useful to this family. I will not stand here and pretend I raised her softly. I didn’t.
But don’t make me a villain because I’m not the only one in this room. ”
His eyes hold mine.
“She is my niece,” he says. “I would not have her killed.”
I study his face. He is too practiced to read easily. Sergei has lied at tables with less effort than other men need to tell the truth. He has sold threats as concern and control as duty for most of Sofia’s life. That doesn’t mean every word from his mouth is false.
It also doesn’t make him innocent.
“The man ran to your gate,” I say.
“Then someone wanted you to see him do it.”
“You expect me to believe that?” I ask.
“I expect you to think,” he snaps, and several weapons tighten in several hands.
Brave. Or cornered.
“There are cameras outside my property,” Sergei says.
“If I wanted to hide a man who failed to kill Sofia, I would not let him crawl through my side gate in daylight.” His voice is harder now, the fear pushed down under offense.
“I don’t know who gave you the information,” he continues, “but it’s not true. ”
I take one step toward him. He doesn’t retreat this time.
“Someone has been lying to you,” Sergei says. “Now it’s up to you who you want to believe.”
“The only liar here is you,” I say, through gritted teeth. This man is testing my patience.
He outstretches his arm. “Then kill me and be done with it.”
The gun cocks in my hand. I raise it slightly, and see his pupils. He’s full of shit.
“Not today,” I murmur before turning the safety off and walking away.
Nikolai runs out after him. “You could have done it, you know.”
I slow my step. I know I could have. I could have ended it, but Sofia’s face keeps coming back to me. I would ruin things between us beyond repair if that man died. I know that, he’s her only family left, after all.
“Not yet,” I tell Nikolai. “But don’t mention this to anyone.”
“Of course,” he says. “Where to now?”
I think of Sofia. “Home.”