Chapter 13 Inessa
INESSA
Iwake to an empty compound.
The absence of Yuri's presence feels different—not the relief I expect, but more like unease.
The guards are still at their posts, but their usual tension has shifted.
They don't seem as controlled now, and it frightens me.
I try to tell myself Yuri would slaughter them if they even looked at me, but that self-reassurance doesn't help.
Rosa finds me in the dining room, picking at breakfast I don't want.
"He'll be back soon," she says, refilling my coffee cup, though I've barely touched it.
"I didn't ask."
"You didn't have to."
She settles into the chair across from me with kind eyes studying my face.
"You have the look of someone who worries about him."
I scoff and shake my head, and it turns into a genuine chuckle.
"I'm not worried. I'm trapped."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
Rosa has worked in this house longer than anyone—twenty years, according to Oleg.
She's seen Yuri's rise to power, witnessed the transformation from the man who married his first wife to the cold strategist who forced me to the altar.
She knows a little about him and I could probably learn things from her.
Which gets my wheels turning.
"What was she like, really?"
The question escapes before I can stop it. "His first wife."
Rosa's expression softens.
"Yelena was light. Pure light in a world that had gone dark for him."
She traces the grains on the oak table with her finger.
"They met at university, before any of this. Before he understood what his father expected him to become."
I set down my coffee cup, suddenly needing to hear more.
"She was studying literature. Wanted to be a teacher. Can you imagine? Our Yuri, falling for a woman who read poetry and believed in happy endings."
The nostalgic smile on her face makes me pause and wonder what she actually sees in that predator that I'm missing.
Because whatever the fuck it is, my body feels it when he gets close to me, even though my mind can't sense it.
The image doesn't fit the man I know.
"What happened to her?"
"Cancer. Took three years to kill her, and every day of it, she kept smiling, kept believing she'd get better. He hired the best doctors, flew her to specialists in Switzerland and Germany. Nothing worked."
Rosa's voice turns quiet.
"He stayed with her through every treatment, every sleepless night. When she died, he buried that part of himself with her. What you see now—the cold, the control—that's what was left after grief finished with him."
The revelation is almost crushing on my chest.
I don't want to think of Yuri as someone capable of tenderness, someone who once loved deeply enough to be destroyed by loss.
It complicates the hatred I need to maintain, muddies the clear lines between captor and prisoner.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you need to understand who you're fighting. And who you're saving."
"I'm not saving anyone."
Confused, I sit straighter and lean back in the chair.
"Aren't you?"
Rosa stands, collecting my untouched breakfast plate.
"He's been different since you came here. Angrier, yes, but also more alive. Grief is a kind of death, child. Sometimes, it takes another person's fury to resurrect what was buried."
She leaves me alone with thoughts I don't want and knowledge that changes nothing but colors everything.
I spend the afternoon exploring rooms I haven't seen—the library with its leather-bound volumes and chess set positioned for a game never finished, the conservatory where winter light filters through glass panels onto dying plants no one tends.
Evening falls early, bringing with it the sound of vehicles returning.
I watch from the dining room window as black cars pull through the gates.
Yuri emerges from the lead vehicle, and even from a distance I can see something's wrong.
He moves stiffly, favoring his right side.
His dark clothing looks darker in places that catch the porch light—stains that might be dirt but probably aren't.
I meet him in the foyer and notice immediately the blood on his hands and shirt.
For some reason, it makes my heart lurch.
"You're bleeding."
He pauses at the foot of the stairs, taking in my presence and almost walking past me.
"It's not mine."
"Your hands are cut," I tell him, gesturing to where his fingers are cut and swollen, evidence of violence that makes my stomach turn.
"Business meeting ran longer than expected."
"Let me see."
I reach for him, and he scowls.
I can see the words surprise him.
I step closer before he can refuse, taking his right hand in both of mine.
The cuts are deep but clean.
"This needs cleaning."
With a scowl, I drop his hand and point down the hallway.
"Rosa will—"
"Rosa's busy in the kitchen. I'm here now."
I lead him to his office, where he keeps a first aid kit in the bottom drawer of his desk.
He doesn't resist or pull away when I guide him to sit on the leather couch.
The silence as I clean his wounds starts as comfortable but grows tighter by the second.
What the actual fuck am I doing caring for him right now?
Rosa's words got to me somehow.
I'm being kind to a man who would otherwise destroy me.
His hands are larger than I remember, scarred from years of violence I'm only beginning to understand.
But they're steady as I work with the alcohol wipe and a gentle touch to clean them.
"The arms dealer."
He speaks quietly, watching my face.
"Kozlov. He's been targeting your businesses."
I pause in wiping gauze across his fingers to remove more blood.
"What?"
"Dominic made promises he couldn't keep. Kozlov wants me to honor agreements I didn't approve."
"So you refused."
"I refused."
"And he threatened me?"
My hands pause their work as our eyes meet.
Yuri's jaw tightens.
"He threatened what belongs to me."
The possessive language shifts something in my chest.
The same warmth I felt last week as he pinned me on his desk swirls again to the surface.
I swallow hard and pull my eyes from meeting his gaze and continue working.
"What happens now?" I ask, sincerely shaken by my own reactions to his nearness.
This man is ruining me and my own better judgment.
I'm acting like a helpless fucking waif, and he is getting off on it.
"Now he learns what threats cost in our world," Yuri says softly, and I believe him.
For reasons I don't understand, this man has taken to warring on my behalf, and I'm grateful.
Yes, it was his fault I got into this mess, but at least he's cleaning it up.
I finish bandaging his hands, acutely aware of his eyes on my face, the heat radiating from his body, the way the space between us seems to contract with each shared breath.
"You could've told me sooner. About why the warehouses burned…"
As I put the kit away and toss the soiled wipes and gauze into the trash, he sits straighter and loosens his tie.
"Would it have changed anything?"
"I might have understood that you weren't the one destroying my life."
"Just the one controlling it?" he challenges, and I wince at how horrible I've been to him.
He hasn't been that awful, really.
"Yes," I admit under a grunt and then shudder as I feel his hand on my waist. I turn slowly, and he reaches up with his bandaged hand and traces the line of my jaw.
"I won't let them hurt you, Inessa. Whatever it takes."
Something is changing inside me.
Whether or not Kozlov's attacks on my business are related to him, Yuri is the man protecting me now that Batya is gone.
I have to acknowledge that.
"I know," I whisper, and I don't shy away when his hand slides down my arm to my wrist.
He pulls me toward him and then down onto his lap.
I'm not sure why I allow him, but I do, and I don't even try to fight him.
My legs straddle his thighs, and I tense, bracing my palms against the back of the couch to hold myself steady.
His grip is firm at my waist but not crushing, and it leaves me more unsettled than if he’d simply forced me.
“You should rest,” I tell him, though the words come out soft.
I am by no means a soft woman, but even my coarse nature seems like silk compared to his violent one.
“Rest?”
His gaze drags over my face.
“When the only thing keeping me upright is you?”
My pulse stutters. “I’m not your crutch, Yuri.”
“You’re more than…”
His voice dips lower, and his finger draws an invisible line on my forearm.
“You’re the one thing Kozlov can’t have. That makes you mine.”
I stiffen as he bites my skin near my wrist.
“I never agreed to belong to you.”
His teeth send a jolt to my core that has me feeling like I may melt all over his poor slacks.
“You think agreement matters?”
His hands slide over my hips, and I feel the heat of it through my slacks.
“If you truly wanted freedom from me, you wouldn’t still be here.”
My laugh is brittle.
“I’m here because your guards won’t let me leave.”
“Then why are your hands shaking?”
His tone cuts through me, and before I can answer, his thumb brushes the side of my wrist.
The gesture feels almost gentle, which only confuses me more.
“I hate you,” I whisper, clinging to the one truth that feels safe.
But I'm beginning to wonder if it's still the truth.
Because as I say it, something inside me feels the dissonance of it.
“I know.”
He leans close, the rasp of his beard scraping my cheek.
“So show me.”
His mouth finds the curve of my throat, and my fingers clutch at his shoulders.
His lips glide across my skin unhurriedly until I shiver from the heat pooling lower in my core.
“Yuri,” I breathe, but it sounds nothing like a warning.
I'm coming undone, and all it took was one fucking conversation with his maid to make me think of him as some sentimental fool.
What is wrong with me?
“Say it again,” he murmurs against my neck.
“Say you hate me…”
My body betrays me as his hand slips between us, gliding over the front of my trousers.
I arch instinctively, my breath catching.