Chapter 10
Lidiya
The food is obscenely good. I hate that it’s good.
I hate that every bite sends warmth radiating through my chest and into my limbs like someone has lit a fire inside a house that’s been cold for months.
I hate that he’s standing there with his vodka, not eating, just..
. observing me with those blue eyes that miss nothing.
I take another forkful and chew slowly, deliberately, as if pacing myself proves I’m in control. I’m not. My body has taken the wheel, and my pride is bound and gagged in the boot.
The ossobuco sits untouched to my right, and I can smell it—rich, deep, the kind of smell that belongs in a home where people love each other and cook Sunday dinners and don’t owe the Bratva money they’ll never pay off.
I finish the Thai and set the fork down.
My hand is steadier now. Fuel will do that.
“The other one,” he says.
“I’m full.”
“You’re lying.”
“And you’re insufferable.”
He pushes the plate closer. My stomach betrays me with a sound that could be heard in the next postcode.
His mouth twitches. He has the decency not to comment.
I pull the plate towards me and pick up the fork again. The first bite of the veal is so tender it practically dissolves, and I have to press my lips together to stop the sound that wants to escape. I eat like no one is watching, even though someone very much is.
I don’t look up. If I look up, I’ll see that expression again—the one that’s not quite smug, not quite soft, but something in between that I don’t have a name for and don’t want to learn.
The plate empties faster than I’d like to admit. I set the fork down with a clink that sounds final.
“Better?” he asks.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t act like feeding me makes you a good person.”
He tilts his head, considering. “I’m not a good person. I never claimed to be. But you needed to eat, and I had food. The maths isn’t complicated.”
“The maths,” I repeat, and something bitter curls in my throat. “Right. Like the maths of a hundred pounds a week that I scrape together while you spend a hundred million like it’s pocket change. That maths?”
He doesn’t flinch. He takes another sip of vodka with the casual ease of a man who has never once worried about where his next meal is coming from. The crystal catches the light, and I want to smash it out of his hand.
“Those are two different conversations,” he says.
“They’re the same conversation. You just don’t like the way it sounds when you put them next to each other.”
Something shifts behind his eyes. Not guilt, but a flicker of acknowledgement that he quickly buries under another sip.
“Your father borrowed money,” he says. “He knew the terms. He accepted them. That debt transferred to you because that’s how it works. I didn’t design the system.”
“But you benefit from it.”
“I benefit from a lot of things. Doesn’t mean I built them all.”
“That’s a convenient philosophy for someone standing on top of the pile.”
He sets the glass down. The clink is precise, controlled, like everything he does. “Do you want me to feel sorry for you?”
“I want you to feel something.”
The words leave my mouth before I can catch them, and they hang in the air between us like smoke.
I didn’t mean them the way they sounded.
Or maybe I did. Maybe somewhere underneath the rage and the exhaustion and the residual taste of basil, I’m furious not just at what he’s done but at how effortlessly he does it. Like none of this touches him.
But it doesn’t. He holds my gaze. For a long moment, neither of us moves.
“I don’t even know your name,” I say eventually. “Your first name.”
“Damien,” he says. No hesitation. No theatrical pause. Just the name, offered like a card laid on the table. “Damien Voronov.”
Damien. It doesn’t suit the monster I’ve built in my head. It’s too human. Too sexy. I wanted something harsher, something I could spit like a curse. Instead, it sits on my tongue with an uncomfortable familiarity, like a word I’ve always known but never had reason to say.
“Damien,” I repeat, testing it. It comes out flat, deliberately stripped of anything he might mistake for warmth.
“Well, Damien. You’ve fed me. You’ve shown me your marble kitchen, your screaming painting, and your car that costs more than I’ll earn in several lifetimes.
The clock is ticking on your two hours. What exactly do you want from me? ”
He picks up the glass again but doesn’t drink. Just holds it, turning it slowly in his fingers the same way he turned the knuckleduster earlier. The man has a thing for objects in his hands. Tactile. Restless beneath the surface, even when the surface is stone.
“I want to know why someone is willing to spend eighty million pounds to acquire you.”
“Acquire.” The word tastes like ash. “Not meet. Not dine with. Acquire.”
“I chose the word deliberately.”
“I noticed. And I’ve already told you—I don’t know. I’m nobody. I have nothing. No secrets. No hidden fortune. No mysterious connections. The most exciting thing about my life is that I once found a fiver in a coat pocket I forgot about.”
“And yet a man with significant resources disagrees.”
“Then he’s wrong. Or insane. Or both.”
He studies me with an intensity that makes me want to squirm off the barstool. It’s not the predatory assessment from the café—that was transactional, cold, a man doing a job. This is different. This is a man trying to solve a puzzle and realising the pieces don’t fit the picture on the box.
“I doubt he is wrong. That’s a lot of money to be wrong about someone.”
“Why did you outbid him?”
His eyes tighten, and he remains silent for a moment.
“Because I could,” he says finally. But the answer is too quick, too smooth, like a card trick designed to distract from what’s happening underneath.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
“Bullshit.” I push the empty plate away and fold my arms. “You don’t spend a hundred million pounds because you can. You spend it because you want something. So what is it? What do you actually want from me?”
He sets the glass down and closes the distance between us in two strides.
Not fast. Deliberate. The kind of movement that gives you just enough time to register it, but not enough to react.
He stops close enough that I can smell his cologne—something dark and warm that has no business smelling that good on a man I despise—and places both hands on the granite, either side of me, caging me on the barstool without touching me.
My breath catches.
“What I want,” he says, voice low, “is to know why your name was worth a threat at my front gate. And until I do, you stay alive. That’s non-negotiable.”
The kitchen is too warm. His proximity is affecting my oxygen intake in ways I refuse to acknowledge. His eyes are impossibly blue this close. They’re not the cold blue of the collector who sat in my café, but something deeper. Darker. Like the centre of a flame, where the heat is most dangerous.
“Keep me alive,” I repeat, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “That implies someone wants me dead.”
“Not dead. Owned. There’s a difference, and the second one is worse.”
My stomach turns, and it has nothing to do with the food. “You don’t know that.”
“I know that a man who sends a fake bomb to a Voronov’s front door isn’t playing games.
I know that a man who bids eighty million pounds and then walks out when he loses isn’t finished.
He’s regrouping.” His jaw tightens. “And I know that you, standing alone on that stage tonight, had no idea you were the centrepiece of something much bigger than a companion auction.”
“I’m not the centrepiece of anything. I’m a waitress who can’t afford toothpaste.”
“And that’s what makes you perfect. No one looks at you twice. No one protects you. No one would notice if you disappeared.”
The words land like a slap. Not because they’re cruel—because they’re true. Every single one of them. I could vanish tomorrow, and the only person who’d file a missing person’s report is my landlord, and only because he’d want the overdue rent.
I swallow hard. His arms are still bracketing me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body through that obscenely well-tailored suit. My heart is doing something erratic and stupid, and I need him to step back before my body starts making decisions my brain hasn’t approved.
“So what?” I say. “You’re my knight in shining Armani? You spent a hundred million pounds out of the goodness of your heart?”
“I don’t have goodness in my heart. I have strategy.”
“And I’m what? A chess piece?”
“You’re the piece everyone’s trying to take off the board. I’d rather understand why before someone succeeds.”
I press my palms flat against his chest and push.
He doesn’t budge. Not even a centimetre.
It’s like pushing a wall that happens to have a heartbeat that is steady, unhurried, infuriatingly calm beneath my hands.
The fabric of his shirt is soft. Expensive.
I can feel the heat of his skin through it, and beneath that, the hard plane of muscle.
“Step back,” I say.
He holds for one more second—long enough to make it clear that he’s choosing to move before he uncages me. But he doesn’t step back.