Chapter 20
Lidiya
“No.”
The word lands between us like a slammed door.
Not because I’m brave. Not because I’m righteous. Because if I say yes, if I let him put a ring on my finger like a seal, then every horrible thing that’s happened since last night becomes logical. It becomes fair in the way predators like to pretend things are fair.
You took his help, so you owe him.
You took his name, so you belong to him.
I won’t give the world that story about me. I won’t give him that story.
Damien doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t argue. He just stares at me with that infuriating stillness, like he’s learned that moving too fast makes me bolt.
It makes my skin crawl that he’s right.
“You don’t understand what you’re refusing,” he says quietly.
“I understand perfectly.” My voice shakes, and I hate it, so I sharpen it. “You’re offering me safety in exchange for ownership. That’s a transaction. I’m not a transaction.”
His eyes flicker with irritation, then respect. It shouldn’t matter. It does.
“It’s not ownership,” he says.
“It is,” I snap. “You can call it a shield, or a flag, or insurance, or whatever charmingly sociopathic word you want. It’s still a collar.”
Silence. Heavy. The kind of silence that comes after gunshots, after shouting, after you’ve learned your life can change because a stranger in a designer suit raised a paddle.
My heart is still doing that stupid thing where it thinks he’s beautiful. Tall and immaculately put together, like violence in a tailored suit. I want to spit in my own face for it.
I drag in a breath and force myself to think like I’m back behind the counter at the café, tallying up my tips. Numbers. Facts. What I can control.
“Here’s what you don’t get,” I say, and I hate that my eyes sting. “If I marry you, I don’t just become protected. I become yours, and I know what you do with things that are yours. You sell them. You exchange them when it suits you.”
Damien’s jaw ticks. For the first time since he walked into this room, the mask slips enough to show something underneath it.
“Ask me if I will ever do that to you,” he says.
The audacity of it makes me laugh out loud—thin, ugly. “Oh, sure. Let me just interview the Bratva heir about his intentions like this is a job at Tesco.”
“I’m not the heir,” he says, automatically, like it matters.
“It doesn’t matter,” I fire back. “You are still an heir to a billion-pound fortune built on blood and illegal activities. You are still a Voronov. You are still the man who made my life smaller every week with a smile on his face.”
His gaze holds mine, unblinking. “I never smiled.”
“You did.” I swallow hard. “Maybe not with your mouth. But you did.”
My hands are cold. My legs are numb from sitting on the floor, but standing feels worse. Standing feels like giving him height again, and I can’t handle height right now. Not from him. Not from anyone.
I hug my knees tighter, like I can keep myself inside my own body by force.
“Do you know what it feels like,” I say, quieter, “to be watched by someone who has all the power and none of the consequence? To have a man come into your work every Friday and remind you that you will never be free as long as he remembers your name?”
Something moves in his face. Not sympathy. Something darker.
“I remember your name,” he says.
My spine betrays me first, a cold tremor from neck to tailbone. Then comes the warmth, pooling where it has no right to be, a match struck in the dark while every rational thought flashes red warning lights.
I press my fingernails into my palm until it hurts. Pain is clean. Pain is honest.
“I am not marrying you,” I say again. “Not for protection. Not for money. Not because you’re afraid someone else will take me.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “You think this is about my fear.”
“I think it’s about your control. You don’t like variables. You don’t like not knowing where something is. You want to put a ring on me because it turns me into a fixed point on your map.”
For a second, he looks like he might deny it. Then—impossibly—he doesn’t.
He exhales slowly, like he’s letting go of something he’s been gripping too hard.
“There are other ways,” he says.
I blink. “What?”
“There are other ways to protect you,” he repeats, and his voice is flat now, stripped of the steel that made it sound like marriage was the only option. “This was the fastest, cleanest, most public.”
The admission hits me harder than any threat. Fastest. Cleanest. Most Public. Not only. A choice. His choice.
My anger stutters, losing rhythm.
“So… what?” I say, suspicious because it is the only thing that has ever kept me alive. “You just—what—accept my no and walk away?”
Damien’s mouth tightens. “No.”
Of course not.
“You stay,” he says. “You don’t go back to Brixton.
Not to a lease with your name on it and a door lock made of hope.
” His gaze drops to my hands, then back to my face, like he’s cataloguing every tell.
“You keep your phone. You can call whoever you need to call. You can tell a friend you’re alive. ”
My throat closes. The idea of telling someone—anyone—that I’m alive feels like oxygen. It also feels like a trap, because who would I call? My landlord? My boss? Alisha?
“And the monitoring?” I ask, because if I don’t ask the ugly questions, the ugly answers will ambush me later.
His eyes sharpen, like he didn’t expect me to go there.
“I’ll have Kirill check for active threats,” he says. “Not read your messages for entertainment.”
“Kirill,” I repeat. “Is that your man who does clean up and orders your food?”
A flicker of humour, there and gone. “Yes.”
It shouldn’t make my stomach flip. It does.
My body betrays me, a compass needle trembling towards his gravity while my mind screams that men like him burn what they attract.
“And what do you get?” I ask, because nothing in my life has ever been free. “If I’m not marrying you, what’s the price?”
Damien looks at me for a long moment.
“I get you alive,” he says.
The words are too simple. Too clean. Too close to something I don’t want to name.
I swallow. “That’s not an answer with context.”
“It is,” he says, and there’s a roughness in his voice now, like he’s forcing the sentence through teeth that want to keep it locked up. “It’s just not one you’re used to hearing.”
I want to call him a liar. I want to throw something at him. I want to stand up, walk out of this room, and prove I can still choose myself.
Then my mind supplies the sounds of last night. The blank efficiency of it. The way fear tasted like pennies in my mouth as I hid in the bathtub.
I am not safe in Brixton.
I am not safe anywhere that doesn’t come with consequences.
And whether I like it or not, Damien Voronov is consequence.
My survival instinct betrays my pride. The need to keep breathing turns me into someone who can compromise.
“I’m not your wife,” I say, each word deliberate. “Not now. Not as a deal. Not as a shield.”
Damien nods once, like he’s taking an order.
“You won’t propose again,” I add quickly, because if I don’t draw that line, it will be redrawn for me. “Don’t do that again.”
His gaze holds mine.
“I won’t,” he says. Then, after a beat that feels like a knife sliding in slow: “Not like that.”
The room goes very still.
Not like that.
Like what, then?
I don’t ask. I don’t give him the space to turn this into something softer, something more dangerous. Softness is how you get owned without realising it until the papers are signed.
I push my feet under me and stand, legs unsteady, pride doing most of the work.
“Fine,” I say, voice clipped because if I let emotion in, it will flood. “I’ll stay. For now. Under conditions.”
“Name them,” he says, immediately, rising as well.
My mouth opens, and for a second, I realise I’ve never been allowed conditions in my life. Not real ones. Not ones that mattered.
I force myself to take up space anyway.
“No touching me,” I say. “Not unless I say so.”
Damien’s eyes darken, but he nods.
“No locking me in,” I continue. “If I want a door closed, I close it.”
Another nod.
“No lies.” My voice cracks on it, and I hate that it does. “If there’s something I need to know to stay alive, you tell me. You don’t decide I’m too stupid or too soft.”
His jaw tightens. “Agreed.”
I nod, like that settles it. Like my conditions aren’t written on water.
“If you can protect me without marriage,” I say quietly, “why did you ask?”
Silence stretches. I expect him to dodge. To smirk. To make it a game.
When he speaks, his voice is lower.
“Because it would make everyone else afraid,” he says. “And because I don’t like the idea of you belonging to anyone who isn’t me. I take what I want, Lidiya. I always have, and no one has ever stopped me before.”
“Until now.”
“Don’t let that power go to your head.”
“Power,” I scoff, but the realisation is like a slap in the face. Power. He thinks I have power over him.
He doesn’t say anything else, just gives me that silence that makes me want to blurt out all of my secrets, even ones I don’t have. “What about my job?” I ask instead.
“What about it?”
“I need my job. I need the money.”
“Whoever wants you knows where you work, Lidiya. Do you really want to risk it?”
“I don’t have a choice. I still have a lease on my bedsit, I still have bills that will accrue while I’m sitting around here.”
“A lease on your bedsit,” he says as if he doesn’t really know what that is. “Is that the only reason?”
“It’s the main one, obviously. It’s my biggest bill.” Why am I explaining this to him?
He pulls out his phone and rudely makes a call while I’m still standing here in his t-shirt and nothing else.
“Proceed,” he says a moment later. “Rush it through. I don’t care about the cost.” He hangs up and pockets his phone. “You don’t need to worry about your rent anymore. You own the building.”
My jaw drops, but I don’t have time to process what he says before he turns on his heel and strides out, closing the guest room door quietly behind him.