Chapter 9 Sage
SAGE
The air feels charged, as if the storm that raged through the night left its presence behind in every corner of the cabin.
Vega walks beside me without a sound, his steps silent on the thick carpet as Albert leads me toward the lounge.
Each footfall brings me closer to another confrontation with Luka, and my stomach twists with equal parts dread and fascination.
I half expect to find him waiting in another interrogation room, all steel and shadows, ready to dismantle whatever's left of my defenses.
Instead, when Albert opens the door, the glow of firelight spills into the hallway, warm and golden.
For the briefest moment, I forget to breathe.
The room isn't what I expect from a man like Luka Barinov.
It's beautiful, quiet, and strangely intimate.
Flames crackle inside a stone fireplace, spilling light across dark wood and leather furniture that looks expensive but lived in.
Shelves line the far wall, filled with books whose spines are stamped in gold Cyrillic lettering I can't read.
Everything smells faintly of smoke and pine with the ghost of whiskey lingering in the air.
Luka sits in the chair near the fire. His black hair draws the light, revealing streaks of brown I hadn't noticed before, as if the flames are determined to find something softer in him.
The suit jacket he wears fits perfectly, every line tailored to his broad shoulders and muscular frame, but the top button of his shirt is undone, exposing a hint of the tattoo that winds up his throat.
The sight shouldn't make me nervous, but it does.
Everything about him makes me anxious in ways I can't control.
“Sit,” he instructs, his voice low enough that it blends with the fire's soft hiss.
The command falls the way everything he utters does, absolute and leaving no space for refusal or negotiation.
Vega nudges my leg, urging me forward, his warm body brushing mine as if he knows I'm thinking about bolting back through that door.
I cross the room and lower myself onto the sofa opposite Luka.
The cushions are buttery leather that sighs under my weight, and I realize with a start that this might be the most comfortable surface I've touched since arriving here.
My pulse pounds so hard I can hear it echoing in my ears.
A tray sits on the low table between us, holding fruit, bread, a wedge of cheese, and a steaming mug that smells of rich coffee.
Beside it, a glass of water catches the firelight, refracting it into tiny stars across the ceiling.
The sight catches me off guard. It’s so ordinary, so human, that it almost feels wrong in this place built on control and unspoken threats.
“Eat,” Luka instructs, taking a slow sip from his own mug.
His tone leaves no room for protest. I should resist out of principle, but the reminder of how long it’s been since I last ate makes the scent of food impossible to ignore.
My stomach betrays me with a quiet rumble, and for a moment, the war between pride and hunger feels like one I’m destined to lose.
Vega settles at my feet with a contented sigh that suggests he's perfectly at home here.
I take a long sip of coffee, the warmth chasing away the hollow ache in my stomach, and reach for the cheese and fruit.
I eat too fast at first, hunger overruling pride, then slow when I realize it, embarrassment prickling at the back of my neck.
Luka watches in silence. His gaze feels like an invisible touch, never quite landing but never really leaving either. When he finally speaks, his voice isn’t sharp. It’s quieter, rougher, stripped of the control that usually cuts through every word he delivers.
“My mother used to sit by the fire during the evenings,” he begins, almost to himself. “Even in summer when the heat made the rest of the house unbearable. She claimed the sound of it reminded her of home.”
The words take me off guard. Luka doesn't talk about himself.
Not when he's threatening, questioning, or silently measuring every breath I take as if cataloging my weaknesses.
I study him carefully, waiting for the trap I know must be hidden in this sudden softness.
There's always a trap with men who hold this much power.
“She was Russian?” I ask cautiously.
He nods once, his profile caught in the flickering light that paints half his face in gold and leaves the other half in shadow.
“Dasha. Elegant, gentle, stronger than any man I've ever known, though she never raised her voice or her hand. She had a way of making this life seem… quieter. More bearable.”
There's something raw in his expression when he utters her name that flashes across his face and disappears before I can properly identify it.
He looks away, his jaw tightening as if he's swallowing words that want to escape.
“Cancer took her when I was twenty-seven.
Two years of fighting before it won. Two years of watching her fade while doctors promised miracles they couldn't deliver.”
The admission sinks into me more than I want it to.
He's not telling me this to earn sympathy, I know that much.
Luka Barinov doesn't beg for anything, least of all understanding from someone he considers a potential threat.
Yet the stillness in his voice feels too real to be manipulation.
For the first time since meeting him, Luka sounds less like a machine built from power and control and more like a man carrying wounds that never fully healed.
“I'm sorry,” I murmur before I can stop myself, the words slipping out unbidden.
He doesn't acknowledge the condolence. “She died in Seattle. My father was still pakhan then, running everything with an iron fist that left no room for weakness. He buried his grief under meetings, territory disputes, and blood, and I learned to do the same.” His eyes lift to mine, and the heat there makes my chest tighten.
“Do you understand what it means to bury something before it kills you?”
I think of my mother's voice fading from strong to a whisper over months that felt like years.
I think of Hope's seizures in the middle of the night, her body convulsing while I held her and counted the seconds until they stopped.
I think of bills I can't pay stacking on the kitchen counter at home, each one an accusation of my failure to protect the people I love. “Yes,” I whisper.
For the first time since I met him, there’s something unguarded in Luka’s eyes.
The silence that follows is laden with understanding that neither of us wants to admit exists between us.
The fire pops loudly, sending a spray of sparks up the flue, and the sound pulls him back into the present.
The softness disappears as if it were never there at all.
“My father,” he continues, his tone sharpening into the tone I know too well, “was a different force entirely.
Isaak Barinov. Men feared him more than death itself.
They still do, even though he's bound to a wheelchair now by a stroke that stole his strength but not his mind. He still rules from the shadows. Even half-broken, he sees everything that happens in this family.”
His fingers tap once against the armrest, a subtle motion that betrays tension he probably doesn't even notice.
“He taught me early that love is a liability. That mercy invites betrayal. That the only way to hold power is to make sure everyone around you fears losing your favor more than they fear dying. He built an empire on that philosophy, and I learned how to hold it when his body failed him.”
I try to imagine growing up under a man with that worldview.
The cold authority hanging over every decision.
The constant expectation to be ruthless, never show softness, and turn emotion into strategy.
The thought makes my stomach ache in a way I don't expect.
“That's a terrible way to live,” I murmur quietly.
A shadow of amusement touches his lips, barely visible in the firelight. “And yet it keeps us alive when others would see us destroyed.”
I should stop talking. I should let him retreat into his silence and remember that he's my captor, not a man confessing his ghosts to someone who might understand.
But something inside me pushes forward anyway, refusing to let this moment pass without probing deeper.
“And your mother? Would she agree with that philosophy?”
The question hangs suspended on threads of firelight and unspoken tension.
His eyes narrow slightly, studying me as though he can't decide whether to be offended or impressed by my audacity.
Then, to my surprise, his voice drops lower, almost fond in a way that makes my heart stutter.
“No. She believed kindness could change men. That it could soften even someone as hard as my father. She tried to make him better. Sometimes she succeeded.”
He leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “She would hate what I've become. What this life has made necessary.”
He says it so softly I almost miss it, but the pull of it drags through me like an undertow.
I can't look away from him now. The man sitting across from me isn't the ruthless boss who had me ripped from the street and locked in a bedroom while he decided whether I lived or died.
He's a son who lost the one person who softened the world for him and tried to shield him from becoming exactly what his father demanded he be.