Chapter Ten - Dimitri
I notice the change almost at once.
She doesn’t shrink anymore. Annie used to keep her head down, keep her steps brisk, keep her distance as if pretending my presence was incidental. Now, when my attention finds her—and it always does—she angles into it.
She doesn’t look away. Her gaze meets mine without hesitation, steady, sharp. Sometimes it’s challenge. Sometimes it’s something darker.
It doesn’t annoy me. It should, but it doesn’t.
It intrigues me.
Most people fold long before this point. They mistake politeness for loyalty, obedience for devotion. Annie hasn’t made that mistake. She isn’t trying to win me over with soft compliance. She’s testing me.
The more she resists folding, the more invested I become in bending her.
She’s clever about it, subtle in ways that most men in this house would overlook.
She lingers in rooms longer than necessary, her footsteps dragging a fraction when she should have left already.
She brushes too close when passing by, not enough to be called out, but enough that I feel the presence of her body in the air.
When she answers questions, it’s never with the neat submission of someone who understands her place. It’s with half-truths laced with a boldness she knows I’ll notice.
I let it play out.
When she lingers in my office after delivering a folder, I don’t dismiss her immediately. I continue with my work, letting her stand there in silence. After a full minute, when most would have excused themselves, I look up. Her chin is tilted, her arms loose at her sides.
“Was there something else?” I ask.
Her lips twitch. “No. Just making sure you didn’t need anything more.”
I let the pause stretch until she shifts her weight. Then I return to my papers. “If I need something, I’ll tell you.”
She leaves, but her smile shadows the door as it shuts. She thinks it was her victory. I allow her to think so.
Another time, she walks past me in the corridor, close enough that the fabric of her sleeve whispers against mine. She doesn’t stop, doesn’t acknowledge it, but her pulse jumps in her throat. I notice everything.
When I test her directly, she never flinches.
I sharpen my tone with questions that cut deeper than the words suggest.
“What did he say to you?” I ask after she delivers papers from a meeting with an associate.
“Nothing worth repeating,” she answers, eyes meeting mine, steady.
“Nothing?” I push.
Her mouth curves slightly. “Nothing you didn’t already know.”
She lies to me in that moment. Boldly. Calmly. The lie tastes better than most truths I hear every day.
I step closer, close enough to watch her pulse leap again. My eyes stay on hers. “You’re sure.”
She swallows, but her voice doesn’t waver. “I’m sure.”
I study her for a long moment, then step back. Her shoulders relax the faintest bit, but not enough to be mistaken for relief. She knows the game as well as I do now: she throws her stones, I let the ripples spread.
Each day she tempts me to set sharper snares.
I change the cadence of my footsteps in the hall to see if she’ll react. She does, her head turning before I come into view.
I drop my voice into steel when giving her orders, gauging whether she’ll falter. She doesn’t. She nods once, tight but confident, and carries them out.
I set her in rooms with men who would happily test her nerve, then watch from a distance as she handles them with that same cocktail of fear and defiance.
The Bratva contact had lingered too close, too bold with his questions, but she hadn’t folded.
She’d held the case until the exchange was finished, her fingers white-knuckled but steady. I saw everything.
She knows I did.
Annie Vale is not safe. Not from me, not from the world she’s walked into. But she’s useful in ways I hadn’t considered. Beyond that, she’s interesting. That’s rarer.
I could break her, if I chose. One order, one demonstration, and all that defiance would shatter into something easier to manage.
Maybe I don’t want easy.
I want to see how far she’ll push before she cracks. I want to watch what happens when the girl who thought she could play games in my house learns the rules I write as we go.
So I let her circle closer, let her think she’s the one probing the edges. All the while, I stand at the center, quiet, waiting.
She doesn’t know it yet, but every test she gives me is one I’ve already prepared her for.
When the moment comes, when the game stops being stones tossed in still water and turns into something deeper, darker—she’ll realize what I’ve known since the first time she held my gaze in defiance.
I’m not studying her to decide whether to keep or crush.
I’m studying her to see how long she can last before she bends.
***
The estate sleeps lightly, the way predators do.
Guards shift outside, boots crunching over gravel; the faint hum of security cameras bleeds through the walls if you know how to listen.
I should be in my study, drowning myself in ledgers and maps, in the next move that will keep everything balanced.
Instead, I wander the hallways like a man trying to outrun his own thoughts.
That’s when I find her.
The sitting room is half lit by the moon.
Tall windows frame the grounds beyond, their glass silvered by pale light.
She stands near one of them, her back half turned, hair catching in the glow like strands of metal thread.
She doesn’t hear me at first. Or maybe she does—maybe she always knows when I’m near.
When she turns, it isn’t surprise that flashes across her face.
Startled, yes, but not frightened. She doesn’t step back. She just waits.
No sarcasm this time. No sharp smile to hide behind.
I move closer, my steps deliberate. Each one narrows the space until her back nearly brushes the cold windowpane. The glass reflects the faint rise of her breath, the tension pulling her shoulders straight.
Her voice is quiet when it comes. “Do you always hover?”
The question doesn’t sting; it interests me.
I study her, let the silence stretch long enough that she begins to shift beneath it. Her chin tilts up a fraction, that same defiance I’ve seen in every glance, every move she makes.
“Only,” I murmur, “when you look like you might run.”
Her breath catches—soft, involuntary, but I hear it. The sound slides into me in a way I don’t expect. The moment stretches thin as wire, charged enough to snap.
She’s too close. Or I am.
Close enough to see her lips part without sound. Close enough to catch the warmth of her breath against my jaw. Close enough to forget why I shouldn’t touch her.
My hand twitches, restrained before it betrays me.
For the briefest second, there’s no plan. No power. No cage. Just the sharp, reckless pull of something I shouldn’t want.
I don’t give in.
I step back, forcing space between us before either of us crosses a line that shouldn’t exist.
Her eyes follow me into the shadow. No fear. No plea. Just steady, unflinching, as if she’s looking straight through the wolf and daring him to prove he has teeth.
My jaw tightens as I turn away, each step heavier than it should be.
By the time I disappear into the hall’s darkness, I already know the truth I didn’t want to admit.
I won’t stop thinking about her.
Back in the hall, the silence is heavier than before. My footsteps echo once, twice, then fade, leaving only the sound of my own breathing. I should feel satisfied that I pulled back, that I kept the line intact. Instead, a tightness coils in my chest, restless and unresolved.
Her face lingers in my mind—the way the moonlight caught in her hair, the way her lips parted when I leaned too close. She didn’t cower. She didn’t break. She looked at me like she could see something more than the man everyone else fears.
It unsettles me.
In my world, loyalty is measured in obedience, in silence, in the weight of blood spilled for my name. She throws all of that off balance with a single glance my way.
The idea of her as property burns in a way I can’t define.
I force myself onward, deeper into the estate’s dark. I already know what the night will bring: hours of lying awake, replaying the moment at the window, hearing her breath catch in my ear.
Knowing I’ll want to hear it again.