Chapter Eleven - Annie
The city outside feels muted, like someone’s turned down the volume of the world.
Even the estate has gone still, quieter than usual, as if the walls themselves are holding their breath.
I should be in bed, pretending to sleep, but the silence presses too heavy against me.
So I slip down the hall until I find myself in the library.
The fire is what pulls me in, not the shelves of books. Flames lick against the grate, their light spilling across polished wood and leather chairs. I curl into one of them, tucking my legs beneath me, staring at the fire until my mind drifts.
The silence isn’t peaceful. It’s the kind that grows louder the longer you listen to it. My thoughts trip over each other, circling the same path until they’ve worn a groove.
The door opens without a sound, but I know it’s him before I look up.
Dimitri doesn’t announce himself. He never needs to.
He moves to the cabinet, pours amber liquid into a glass, and sits across from me as if he belongs there—as if this is his living room and I’m the guest who’s overstayed.
His presence fills the room, the way it always does, shifting the air, making it heavier.
“Couldn’t sleep?” His voice is calm, almost conversational, but not casual. Nothing about him is ever casual.
I shake my head, eyes flicking back to the fire. “Too quiet.”
He sips his drink, ice clinking faintly. “Most people would find that a blessing.”
“Most people don’t live here,” I counter, my voice low but steady.
He doesn’t argue. For a moment, the crackle of wood fills the silence between us. He leans back in his chair, studying me in that unhurried way that makes me feel pinned in place. Then he nods at the shelves. “Do you read?”
“Sometimes.” My lips twitch. “Not Russian mob manuals, if that’s what you’re offering.”
His mouth curves faintly, though his eyes don’t soften. “Art books, then?”
“Maybe. When I have the patience.” I glance at the rows of spines behind him, titles in Russian, in English, in languages I don’t recognize. “Not much patience lately.”
It’s small talk, harmless, but it doesn’t stay that way. The words wander, one after another, as if pulled along by the firelight and the weight of his gaze.
“What do you have patience for?” he asks after a pause.
I huff a quiet laugh. “For people proving me wrong, I guess. Doesn’t happen often.”
He tilts his head. “About what?”
The answer slips out before I can stop it. “I don’t believe in heroes.”
His brow lifts. “No?”
“No.” I shrug, eyes still on the fire. “Never met one who wasn’t just another liar in a different suit. Every so-called savior has a motive. They hide it under good deeds, but it’s there. Always.”
He studies me, the glass balanced easily in his hand. “That’s a cynical view.”
“It’s the truth,” I say softly. “People always talk about saviors, but in the end they all want something. Fame, power, forgiveness. It’s never about saving anyone else. Just themselves.”
The silence that follows is different this time—thicker, weighted. The fire pops, sparks rising, but neither of us moves. His gaze doesn’t waver. He watches me the way someone studies a painting up close, searching for cracks in the canvas.
Finally, he speaks. “I don’t believe in luck.”
I glance at him. “No?”
“No.” His tone doesn’t rise, but there’s something behind it, a shadow that edges the calm.
“People survive or they die because of choices. Not fate or chance. Every breath you take is bought by a decision—yours, or someone else’s.
Luck is the excuse people use when they don’t want to admit they failed. ”
The words sink into me, heavy and unyielding. He says them like a man who’s lived them, who’s carried the cost of every choice on his back. There’s no softness in his voice, but there’s history. Old scars, old blood, stitched into the quiet spaces between his words.
“Do you really believe that?” I ask, my voice quieter than before.
His eyes narrow slightly. “I know it. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
The implication burns through me, and I look back at the fire quickly, my pulse stuttering. He’s right. My choices brought me here—every small step, every decision to push, to test, to survive. And every one of his choices has pinned me inside this gilded cage.
I lean back into the chair, studying him in turn.
The firelight paints hard lines across his face, throwing shadows into the hollows of his eyes.
I wonder what kind of decisions carved him into the man sitting across from me.
What it cost him to believe so fully that fate doesn’t exist. What scars are hidden beneath the crisp lines of his suit.
The library feels smaller suddenly, the fire too warm, his presence too close. I hug my knees tighter, unable to keep the question from circling in my mind.
Why, despite everything I know he’s capable of, despite everything I’ve seen—why I want to know the answers anyway.
The air between us shifts. It isn’t romantic, not even warm, but it’s real in a way our earlier exchanges never were.
The silence has weight, substance, like something fragile that could break if either of us pushed too hard.
I open my mouth, almost asking him the questions burning at the back of my throat—who he was before, what he lost, what he’s hiding behind that impenetrable calm.
But the words stick, and I swallow them down.
He looks at me too long. His drink sits untouched in his hand, forgotten. Then, without a word, he rises, his movement fluid, precise, final. He sets the glass down on the table, the faint clink making me flinch harder than it should.
He leaves without explanation, his footsteps absorbed by the thick carpet. The door closes, and with it the heat of the fire seems to fade, leaving the room colder, emptier. I stare at the flames, waiting for their warmth to return, but it doesn’t.
I tell myself I’m imagining it—that the fire hasn’t changed, only my perception has. But part of me knows better. This was the first real conversation we’ve had, stripped of games, stripped of masks.
It won’t be the last.
The thought unsettles me more than the silence ever could. Because beneath the unease, I can’t deny the truth: I enjoyed having his company.
I close my eyes, forcing myself to remember the night in the storage hall, the body crumpled on the floor, the sharp echo of a gunshot in my ears. I remind myself of the blood, the smell of iron, the cold way he’d said, “You had your chance.”
He is a killer. A man who bends the world to his will and discards anyone who doesn’t fit. No amount of quiet conversation by the fire can change that.
The night stretches long when I finally leave the library.
The corridors echo faintly under my steps, each shadow I pass thick with weight.
I climb the stairs slowly, my body heavy with exhaustion but my mind alert, replaying every glance, every word.
I expect to feel relief that he left before the silence turned dangerous.
Instead, I feel the opposite. An ache, sharp and uninvited, at the space he left behind.
I crawl into bed but don’t sleep. The firelight stays burned into my vision, the lines of his face drawn sharp against it. I toss and turn, angry at myself for caring. Angry that I wanted him to stay. Angry that part of me wonders what might’ve happened if he had.
Hours pass before I drift into shallow rest. My dreams are jagged things—gunshots, firelight, and eyes that see too much. I wake with my heart pounding and the faintest trace of his voice in my ears. “Luck is the excuse people use when they don’t want to admit they failed.”
The morning doesn’t help. Breakfast is routine: polished silver, perfect china, the quiet shuffle of servants. I slide into my chair across from him, force my shoulders straight, and keep my gaze fixed on my plate. He doesn’t mention the night before.
His silence isn’t empty. It presses against me with the weight of memory.
I stab at my food, aware of his presence in every breath. The guards speak quietly near the doorway. Outside, the storm has finally broken, leaving the air damp and heavy. I sip my coffee and tell myself I imagined the shift in the library. That nothing’s changed.
Except it has. I feel it in the way my pulse jumps when his eyes finally flick up, meeting mine. It isn’t a long glance, barely a second. Still, it’s enough to make the coffee taste sharp, to remind me of the firelight between us, of the conversation that slipped deeper than either of us intended.
The rest of the day passes in fragments. Papers in his office, errands through the estate, a dozen moments where I feel his gaze land on me before he looks away. Each one is brief, ordinary, deniable. Each one is real.
Each time, I catch myself wanting to throw another stone into the still water, to see how far the ripples might spread.
The estate moves around me as though nothing has shifted, yet I can’t shake the weight of that night in the library.
Every corridor feels altered, as if the firelight followed me into the walls.
The guards are the same—watchful, silent, impersonal—but I catch myself wondering which of them heard our voices through the door, which of them noticed how long we lingered together.
I keep busy, or at least I try. Sorting paperwork in his office, noting deliveries, memorizing the ebb and flow of schedules. I move like I’m focused, efficient, the perfect little assistant. But my mind runs elsewhere, replaying his words, the tone behind them.
“Luck is the excuse people use when they don’t want to admit they failed.” He said it like someone who has never forgiven himself for failure, even if no one else ever saw it.
I hate that I want to know what choices carved him into that man.
At lunch, I sense him before he enters. The long dining hall feels smaller when he’s in it, the air tightening as if to make room for him.
He takes his seat across from me, as always, hands steady on silver cutlery.
He doesn’t speak, but when his eyes lift to mine, something sparks—recognition, maybe, of the conversation we’re both pretending didn’t happen.
I force my gaze back to my plate, but the food tastes bland, heavy. My pulse betrays me, thudding too loud in my ears.
The silence stretches. His smirk doesn’t surface, but the faintest tilt of his head tells me he knows. He’s watching, waiting, gauging how I’ll move next.
I swallow hard, pushing food I can’t taste around the plate, and remind myself of the truth: I saw him kill a man. I watched him deliver judgment without flinching.
He isn’t safety. He isn’t warmth.
When his gaze lingers, though, sharp and unblinking, I can’t deny the part of me that leans toward the fire instead of away.