9. Nina
NINA
I’m standing by the window now because standing at the foot of Luka Kazan’s bed felt like a decision I was not ready to make.
Luka’s still propped against the pillows, shirtless under the bandage, one arm useless at his side, the other resting over the blanket.
The firelight moves over him in low gold, softening nothing.
If anything, it makes him look more dangerous, more unreal, like some wounded king refusing to admit there is blood in the room.
Misha notices me noticing. His eyes narrow.
I look at the tray with sudden, passionate interest. “You brought the jam,” I say.
“You said he’d want it,” Misha says.
“I said he’d pretend not to want it.”
Luka looks at me. “I don’t want it.”
I point at him without looking. “See?”
Misha snorts. “Still lying while half-dead. Impressive.”
“I’m not half-dead,” Luka says.
“You were shot.”
“In the shoulder.”
“You keep saying that like it makes you less shot.”
I almost smile.
It feels strange, standing in Luka’s bedroom after everything that has happened, listening to the two of them talk like this.
Like men who have known each other so long that care has become insult.
There is history in every short sentence.
Years of it. Blood and loyalty and whatever kind of friendship makes one man show up furious at another man’s house and still remember what he eats after an injury.
Misha picks up the tea and passes it to Luka.
Luka takes it with his good hand, but the movement pulls at his shoulder. His jaw tightens for the briefest second.
Misha sees it. So do I.
Neither of us says anything.
Misha sits in the chair near the bed, elbows on his knees, his gaze dropping to Luka’s bandaged shoulder. “Who got in?”
Luka looks at him over the rim of the cup. “We don’t know yet.”
“That means someone helped.”
“Possibly.”
“Not possibly,” Misha says. “Definitely.”
Luka says nothing.
The air shifts, the easy insulting warmth between them disappearing under something colder. I can almost see it happen—the return of the world I glimpsed in the garage, the one made of locked doors, guns, and men who speak in half sentences because the other half is too dangerous to say aloud.
Misha’s gaze cuts toward me. He stops.
I hate that.
I hate that everyone suddenly remembers I’m in the room whenever the real conversation begins.
Luka notices too. His voice remains even when he says, “Say it.”
Misha’s mouth tightens. “Not in front of her.”
“I’m right here,” I say.
“Yes,” Misha says, looking at me. “That’s the problem.”
I fold my arms. “I work for him.”
“For the legitimate side,” Misha says.
“Yes.”
“You saw tonight how thin that wall is.”
I don’t answer immediately.
Because he’s right. And because I hate that he is right.
Luka sets the tea down. “Enough.”
Misha turns to him. “No. Not enough.”
“Misha,” I warn.
He looks back at me, and for one second his anger cracks enough for fear to show through. Real fear.
The kind that has nothing to do with pride and everything to do with imagining me on that garage floor again.
“You should not have been there,” he says.
“I know.”
“You could have died.”
“So could he,” I shoot back before I can stop myself.
Silence.
Luka’s gaze moves to me. I feel it everywhere.
Misha looks between us again, and this time the question on his face is not subtle at all.
I turn away first.
Because apparently that’s what I do now. I survive bullets, argue with mob-adjacent billionaires, and then lose my nerve when someone looks too closely at the truth sitting between me and Luka Kazan.
Misha’s phone rings.
He pulls it out, glances at the screen, and goes still.
Something immediate and alert passes through him so quickly I almost miss it. His shoulders straighten. His eyes harden. The brother in him vanishes, and another man takes his place. The one I’ve seen only rarely. The one who belongs to the same shadows Luka does.
Luka sees it too. “Who?” he asks.
Misha does not answer.
He stands too fast. “I need to take this.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
Terrible lie. And unlike me, Misha is usually good at them.
He’s already moving toward the door, phone pressed to his ear before he reaches it.
“Misha,” Luka says.
Misha pauses with his hand on the doorframe.
For a second, they look at each other, and something silent passes between them. Something old and coded, familiar enough that neither needs to explain it and alarming enough that my stomach tightens.
Then Misha says, “Stay in bed.”
Luka’s mouth barely moves. “Unlikely.”
“Try,” Misha says, and leaves.
The door shuts behind him.
I stare at it. Then I look at Luka. “What was that?”
Luka reaches for the bowl of broth. “A phone call.”
I give him a flat look. “Thank you. I thought perhaps a tiny ghost had screamed from his pocket.”
He picks up the spoon with his right hand. “You asked.”
“I asked what it was about.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
That stops me.
He looks almost bored, but the tension around his eyes gives him away. He is listening. Not to me. To the house. To footsteps beyond the door. To whatever shift Misha’s sudden departure has caused in the machinery of his world.
“You know more than nothing,” I say.
“I know he didn’t want to say it in front of you.”
“That seems to be everyone’s favorite activity tonight.”
“What?”
“Not saying things in front of me.”
Luka’s gaze returns to mine. Then he looks away, down at the tray, and tries to eat.
His left shoulder is bandaged and useless.
His right hand holds the spoon, but the movement pulls across his chest every time he leans forward.
He hides the pain well. Too well. His face barely changes, but I see the slight pause after each motion, the controlled breath, the tiny adjustment of his grip.
He manages one spoonful. Barely.
The second spills back into the bowl.
He stares at it like it has betrayed him.
I press my lips together. Don’t laugh, Nina.
Don’t laugh at the injured Pakhan struggling with soup.
Unfortunately, my face is not as loyal as it should be.
His eyes lift. “Careful.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was not.”
“You looked pleased.”
“I’m discovering new things about you.”
“Such as?”
“That you can intimidate half of the world but cannot operate broth under medical supervision.”
His expression darkens.
It should scare me. It almost does.
But the problem with Luka injured, half-dressed, and annoyed under a blanket is that he is still Luka, only now there’s something painfully human underneath the danger. Something I should not find charming. Something that makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with the garage.
He tries again.
This time his hand is steady, but the angle makes his shoulder pull. His jaw locks.
I’m across the room before I decide to move. “Stop,” I say.
“I can feed myself.”
“Apparently not elegantly.”
“Nina.”
“No. You are going to either spill hot broth on yourself or rip your stitches open out of masculine pride, and then Doctor Mirov will blame me because I was the only sensible person present.”
“I don’t need help.”
“I didn’t ask what you needed.”
He looks up at me.
The room stills.
For one second, I realize exactly how close I am to his bed.
.Close enough to see the dark shadow along his jaw. The faint exhaustion around his eyes. The tension in his mouth from pain he refuses to admit. Close enough to see the blood that remains in a thin streak near his collarbone, missed by the doctor’s cloth.
My hand itches to wipe it away. I don’t. Instead, I take the spoon from him.
His fingers brush mine. The contact is nothing.
My body, having learned absolutely nothing from the past twenty-four hours, treats it like a confession.
Luka doesn’t let go immediately. His gaze holds mine, dark and unreadable. Then his fingers open.
I sit carefully on the edge of the bed. The mattress dips slightly under my weight, and his eyes drop to the movement before rising again to my face.
“This is unnecessary,” he says.
“Most things involving you are.” I scoop broth onto the spoon and hold it out.
He stares at it.
I stare back. “You cannot possibly be too proud for soup,” I say.
“You would be surprised.”
“I wouldn’t.”
For a moment, I think he will refuse out of sheer stubbornness. Then he leans forward and takes the spoonful from me.
Something about the act is so intimate that my hand nearly trembles.
It’s ridiculous. I know that. I know it’s only broth, only a spoon, only a man injured enough that practicality has cornered him. But Luka does not accept care easily. He does not allow softness near him unless it has been cleared, measured, and stripped of danger first.
This has not been cleared. This is dangerous.
He knows it, too.
I can tell by the way he watches me between spoonfuls, silent and focused, as if every small motion of my hand is another piece of evidence he is filing away.
I feed him slowly. Neither of us speaks for a while.
The fire shifts in the grate. Somewhere beyond the room, distant footsteps move down the corridor and fade. The estate feels impossibly large around us, full of locked doors and armed men and secrets I’m not supposed to know.
Here, in the low light, the world narrows to the bowl in my hand and Luka’s mouth around the spoon.
I try not to look at his mouth.
Obviously, I fail.
His lips close over the spoon with quiet precision. No wasted movement. Nothing overt. Still, heat climbs up my neck because I have not forgotten the boardroom, and neither has he. It is there in the silence, breathing with us.
After a few minutes, I set the spoon down and reach for the bread.
“Jam?” I ask.
“No.”
I spread cherry jam on the bread.
He watches me. “I said no,” he says.
“It means open your mouth.”
The instant I say it, we both go still. My fingers freeze around the bread.
Luka’s gaze drops to my mouth. Then returns to my eyes.
Something in the room changes, and I feel it dance across my skin.
I should make a joke. I should stand. I should do anything other than sit on his bed holding a piece of bread near his mouth while remembering how many times today his mouth has ruined my ability to think like a normal person.
Instead, I lift the bread slightly.
A challenge. Or surrender.
I don’t know anymore.
Luka leans forward. He takes a bite. His eyes stay on mine the entire time.
My stomach flips, slow and deep.
He chews, swallows, then says, “Cherry jam.”
“I told you.”
“You’re smug.”
“I earned it.”
His mouth curves, barely. “You often think that.”
“I’m often right.”
He looks tired suddenly. Not weak. Never that. But the pain has worn at the edges of his control, and for the first time, I see what is beneath it without him turning it into a weapon.
Exhaustion.
Loneliness, maybe.
Or maybe I’m projecting because the room is too quiet and his bed is too warm and I’m sitting too close to a man I should have been running from hours ago.
There is still a faint smear of blood near his collarbone.
This time, I do reach for it.
I tell myself I’m only being helpful. That it’s just blood. That I have already had his blood all over my hands tonight and there’s nothing especially intimate about wiping away what the doctor missed.
My fingertips touch his skin.
Luka goes completely still. So do I.
The blood wipes away beneath my thumb, leaving clean, warm skin behind. His chest rises once, slowly. His good hand closes around my wrist, but he doesn’t pull me away.
He only holds me there.
My fingers rest against him. His pulse beats beneath my touch.
He’s not as calm as he looks.
The knowledge goes through me like a spark.
“You shouldn’t do that,” he says quietly.
I know exactly what he means. I do it anyway, and look at him. “Do what?”
His grip tightens by a fraction. “Pretend you don’t understand me.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“You always are.”
That should offend me.
It does. A little. Mostly, it hurts because it feels true.
His thumb moves once over the inside of my wrist. Not a caress. Not quite. A small, absent motion that makes my breath catch anyway.
His eyes drop to my mouth.
This time, there’s no conference table. No board members waiting outside. No gunfire. No Misha in the chair beside us.
Only Luka in bed, wounded and too close, and me with my hand on his bare chest, trying to remember every reason I should pull away.
There are many. My brother. My job. The women in the diary.
The fact that Luka Kazan is not a man anyone touches lightly and walks away unchanged.
His hand slides from my wrist to my fingers. “Nina,” he says. My name is rougher this time.
I lean in before I can think better of it.
He does too. The space between us shrinks to almost nothing.
I can feel his breath now. Warm. Slow. Too controlled. His gaze is locked on my mouth, and I know if I stay one more second, he’ll either kiss me or I will kiss him, and then the one boundary he’s not crossed will be gone too.
My phone buzzes on the bedside table.
I jerk back like I have been caught.
Luka’s hand falls away.
I stand so quickly the bowl rattles on the tray. “I should go.”
His expression closes immediately.
Just like that, the door behind his eyes shuts, and Luka Kazan returns in pieces: the control, the distance, the unreadable mouth.
“You should,” he says.
It hurts more than it should.
I nod, because apparently, I’ve decided dignity is still worth attempting at this late stage of disaster.
“Tell Doctor Mirov if the pain gets worse,” I say.
“I will not.”
“Then tell your mother.”
“I will not.”
“Then bleed dramatically and suffer in silence. Very on brand.”
I pick up my coat from the chair and turn toward the door before I can do something stupid, like touch him again, or ask what this is, or tell him that my brother thinks I should leave and I’m terrified because part of me knows he is right.
At the doorway, I pause and look back.
Luka’s still watching me from the bed, firelight moving over his face, bandage stark against his skin, the tray untouched now beside him.
For one second, he looks like he might say my name.
But nothing happens.
So, I leave before either of us can make the almost into something real.