5. Rowan #2
He has spent years keeping her above the crude mechanics and ugly truths of this world.
Dragging her into a hospital room where he looks pale beneath fluorescent lights and stitched back together by surgeons would shatter more than the illusion of safety.
It would shatter the version of him he’s preserved for her all these years.
And maybe if I’m being honest, it would shatter something in me too.
Remembering him on that road, blood pouring through my fingers faster than I could contain it, that brief and terrible emptiness in his eyes when I thought the next breath might not come, I don’t need Sofia carrying that image too.
She rises from the chair in one smooth motion, the oversized cream sweater slipping down one shoulder before she shoves it back into place with barely restrained irritation. Her bare feet are quiet against the wooden floor.
When she reaches me, she folds her arms over her chest. “Then help me understand.”
My eye nearly twitches. “No. I have better things to do.”
Her expression flickers, hurt at first. Then anger burns over it so fast it almost erases the first part entirely. Her arms drop, hands curl into fists at his sides. “You are impossible.”
“You’re not going to see him today,” I say, stepping back from the doorway. “Accept it now and spare yourself the argument tomorrow.” I stop right before I turn on my heel to leave entirely. “And keep your attention off the watchtowers. The guards are there to keep threats out, not entertain you.”
By the end of the next week, the irritation I’ve been carrying has started to twist into something else. Though at this point, I’m too exhausted mentally to put a name to it.
That is probably for the best.
Names give legitimacy to things that do not deserve so. There are enough concerns weighing on me without indulging whatever this new, unwelcome distortion is.
Irritation I know how to handle.
Its razor-sharp edge keeps me distant and exactly where I need to be to remain objective. A familiar weapon with a grip molded to my hand from years of use. It keeps people at arm’s length and my judgment sound, stripping situations down to nothing but function and utility.
That is how men like me survive.
By refusing to let the world become more complicated than orders and outcomes.
The second you start adding softer things into the equation, the whole structure begins to rot.
Those things blur the line between duty and desire until one starts wearing the other’s face.
I have seen it too many times not to recognize the trap.
Attachment is fatal and something I absolutely refuse to nurture.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t help that Sofia has settled into the estate too quickly for my comfort. She has adapted well to her new life here, and every time I notice, that nameless thing under my irritation twists a little tighter.
It isn’t until Ivan is finally discharged from the hospital and brought home that I finally get a chance to breathe.
The convoy that escorts him is heavier than usual, additional trucks flanking the lead car, medical staff riding shotgun in case anything goes wrong.
Two advance vehicles swept the route twice before anyone left the hospital’s parking lot, and even then I still had men posted along the drive an hour before the gates opened.
Overkill, maybe. But I don’t care.
I stand on the front steps, arms folded behind my back as my breath fogs the morning air.
Frost still clings in thin veins running along the hedges and the stone landing under my boots.
The estate looks almost beautiful from here in the pale gray light, a fitting welcome to our leader finally returning home.
Sofia is already beside me, close enough that I can smell the faint traces of her shampoo when the wind shifts.
Something clean and a little floral, wildly out of place in a place like this one.
I can feel the heat of her standing near me even through layers of wool.
The realization annoys me on instinct. I shouldn’t be registering details like that.
Her hands are tucked into the pockets of a thick coat I had brought in for her from one of Ivan’s preferred shops. Her hair is loose again, pale against her collar, the ends lifting faintly in the wind.
She hasn’t asked a single question since stepping outside. That alone puts me on edge. Silence from her means observation, that same restless intelligence turning inward and working through what she’s seeing.
Engines roll up the drive in a disciplined formation. The lead SUV pulls beneath the portico first, the second braking just behind it. The medical staff’s vehicle hovers off to the side, idling on stand-by just in case.
I’m already moving before the rear passenger door opens.
Not fast enough to betray the urgency flitting through my veins, just first.
Always first.
One of the drivers reaches for the handle at the same time I do and wisely lets me take it when he realizes. Ivan sits inside, pale beneath the winter light, one hand braced against the seat as he prepares to stand.
He looks better than he did in the hospital, worse than he would want anyone to notice.
The color has not fully returned to his complexion and the set of his mouth is harder than usual, pain pulling at his composure no matter how well he fights to disguise it.
But his eyes are clear and alert. The sight of that alone slowly loosens something in my chest I hadn’t been aware was choking me.
For one irrational second, I want to tell Sofia to go back inside.
The thought arrives fast enough to surprise me.
It is not tactical in any sense, nor is it built from any amount of risk assessment or protocol or any of the other cold, practical instincts I trust. There is no immediate threat in her standing on the front steps with her coat pulled tight against the morning chill and her blue eyes fixed on the convoy.
Still, the urge comes.
Don’t stand there.
Go inside.
Don’t try to take this from me.
The last thought is so ugly and childish that for a second I almost recoil.
Because that is what it is, isn’t it? Not merely a cause for concern that Ivan’s return will overwhelm her or expose more of his injuries than he’d want her to see.
It would be easier if I could file these feelings under duty and close the drawer before locking it tight.
But the thing twisting inside my chest is more exposed than that.
I have never been just his enforcer. I have always been his right hand.
The one person he can lean on without judgment, the only one capable of keeping secrets no one else in this world knows.
I have carried them for him without complaint.
I have killed to protect them, bled for them.
Built an entire life out of standing exactly half a step behind Ivan Kuznetsov and making sure every man in the room understood that reaching for him meant going through me first.
To share that bond with anyone else, even merely a fraction of what Ivan and I have developed, irritates me.
I have never had to compete for my Pakhan before.
Not in any real sense. Men have wanted his favor, feared his displeasure, begged for his approval, but none of them ever occupied the space I did.
None of them understood him the way I do and earned the kind of trust built through obedience and the long, brutal years of becoming exactly what he needed me to become.
Least of all in a childish sense like the one I feel now.
Sofia is his blood.
That should be the end of it.
She belongs beside him in a way I never can, no matter how much of myself I have fed into his empire.
She carries his beloved sister’s face, his family’s name on her documents, his protection in her bones.
She does not have to earn a right at his side because she was born already having it.
Hidden from it, yes, and protected. But born into this life all the same.
I was made. That is the difference.
“I can walk,” he murmurs, low enough that only I hear.
“I know,” I answer.