5. Rowan #3
I offer him my arm without another word, not at all surprised when he hesitates to take it. The hesitation is brief enough that most would miss it. It is a fraction of a second that his fingers flex in his lap before slowly lifting, pausing just as they level with my arm.
Ivan hates weakness.
Not in others, of course. That he expects. He uses it to his advantage, punishing those stupid enough to allow themselves to be so thoroughly exploited when necessary.
Weakness in himself is something else entirely, a betrayal by the body he has spent decades honing. I know him well enough to understand that taking my arm in front of not only Sofia but also the medics and his own men costs him a great deal.
Our syndicate is never supposed to see him weak.
I keep my face blank when he finally wraps his hand around me and uses it to lift himself up off the seat.
That is the one mercy I can offer him in this moment.
I lean slowly, shifting my weight backward in a momentary adjustment because the ground is slick and the doctors are irritatingly insistent the closer they hover.
It forces me to cut them a look before they can step any closer. I will not have them crowding him like he’s a fragile old man.
“Uncle Ivan!”
Ivan’s gaze moves past me.
The change in him is slight, but it is there—a softening around the eyes that I have seen maybe a handful of times in all the years I have served him. It’s the kind of thing he would never give a room full of lieutenants or foot soldiers. All because she is Irena’s daughter. Because she is blood.
My jaw tightens before I can stop it.
There it is again. That rotten, humiliating flare in my gut.
I am relieved he is home, grateful he is even breathing let alone standing on two feet.
I have prepared myself to kill any man on this property who so much as looks too long at the strain carved into his features.
Yet underneath all of my gratitude that those assassins failed in their mission, resentment boils from the way his gaze changes for her.
It is ridiculous, beneath me, to feel that way.
She moves quickly down the landing to get to us, enough that the guards surrounding the convoy straighten on instinct, their hands hovering near their weapons before they remember who she is.
Her face changes when she finally sees him, relief at first, so bright and unguarded, it is almost painful to witness.
Then alarm follows. Sofia is much too intelligent to be soothed just by Ivan standing upright in front of her.
She takes in what he would prefer hidden with those careful eyes—the stiffness in his movements, the way his hand hovers near his torso before he catches himself and lowers it, the bandage just visible at his collar where his shirt doesn’t sit quite right.
Instead, her gaze flickers once to me, then back to Ivan, reading what neither of us says out loud.
Ivan gives her a warm nod. “I see you’ve made it home safely. I hope my staff have been treating you well.”
Sofia does not throw herself at him the way I half-expect. Some part of me had braced for that, along with tears and the rush of panicked questions I’ve been trying to dodge for days. I had prepared myself to step in if I needed to, but to my surprise, she does none of that.
She stops just shy of him. I can see in the way her fingers flex at her sides that she wants to reach for him, but she doesn’t. Somehow, she understands that Ivan would not want to be handled gently in front of witnesses.
Reading situations as charged as this one is one of the things I have begun to respect about her.
She breathes in slowly, rolling her shoulders back. “You could have told me what happened.”
Ivan’s gaze rests on her for a long moment. I can see him weighing his response carefully. He loves her in whatever hard, possessive way my Pakhan understands how to, but even that affection passes through the machinery of control residing within him before it ever reaches his mouth.
He will not apologize fully. That is not the kind of man he is. Whether she accepts that fact and what he is capable of giving her in response will be up to her.
“It seemed unnecessary to worry you. I have been well taken care of, rest assured,” he says.
Her expression barely changes, but I can feel the disappointment and hurt boiling just under the surface.
Not only at him but for every deflection, half-answer, and carefully sanitized lie she has been fed since the moment our soldiers ended her life in Italy.
She’s too composed and far too aware of how public emotion can be used against a person in a house like this to make a spectacle.
Though, I have no doubt she will resume this conversation once she and her uncle are behind closed doors.
Ivan takes his first step toward the house. I match him automatically, keeping myself one pace behind and just close enough to grab him if anything happens. Sofia falls into line by his side, careful not to touch him unless he asks.
At least she learns fast.
That should please me. What it really does is lock my jaw tight because watching her beside him twists something ugly in me.
I absolutely hate it.