8. Sofia
SOFIA
The moment the doors shift closed behind Nikolai and Alina, I push myself to my feet.
The sitting room feels emptier the second they’re gone, as if the warmth Alina brought with her has been dragged out by her retreating footsteps. Rowan stands near the door, his broad shoulders squared and both hands loose at his sides.
His eyes are pinned directly on me. They narrow the closer I get to him until they are nearly slits by the time I’m standing directly in front of him.
I have to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze, and for some reason I instantly hate that.
It’s just another physical reminder of how much larger he is than I am.
Some traitorous part of me notices the hard set of his jaw and the tired shadows beneath his eyes before I remember I’m supposed to be angry.
“What did he want with my uncle?” I ask.
His jaw flexes. I catch it easily because I’ve started to learn him now. He would hate knowing that. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
My hands fist at my sides.
I am so damn tired of that line. Every person in this house seems to think keeping me ignorant and unaware is an act of mercy for my sanity when all it does is leave me stumbling blindly while I try to find my footing and fail miserably.
My voice rises despite my best effort to keep it level. “Why can you never give me a straight answer?”
Whatever flicker of emotion I thought I saw in him disappears behind the blank cruelty of indifference. “That’s the only one you’re getting.”
“Rowan—”
He doesn’t wait for me to argue.
He turns and heads for the door, forcing me to either stand there dismissed or follow. The choice isn’t really a choice at all, quickly forcing me to catch the door before it swings shut and chase after him down the hallway. His long strides force me to practically jog to keep up.
He doesn’t so much as look back to make sure I’m following. Rowan has always acted like he’s accustomed to being obeyed by everyone unfortunate enough to fall into his orbit, and apparently, I am now one of them.
The distance between us feels colder than usual.
Like he is punishing me for having the gall to ask about what happened during whatever meeting Nikolai had with my uncle.
In a strange way, it isn’t exactly new. It always seems like he’s punishing me for noticing things and wanting answers.
The more I refuse to sit quietly in the dark while my life is rearranged behind closed doors, the more irritated he grows.
The portraits along the walls blur past us, the stern Kuznetsov faces watching from their gilded frames.
“Did Nikolai threaten him?” I demand.
Rowan keeps walking.
“Did he accuse him of something? Is that why he came here?”
Nothing.
“Was it about the attack?”
That gets a reaction.
He stops abruptly and spins around on his heel so fast that I nearly slam into his chest. My heart beats harder when he towers over me, using his massive size to practically herd me back until I hit the wall and flatten myself against it.
For one second, there is nothing but the small sliver of space between us that narrows even more when he leans in to glare at me.
Rowan doesn’t need proximity to intimidate. He can do it from across a room with only that awful, beautiful face carved into displeasure. Yet for some reason, he stands close enough to me now that I can smell the faint traces of his aftershave.
“You need to learn when to stop asking so many questions.”
I lift my chin, refusing to back down now. “I wouldn’t have to if I ever got any straight answers around here.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“That’s because no one will tell me,” I snap back.
A maid appears at the far end of the corridor and stops short when she spots us. She takes one look at us and immediately disappears through the nearest doorway. Rowan’s gaze flicks briefly in that direction before returning to me. “This is not the place or the time for any of that.”
A bitter smile pulls at my mouth. “Is there a place in this house where people actually tell the truth? Where is it? I’d love directions so I can go there.”
“Sofia.”
My name in his mouth sends a shiver rolling down my spine.
I hate that even as furious as I am, enough to slap that expression right off his face, I still feel heat coiling low in my gut. It spreads slowly, traitorous and molten under my skin, curling beneath the sharp edges of my anger until I can’t tell where one sensation ends and the other begins.
Somehow, my body mistakes this tension for something else. Something I absolutely refuse to examine under the bright, unforgiving light of reality.
This should repel me. Hell, it does repel me, how irritating this dance between us has become.
He is infuriating to deal with most days and impossible on others.
It would be so much easier if Rowan were simply cruel for the sake of enjoying denying me.
If there was satisfaction in his eyes every time he told me no or cut a conversation short or steered me away from doors I’m not supposed to open.
I could harden myself against that and turn this anger into something more useful.
But there never is.
His harshness feels more like a reflex than gratification for turning it on me and seeing me flinch from it.
It’s in these moments that I hate that small voice inside my head that believes he’s doing this and acting this way in order to protect me.
Not only because my uncle ordered him to but because some part of him genuinely thinks the truth might do more harm than good.
Rowan owes me nothing outside of whatever his orders from Ivan are forcing him to do, that much is obvious.
He did not ask for me to be placed under his guard.
If anything, he has made it painfully clear that he would rather be anywhere else, doing anything else than being stuck following me like a reluctant shadow.
Probably like hunting down the people responsible for my uncle’s attack.
I know I am an assignment, a burden he can’t escape until the order is given.
And yet every time he looks at me, I feel something between us…
change. It is subtle, but I’m starting to understand despite his best efforts to keep me at arm’s length that there is more beneath the surface of that blanket irritation.
Maybe I’m foolish enough to mistake duty for care.
Instead of finding rationality in that and pushing him away, it only makes the ache inside me feel more complicated.
I don’t know what to do with a man who frustrates me this badly and still makes me feel, in some inexplicable way, like I’m safest when he’s in the room.
The contradiction is unbearable.
He is the dog guarding my cage, snapping anytime I try to reach my hand outside the bars. He is one of the biggest culprits denying me the truth while also being one of the only people in this house who might understand exactly how dangerous that truth might be once the veil is lifted.
My hands remain clenched at my sides as I continue to stare up at him. If I don’t keep them there, I fear I might do something reckless. Like hit him or reach for him.
Both impulses feel equally catastrophic.
Rowan watches me, his expression flickering like he knows it too.
I can see the war waging under his skin and that only makes the heat in my stomach twist harder.
I want to make him react, to crack that brutal calm and see what lives beneath it.
To prove there is something human under all that obedience.
“I’m not a child,” I finally say.
His eyes darken slightly, though his face barely moves. “No. You’re not.”
The words land between us with a different kind of weight than before.
For one terrible second, I stop fighting the urge to reach for him and actually do it.
Every rational thought in my head begins screaming at once, frantic and useless against the buzzing under my skin.
This is Rowan, my guard. My uncle’s enforcer.
A man who has spent the last two weeks following me through this estate assigned to keep me contained.
I should not want to touch him. I should not want anything from him. But my fingers still rise, the distance between us disappearing in increments so small they feel excruciating until my hand hovers right over his chest, just shy of pressing the hard muscle.
He doesn’t move at first, his eyes staying fixed on mine. There is something in them now that looks strained, a flicker of hunger, maybe, buried so deep beneath that familiar mask of control that I can almost convince myself I imagined it.
I can see it in the faint rise and fall of his chest beneath my hand. Feel it in the charged stillness surrounding us. Stupidly, I think he won’t stop me.
I don’t know which one of us is more surprised when he does.
He shoves away from where he has cornered me, the movement sudden enough that I flinch.
My hand drops as he widens the gap between us until it feels cavernous.
He shakes his head harshly, as if trying to dislodge whatever thoughts had been moving around inside it.
It is a command aimed inward, snapping a leash around his own throat before the animal inside him can lunge forward.
“Lunch should be up soon,” he mutters, his body already turning away from me.
My face burns from mortification, humiliating enough to make my stomach twist hard with nausea.
I had actually reached for him like an idiot.
This impossible man who has given me nothing but refusals and restraint.
Worse, I thought he wanted me to. I thought I saw something in him that matched the reckless thing unfurling inside me.
His boots echo down the hallway as he retreats, each step drawing him farther from me until the sound stretches thin and then begins to swallow itself when he disappears around a corner. I stand there alone, frozen between anger and shame. The hallway feels enormous without him.