18. Lena
LENA
The morning air in the compound is thin and biting, a sharp contrast to the suffocating heat of the bedroom I just fled.
Every muscle in my body is screaming, a dull, throbbing reminder of the way Razvan reclaimed me in the dark of our suite.
I can still feel the ghost of his hands on my skin, the phantom weight of him pinning me down, making me beg for a release that felt like a betrayal.
I hate him for it. I hate that he is the man who murdered my father, the man who kidnapped me and threw me into a damp dungeon for days until I forgot the color of the sky. He is the hand that delivered every woe I own, yet my body is a traitor that hums whenever he enters a room.
I walk toward the training wing, my steps echoing on the stone floor.
My heart is beating hard, but my mind is a cold, clear blade.
Last night, he told me no when I asked him to teach me to fight.
He wants me in the light, a porcelain doll kept on a high shelf where the blood can’t reach.
He wants to keep me helpless so I never have the means to strike back at the monster who destroyed my life.
But I’m done being a victim. Being a doll.
I push open the heavy double doors of the gym.
The smell of sweat, old leather, and gun oil hits me instantly.
Lyosha is alone in the center of the room, obliterating a heavy bag.
He’s a mountain of a man, forty years of violence etched into the blunt planes of his face.
He’s the Pakhan’s shadow, but he’s the only one who doesn’t look at me like a broken thing.
The bag groans under a hook that would have shattered my ribs.
He stops, the chain rattling, and turns.
He wipes sweat from his forehead with a taped hand and stares.
“The Pakhan is in the study, Lena,” he says, his voice like grinding stones. “You took a wrong turn.”
“I’m exactly where I meant to be, Lyosha. I want you to teach me how to fight.”
He stills, narrowing his eyes. “Does Razvan know you’re here?”
“He told me no. He thinks his protection is enough. He thinks I should just sit pretty while men like Borodin leer at me in clubs and enemies wait at the gates. I’m tired of being the only one in this house who can’t hold a weapon.”
Lyosha lets out a low, rough bark of a laugh. He leans against the bag, looking me up and down. “He told you no, did he? Probably because he knows you’d use it on him first. You’ve got that look in your eye—the one Razvan gets right before he breaks someone’s neck.”
“Then help me make it a reality,” I say, stepping closer. “I want to be able to defend myself. I want to be able to protect Theo if the walls of this place ever fall.”
Lyosha studies me for a long beat. A slow, genuine grin spreads across his face, one that makes him look less like an enforcer and more like a man who simply loves a good complication. “You really want to do this? It’s not going to be pretty, Lena. You’ll have bruises that won’t hide under silk.”
“I’ve had bruises that didn’t hide under anything,” I remind him, thinking of the dungeon floor. “I don’t care about the pain.”
“Alright,” Lyosha says, reaching for a pair of sparring mitts. “On one condition. If you actually get good, you have to promise to use a left hook on Razvan at least once. I’d pay a year’s salary to see him have to explain a black eye to the council.”
I feel a genuine grin tug at my lips—the first one in a long time. “That’s been the plan since I walked through the door.”
“Good girl. Pick up those wraps. If you’re going to hit something, you don’t want to break your wrists on the first go.”
The training is brutal. Lyosha has no patience for “soft” versions of combat.
Within minutes, my knuckles are raw and my lungs are burning.
He doesn’t go easy on me. He moves with a frightening speed for a man his size, forcing me to react, to move, to stop thinking and start feeling the rhythm of the violence.
“Again!” he barks. “Don’t look at my hands, look at my shoulders. The punch starts in your feet, Lena. Twist. Explode. Think about the man who put you in the dungeon. Think about the man who took everything. Kill him.”
A red veil drops over my vision. I scream—a raw, jagged sound—and unleash a flurry of strikes. I’m not a woman in a silk dress anymore. I’m the daughter of a murdered man. I’m a prisoner fighting for a way out. I’m hitting the mitts, but in my mind I’m hitting the man who holds my leash.
The air in the room suddenly changes. It’s a shift in pressure so violent it feels like the oxygen has been sucked out of the gym.
Lyosha freezes. He drops the mitts, his expression shifting from a delighted teacher to a wary soldier in a heartbeat.
I spin around, my chest heaving, sweat dripping down my nose.
Razvan is standing ten feet away. He’s still in his charcoal suit pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing the dark ink of the serpent on his wrist—the same mark that haunted my father’s final moments.
He stands there, a pillar of lethal, frozen energy.
He doesn’t speak, but the weight of his presence is a physical blow, a silence so heavy it makes the sound of my own heartbeat feel like a deafening roar.
“Out, Lyosha,” Razvan says. The words are quiet, but they carry the finality of a closing coffin lid.
Lyosha doesn’t hesitate. He knows the look on his friend’s face. He glances at me once, a silent warning and vanishes through the side door.
The silence that follows is thick with everything we haven’t said since last night. I refuse to look down. I refuse to be the submissive wife he expects. I raise my chin, my hands still curled into fists.
“I told you no,” Razvan says, his voice a low, jagged rasp.
“And I told you I wasn’t asking.”
He moves. It’s not a rush; it’s the slow, inevitable advance of a landslide.
He stops inches from me, his presence an overwhelming wall of power.
“You think you can learn to survive in an hour with an enforcer? You want to learn how to fight, Lena? You want to know what it feels like when someone truly intends to break you?”
Before I can answer, he pulls me toward the center of the mat.
He doesn’t let go. He steps behind me, his chest pressing into my back, his arm sliding around my waist to pull me flush against him.
“This is the first lesson,” he growls into my ear.
“In my world, nobody stands in front of you and waits for you to hit them. They take. They pin. They hold.”
He hooks his leg behind mine and sweeps. I gasp as I hit the mat, but he doesn’t let me fall away. He follows me down, pinning my wrists above my head with one hand. His weight is crushing, a deliberate reminder of the physical reality between us.
“Get out,” he commands.
I struggle, my body bucking beneath his, my heels digging into the mat. But he’s a mountain. He’s the man who took my freedom. He shifts his weight, his knee pressing into the space between my thighs, his other hand coming up to cup my jaw, forcing me to look at him.
“You’re using strength you don’t have,” he says, his gaze burning into mine. “Use your leverage. Use the fact that I want you.”
The words send a jolt of electricity straight to my core.
The air in the room is suddenly too hot, the scent of his expensive soap and raw masculinity filling my senses.
This isn’t sparring. This is a continuation of the war we started in the car.
I shift my hips, trying to find an opening, but the movement only brings us closer.
The friction of my leggings against his suit pants is an agony of awareness.
I can see the pulse leaping in his neck, the way his pupils are blown wide.
“You’re not teaching me,” I hiss, my breath coming in short, ragged bursts. “You’re just showing me you can hold me down.”
“I’m showing you that in a fight, there is no fair,” he rasps. He leans down, his lips inches from mine. “There is only who survives. And if you want to survive me, you have to be willing to do things that make you recoil.”
He releases my wrists but stays draped over me.
His hand slides down my side, his fingers splaying over my ribs, tracing the line of my waist with a slow, agonizing deliberation.
He’s pretending this is a lesson. He’s pretending his touch is purely instructional, but I can feel the heat of his palm through my shirt and I know he’s remembering the way I begged for him last night.
I reach up, my hands finding his shoulders, my fingers digging into the muscle.
I should push. I should fight. But my body is melting into the mat, the adrenaline of the sparring session curdling into a heavy, liquid desire that I hate myself for feeling.
I want him to finish what he started, even as I want to wrap my fingers around his throat.
“Show me,” I whisper, the defiance in my voice replaced by a raw, desperate need that has me arching my back into his touch.
Razvan’s jaw locks. For a second, I think he’s going to kiss me right there on the gym floor, to claim me in front of the ghosts of his ancestors.
His thumb brushes my lower lip, pulling it down, his eyes fixed on my mouth with a hunger that mirrors my own traitorous want. Then, the mask snaps back into place.
He pushes himself off me in one fluid motion, standing up and smoothing his shirt as if nothing had happened. The sudden absence of his heat leaves me shivering on the cold mat.
“Again tomorrow,” he says, his voice cold and professional, though his chest is still heaving. “Five a.m. If you’re a second late, I’ll have Lyosha lock the gym doors.”
He doesn’t help me up. He turns and walks out of the room, his stride long and purposeful.
I lie on the mat, staring at the fluorescent lights until they blur.
My knuckles ache. My ribs ache. But the emptiness in my chest—the fact that he left me wanting him even after everything he’s done—is the sharpest pain of all.
He thinks he’s won. He thinks he’s brought me back into his orbit by taking over the training. I sit up, wiping a stray tear of frustration from my cheek. I look at the door he just walked through. He will teach me how to fight like a Volkov. He’ll teach me the “precise” way to end a life.
But I still need a weapon he doesn’t see coming. The tension isn’t gone; it’s just shifted, walking out of the room with both of us, leaving the air behind us heavy and unresolved.