"It's an observation." He sets down the empty glass. "She's got you drinking from her hand like Mikhail's lost puppy. Except the water bowl is full of poison."
I stand, and we're face to face now. Mirror images of Volkov blood, of shared history, of grief that's calcified into something sharp enough to cut.
"I'm only going to say this once." My voice drops to that register that makes grown men piss themselves. "Sofia is under my protection. Mine. If you touch her, if you threaten her, if you so much as look at her wrong, I will forget we're family."
"You'd kill me? For her?"
My hand finds the knife at my belt, the one that's tasted blood for lesser offenses. Kaz's eyes track the movement, and I see him calculate distances, angles, probabilities.
The answer comes without thought, pure truth. "I'd kill anyone for her."
The words hang between us, irreversible. I see the moment Kaz truly understands what's happened, what I've become.
He laughs, soft and sad. "The Rosetti girl collects Volkov men like trophies. First Misha, now you."
"Don't touch her," I growl. "Or you'll find out just how much I mean that."
"I won't touch her. You have my word." He holds up a hand in mock surrender. "But I won't protect her either. And when the men decide she's a liability, when someone else makes a move, don't expect me to stop them."
I leave Kaz's quarters without another word, my pulse thundering in my ears. The hallway stretches before me, and everywhere I look, I see the ghosts of what we used to be. Three boys with wooden swords, swearing blood oaths we didn't understand.
The men I pass nod respectfully, but I catch it now. The glances that linger, the whispers that stop when I'm near.They're watching, judging, wondering if their pakhan has gone soft over enemy pussy.
Kaz isn't wrong about that part. The doubt spreads through my ranks like blood in water.
I stop at Mikhail's portrait in the main hallway. Painted when he was seventeen, already being groomed for leadership. Those warm eyes that could see the best in everyone, even our father.
"Promise me you'll take care of them, Alyosha. If anything happens to me."
The memory cuts deep. The night before the massacre, when Mikhail had been strange and distant. I'd thought he was nervous about his upcoming exams.
Now I wonder what else he knew. What he was hiding.
My phone buzzes. A text from the driver:Arrived safely. She's inside now.
Sofia. Surrounded by her brothers, her family, the people I'm supposed to destroy. Sitting at their table while carrying my secrets, my touch still marking her skin. I can still feel her nails raking down my back.
Her scent ambushes me the second I enter my quarters.
It saturates everything. That subtle perfume mixed with sex, with her arousal from when I made her come twice before breakfast. She's been gone less than an hour and already her absence feels like missing organs.
I strip off my jacket, pour vodka but don't drink it. The glass sweats in my hand while I stare at the bed where we slept tangled together. The pillow still holds the indent of her head. I press my face to it like a desperate man, breathing in the scent of her hair.
The compound feels like a tomb without her. Too quiet despite being full of armed men. Just walls and weapons and old ghosts that won't stop whispering about betrayal.
The truth tears through me: what I feel for her has a name I've been refusing to speak, even in my own mind.
Love.
The admission feels like betrayal to Mikhail, to my mother dying without revenge, to every promise I've made. But denying it would be worse. It would be cowardice.
Not just want her. Not just need her. Love her with the kind of desperation that makes men burn down empires.
When did it happen? When she smiled at me over breakfast? When she stood up to Kaz? When she deleted intel that could save her family because she couldn't betray me?
Or was it always there, growing like Mikhail's carefully tended trees, one small cut at a time until the shape was undeniable?
I lie on the bed fully dressed, my cock already half-hard from her scent alone. Pathetic. In a few hours, she'll walk back through that door. Or she won't. Maybe her brothers will convince her to stay. Maybe she'll remember who she's supposed to hate.
