Even though I know she isn’t.
"Is your sister okay?"
Her voice is quiet. Steady. Carefully controlled. She is looking at me with genuine concern.
The question catches me off guard.
I turn my head slowly. "She will be."
Mila, my youngest sister, and a beacon of light in an otherwise overcast world, came to me last night, tears streaming quietly down her freshly bruised face.
Sergei had promised her a future and marriage, and she had fallen for his charms. When he made advances, and Mila refused because she wanted my blessing for the marriage first, he lost his temper. Smacked her. Started to tear at her clothes. She managed to fight him off, which makes him a lucky bastard, because if he had raped my sister I would have done more than have one of my men shoot him in the head.
Matilda nods once, accepting it without probing further. Then after a pause, she says, "I’m sorry."
I almost laugh.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," I tell her. "Your father is lucky he’s still breathing. He raised Sergei wrong. Shielded him. Excused him. That kind of failure deserves the pain he will feel at knowing that ultimately, he is the reason for his son’s death."
Her fingers tighten in the fabric of my jacket. "It won’t teach him anything."
I glance at her. There’s no bitterness in her tone. Just certainty.
"Men like my father don’t learn. They just demand and expect and resent."
Interesting.
Silence fills the space between us again, and I let myself think about what comes next.
I don’t negotiate lightly. I brought her with me. That means responsibility. It also means deciding what happens next.
She’s been raised Bratva. Knows the rules, the language, the violence beneath the polish. She’s likely untouched. Men like herfather guard their daughters’ purity and treat it like currency. She would understand obedience and structure. The shadows and the darkness.
She would understand me.
The thought sharpens something low and unwelcome in my gut.
Admiration, I name it, maybe even curiosity. But nothing more.
Anything resembling attraction is a liability. I press it down, bury it beneath the familiar weight of command and consequence. The truth is I’ve never felt attracted enough to any woman before to make her anything more than one night. Then even that got boring.
I wasn’t expecting Matilda to be anything more than a bratty daughter to a dysfunctional family. I didn’t expect her to show such tenderness to her sister, to show such indifference to her brother. I didn’t expect her to have enough backbone to stand up to her entire family.
"What happened to you?" I finally ask, because people don’t become like that overnight.
She turns to me slightly and shrugs her shoulders slowly.
"Actions have consequences. I suppose I’d just had too many consequences for Sergei’s actions, and I think I’d had enough." She drags her bottom lip between her teeth and worries it.
"I don’t remember him ever being anything other than bad. Always up to mischief and nastiness, always plotting and conniving. He thought he was invincible and I thought he needed to be taught a lesson. That lesson could have been anything, at any point, but it never came. Not until he messed with you and the consequence was death."
It’s dark in the car. Dark enough that I can only make out the shape of her pale face and the puddle of her nightdress over her knees.
"You came with nothing but what you’re wearing." It’s an observation. I don’t know why I even said it out loud.
"I don’t want anything from that life. From now on, I want to build my life on my terms. I’ll work hard, around the house maybe, or even in the business, if you think there’s anything I could help with…" she trails off, worrying her bottom lip again.
I reach up and press my thumb against her chin, pulling down until she releases her lip. A dark smear blooms on the pale pink flesh.
