My jaw tightens. “I’m not trying to be like him.”
He holds my gaze a beat longer, then relents with a tired sigh. “Get some sleep. Someone will bring you breakfast in the morning. Just don’t make trouble tonight, alright?”
I nod, trying to look as unmoved as he expects. He kills the flashlight, glances back over his shoulder one last time, then shuts the door, leaving me in the thick hush of the powerless mansion.
I blow out what’s left of the candle, slipping beneath the covers. In the dark, my thoughts spiral—questions about Lukyan, about myself, about the strange, dangerous gravity that pulls us together even as everything else falls apart.
Nikolia’s skepticism lingers in my mind, but so does the warmth of Lukyan’s hand at my waist.
I lie awake, caught between longing and fear, trying to convince myself that I don’t care at all.
Chapter Twelve - Lukyan
The night is colder than usual as I drive back from the warehouse on the river. Blood and rain mingle, soaking through my shirt and sticking it to my skin. I leave the car at the gate, too tired to wait for anyone to open it.
My boots leave muddy prints on the marble, but I don’t care. I shoulder past the guards without a word; they scatter at the look in my eyes.
My left arm throbs. I hold it close to my ribs, hiding the worst of the wound under a torn sleeve. There’s more blood than there should be—most of it isn’t mine, but enough is. I taste iron on the back of my tongue and force myself upright as I make my way to my office.
The mansion is quiet, power humming again, the storm finally fading. My reflection in the glass is a mess: hair plastered to my skull, a line of blood down my cheek, my shirt shredded and sticking to a wound just above the elbow.
The meeting was supposed to be a warning, a line drawn in the mud between my crew and Ivan Belyaev’s. Instead, it ended with bodies on the floor, my own men dragging me out while sirens wailed in the distance. Ivan won’t be sending spies again, if he’s breathing at all. But victory is thin comfort tonight.
I collapse into the leather chair behind my desk, jaw clenched against the ache that pulses up my arm. The smell of gunpowder and wet earth lingers, mixing with the antiseptic tang of spilled whiskey on the table.
I ignore the blood running down to my wrist, focusing on the steady drumbeat of pain. I’ve survived worse. I will again.
Footsteps echo in the hall. I expect one of the men—Nikolai, maybe, with questions I don’t want to answer—but the door opens and it’s Clara.
Clara stands framed in the doorway, hair pulled back in a messy knot, her expression shifting between horror and something softer, something I can’t name. I brace for her to shrink away, to cover her mouth, to accuse me of being the monster I am. She doesn’t. She takes one look at my arm, then disappears down the hall.
I try to shout after her to leave me alone, but exhaustion sticks the words in my throat. I close my eyes, blood seeping between my fingers, breath growing shallow. I hear her come back—quick steps, determined. She sets a battered first aid kit on the desk, flipping it open with hands that only tremble a little.
“Let me see,” she mutters, voice thick with annoyance, or maybe nerves. “It’s already filthy. You want it infected?”
I start to push her away. “I don’t need—”
She cuts me off. “Hold still, Lukyan.”
It’s the first time she’s said my name like that. My protest fades.
She kneels beside the chair, hands moving with more confidence than I expect. She peels back the ruined sleeve, brow furrowed as she inspects the wound—a long, ugly slash, already clotting at the edges. She soaks a cloth with antiseptic, biting her lip as she cleans the blood away. Her hands are steady, even as the muscles in her jaw jump with every hiss of pain from me.
I watch her, unable to look away. She’s close enough that I can see the faint freckles across her nose, the concentration in her eyes. Her hair falls loose around her face, damp from the humidity still clinging to the house. She’s trembling, butnot from fear—from focus, from determination, from something that feels dangerously like care.
When our eyes meet, something shifts between us. The walls I keep so carefully built start to crumble, just for a second.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say, voice low, rough. “Like I’m something you can fix.”
She doesn’t answer. She just keeps working, pressing a clean pad to the wound, wrapping it tight with a bandage she found in the bottom of the kit. The touch of her hands burns through the fog of pain, lighting every nerve in my arm.
I grit my teeth, not because it hurts, but because I want more than her careful mercy.
“You’re going to bruise,” she says quietly, tucking the end of the bandage into itself with a neat, practiced twist. “You should rest.”
I almost laugh. “Resting isn’t something men like me get to do.”
She looks up at me, something like a challenge in her eyes. “Even men like you bleed.”
