I look up.
He's leaning against the doorframe, tall, broad-chested, dark hair. One eye is a sharp, stunning green, the kind of green that doesn't look real. The other is milky white, clouded and still, bisected by a scar that runs from his brow through the ruined eye and down his cheekbone.
He's watching me with the good eye.
I don't hesitate.
"Yes."
Surprise flickers across his face, and is buried fast. He wasn't expecting me to agree. I can see it in the way his jaw tightens, the way his shoulders shift like he's bracing for a hit that didn't come.
I briefly wonder why, but the relief that this is now a tangible option pushes all my questions away.
He is not the Baron. He is Saoirse's son, and Saoirse raised good men under all the Bratva layers, and right now, that is worth more to me than anything.
He steps into the room, walks right up to where I’m sitting on the edge of Saoirse’s sofa, and bends down so his face is only inches from mine. I meet his eyes. One vibrant and alive, the other lifeless and milk white.
"Then I suppose we have a deal," he says.
Connor
I'm standing close enough to count the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, close enough to see the tear tracks she tried to wipe away before anyone noticed, and this woman just looked me dead in the face and saidyeswithout so much as a flinch.
I don't know what to do with that.
I straighten up and take a step back because I need the distance. I need to not be breathing her in while I try to figure out what the hell just happened in the last ten minutes of my life.
Ten minutes ago, I was in the kitchen with Iris, letting her beat me at an argument about whether the estate needs a new terrace. She was winning, because Iris always wins, and I was laughing in a way I only ever do with her. Then I heard the front door open, and my mother's voice shift into that soft, careful tone she reserves for people who are hurting.
I went to look.
And there she was. Standing in the foyer with her coat half on and her hands shaking and her dark hair falling out of whatever she'd tied it back in. Beautiful. Not the polished kind of beautiful you see at the events my brother drags us to. The wrecked kind. The kind that comes from running out of options and showing up anyway.
I didn't know who she was. I just knew I couldn't stop looking.
Liam appeared at my shoulder before I could say a word. He gave me that look he's been perfecting since we were kids, the one that saysstand down, I've got this.We followed her and Ma to the conservatory and stood outside the door like a pair of eavesdroppers, which is exactly what we were.
I listened to her tell my mother that a seventy-three-year-old man with three dead wives wants her in exchange for passage through his territory. I listened to her voice shake and then steady itself. I listened to her ask if she was too late to marry one of us.
One of us.
Any of us.
She didn't care which one. She just needed a name and a ring and the protection that comes with being an Orlov wife. And something in my chest, something I've spent years keeping locked down tight, cracked open just enough to let in a thought I had no business thinking.
Me.
Pick me.
Which is insane. Because no one picks me. Not like this. Not when there are other options, other brothers, men whose faces don't make women look away and then pretend they weren't looking away. I know what I am. I've known since I was nineteen and a deal in Galway went sideways, and the man I was collecting from decided a broken bottle was a better negotiating tool than cash. I won the fight. I beat him so badly they had to wire his jaw shut. But he got my eye first, and no amount of winning changes that.
The jagged scar runs from my left brow, through the eye that used to match the right one, and down to the corner of my mouth. The eye itself is still there. It just doesn't work anymore.Milky and pale and wrong, like something dead left in a living face. I stopped looking in mirrors years ago. I know what I look like. I don't need the reminder.
When Da was alive, he told me it was a badge of honor. That it proved I was a survivor. Da was full of shit about a lot of things, but he meant that one, and I loved him for it. It doesn't change the fact that I catch people staring and then not staring, which is worse. The active effort to look normal around me. The careful way women keep their eyes fixed on my right side, like if they just commit to the good half, they can pretend the rest doesn't exist.
Liam walked into the conservatory first. I stayed in the hall and listened to him be practical and measured and right about everything. Contact Diomid. Do this properly. Don't start a war.
And then Ma said Anya wasn't leaving, and I knew this was my window.
