I blink. “I’m sorry?”
Her smile deepens the smallest bit. “It is refreshing.”
I have absolutely no idea what to say to that. Luckily, I’m saved from answering by the door opening again.
I turn, expecting Aleksei. It isn’t him.
The man who walks in is older, tall, and carries himself with that effortless kind of menace rich men and violent men both seem to perfect. His suit is immaculate. His hair silver at the temples. His face…
My stomach drops. He has Aleksei’s mouth.
His father.
He stops just inside the room and lets his gaze sweep over me slowly, taking in everything with one glance. The smile that follows is polished and wrong.
“Well,” he says. “What do we have here?”
The words are light. The tone is not.
His mother’s face changes instantly. Whatever softness was there before hardens into something weary and guarded.
The man steps farther into the room, all smooth confidence and cold interest. “You must be the new one.”
I don’t answer. Mostly because every instinct I have is suddenly telling me not to.
He looks amused by my silence. “Pretty, too. That is unfortunate.”
My pulse starts to pound. Before I can decide whether that was an insult, a threat, or simply the kind of sentence a deeply evil person says for sport, another voice cuts across the room like a blade.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Aleksei.
He’s in the doorway now, and the shift in him is terrifying. Not loud. Not dramatic. Worse. Every line of him goes still and dangerous at once, his attention locking on the older man with the kind of focus that promises blood.
The older man turns slowly, smile widening by a fraction. “Alyosha.”
“Don’t call me that.”
The room suddenly feels too small for both of them. Too charged. Too full of old damage.
Aleksei moves inside without taking his eyes off the man. “You were told to stay away from her room.”
“I was concerned.”
“No, you weren’t.”
His father glances at the bed, at his wife, then back at me, as if assessing where everyone stands in some game only he understands. “I came to see your mother. I did not realize you’d brought company.”
The last word lands on me like something sticky.
I resist the urge to step backward. Aleksei notices anyway, and steps between us.
The motion is so automatic, so total, that it takes my breath for a second. He doesn’t even look at me while he does it. He just places his body there like a wall, like the decision was made before anyone else caught up.
His father sees that. And smiles.
That smile is the worst thing I’ve seen all day.
