I make a small, involuntary whimper. It's not loud, but it's enough. Andrei goes still. Completely, utterly still, the knife frozen in place. Then he turns his head, and his eyes find mine across the distance.
For a moment, neither of us moves. We just stare at each other—me in my silky pajamas, barefoot and horrified, and him covered in someone else's blood, a knife in his hand.
His expression doesn't change. He doesn't show any emotion at all. He just looks at me, and I can't read what he's thinking—can't tell if he's angry or surprised, or something else entirely.
Then he straightens, says something sharp in Russian to someone I can't see, and starts walking toward me.
I should run, turn and sprint back to the house, lock myself in my room, and pretend this never happened. But I'm frozen, rooted to the spot. Unable to do anything except watch as he approaches, his stride unhurried and his expression unreadable.
He stops a few feet away from me, close enough that I can see the blood spattered across his forearms, the cold calculation in his eyes—the complete absence of the man I thought I saw last night.
"Go back inside, Liesl."
His voice is flat and empty. The same tone he used when he first interrogated me, when I was nothing more than a mistake his men had made.
"What are you doing?" The question comes out barely above a whisper.
"Winning a war." He tilts his head slightly, studying me. "Keeping you safe."
"By torturing someone?"
"By getting information." He takes a step closer, and I force myself not to back away. "Your father clearly doesn't give a shit about your safety. So I'm handling it my way."
The words land like a slap.My father. The war.The constant reminder that I'm here because of choices other people made, caught in the middle of something I never asked to be part of.
"Andrei—"
"Go. Back. Inside." Each word is clipped. Final. "Now."
I open my mouth to argue, but movement behind him catches my eye. Two of his men are standing near the outbuilding, watching us. One of them—young, maybe mid-twenties, with a scar across his cheek—is staring at me. Not at my face.
His gaze takes in my bare legs, all the way up to the bottom of my shorts, then the visible press of my breasts against the silky tank top. It's cool out, and I can feel my nipples pebblingagainst the material. He takes it all in, and his gaze is hungry, appreciative. It makes my skin crawl.
And I see the exact moment Andrei notices. One second, he's standing in front of me, telling me to go inside. The next, he's turning toward the man, looking to see where my gaze went, and then he sees the guard checking me out.
He crosses the distance to the guard in three strides, and before the man can react, before he can even register what's happening, Andrei has a knife in his hand. Not the same knife he was using inside. A different one—smaller, pulled from somewhere I didn't see.
He grabs the guard by the front of his shirt and drives the blade upward, through the man's eye.
The sound is wet and horrible. A softsquelchfollowed by a choked gasp and a low, gasping moan of pain. The guard's body goes rigid, then limp, and Andrei lets him drop to the ground like discarded trash.
I can't breathe. I stare at the body on the ground, the knife still embedded in the man's skull as blood pools on the stone path.
He killed him. Just like that. No hesitation. No warning. One moment the guard was alive, and the next he was dead, and Andrei didn't even blink.
The other guard has gone pale, his eyes wide and his hands raised slightly like he's trying to show he's not a threat. Andrei turns to him, and his voice is cold enough to freeze blood. "Get rid of this. Then get back to your post."
"Yes,pakhan." The words are rushed, terrified.
Andrei doesn't wait for a response. He turns back to me, his hand closing around my upper arm, and starts walking. I stumble after him, my legs barely working, my mind still stuck on the image of the knife driving upward and the guard's body crumpling.
"Andrei—"
"Not now."
"You just?—"
"I saidnot now, Liesl." He's pulling me back toward the main house, his grip on my arm unbreakable, his pace quick enough that I have to half-jog to keep up. We reach the door. He opens it, pushes me inside, follows me in, and slams it shut behind us.
