They took him out through the side door.
His voice faded down the hall.
Then the hallway went quiet.
No one in the room moved for several seconds.
Nadia’s breath shook once.
I turned to her.
Petya stood beside her, face pale, fists open now. He looked from the empty doorway to me with the blunt understanding of a young man realizing danger hadn’t ended because someone shouted louder. The Sorins had protected his sister. Now he would have to become the kind of man who didn’t make her protection necessary.
“Petya,” I said.
He straightened. “Yes.”
He didn’t call me sir. He didn’t call me Vadim. He had no idea what to call me, and for once, he’d had the sense not to guess.
“You’ll stay under my protection until I say the risk has passed. You’ll work where Lev places you. You’ll repay your sister with every honest choice you make from this day forward,because there is no amount of money large enough to repay what she was willing to lose for you.”
Petya’s throat moved. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t. You’ll understand after time has cost you enough pride to make room for sense.”
Nadia looked down.
Her mouth curved for half a second.
Petya saw it and nearly broke.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Whatever job. Whatever rules. I’ll do it.”
Nadia reached for his hand.
He took it.
Mikhail watched them, his expression unreadable. Then he looked at me. “You’ll marry her quickly.”
Nadia’s head lifted.
I met my father’s gaze. “Yes.”
“Not because scandal requires it.”
“No.”
“Say why.”
The old bastard.
Even half-ill, he couldn’t resist making a room into a test.
I turned to Nadia instead of answering him.
She stood between her brother and my table, in the coat I’d ordered for movement, with her dark hair loose around her shoulders and her eyes still bright from refusing the man who had tried to own her. She was pale from fear and exhaustion, but her chin stayed lifted. She’d stopped my hand when violence began serving Gennady’s hunger for attention instead of her safety.
I walked to her and stopped close enough that only she could decide whether to touch me.
