I shouldn’t be afraid of anything, especially not a woman’s rejection, but here I am, hiding in my own house because I’m terrified that if I lie down next to her, she’ll pull away from my touch.
The door creaks open, and I don’t even have to look up to know who it is. Mike walks in, his footsteps heavy on the hardwood. He’s been my right hand since we were boys, the only man who sees the person behind the title. He doesn’t say anything at first; he just walks over to the sideboard, pours himself a drink, and sits in the leather chair across from me.
“You look like hell, Razvan,” Mike says, his voice gravelly.
“I’m busy,” I growl, staring into the fire.
“You’re sulking,” he counters. “There’s a difference. You’ve been staring at that same stack of papers for three hours, and you haven’t turned a single page. It’s Lena, isn’t it?”
I slam the glass down on the desk, the liquid splashing over the rim. “She hates me, Mike. She sees a murderer every time she looks at me. I forced her into this. I dragged her into my world and expected her to just…what? Fall for me? I’ve done too many bad things to her. The dungeon, the threats, the marriage. It’s too late to right those wrongs.”
Mike leans forward, the firelight catching the scars on his knuckles. “Is it? You saved her son. You stayed up all night when the boy was sick. You’re providing for them, protecting them. You aren’t the same man who walked into that house months ago.”
“It doesn’t matter who I am now,” I say, my voice cracking. “She remembers who I was then. She remembers her father.”
“Then change the narrative,” Mike says firmly. “If you want her, truly want her, you have to be brave. You have to bare your heart and ask for the truth. You’re the Pakhan. You take what you want from the world, but you can’t take a woman’s love by force. You have to earn it. Go to her, Razvan. Ask her. Even if the answer kills you, at least you’ll know where you stand.”
“I’m afraid she doesn’t want me, Mike,” I admit, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat.
“Then find out,” he says. “Stop hiding in the dark.”
He leaves me alone with my thoughts, and I spend the rest of the night pacing the floor. Mike is right. I can’t live in this limbo anymore. I can’t keep watching her from the shadows, wondering if the distance between us is a mile or a light-year.
The next morning, the house feels suffocating. I find Lena in the solarium, sitting among the ferns and the glass walls. She’s reading a book to Theo, her voice soft and melodic, but as soon as she hears my boots on the stone floor, she stiffens. She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t even acknowledge I’m there. She’s avoiding me, just like she’s been doing since the dinner.
“Theo,” I say, my voice sounding louder than I intended in the quiet room. “Go find Lyosha. I think he has that wooden sword ready for you.”
Theo’s eyes light up. “Really?” He looks at Lena, who nods slowly, her lips pressed into a thin line. The boy scrambles off the chair and sprints out of the room, leaving the two of us in a silence so heavy I can barely breathe.
“Lena,” I say, stepping closer.
She stands up, clutching her book to her chest like a shield. “I should go check on his lunch. Maria was asking?—”
“Stop,” I say, moving to block her path. I corner her against a tall marble pedestal, my shadow falling over her. “Stop running. Stop looking through me as if I don’t exist. I want the truth, Lena. I want it now.”
She looks up at me, her eyes flashing with a sudden, violent heat. “The truth? You want the truth, Razvan?”
“Yes,” I demand, my hands curling into fists at my sides. “Tell me why you pull back. Tell me why you act like my touch is poison. I want to know why we can’t be what we were in St. Petersburg.”
Lena snaps. The book hits the floor with a heavy thud, and she steps into my space, her face inches from mine. “You wantto know why? Because I could never allow myself to love the man who killed my father! How dare you? How dare you think I would just forget? Every time you touch me, I feel his blood on my skin. Every time we sleep together, it eats me alive! I lie awake wondering how I can be so weak that I let the man who destroyed my family into my bed!”
I go completely still, the air leaving my lungs as if she’s physically driven a blade between my ribs. The hallway, the marble pedestal, the flickering shadows of the evening—it all fades into a dull, grey blur.
There is only Lena.
Her chest is heaving, her face flushed with a beautiful, devastating rage. She looks like a recording of a lightning strike—pure, destructive energy. And for the first time in my life, I am the one standing in the center of the storm, defenseless.
“I saw you!” she screams, her voice cracking with the force of her pain. “I saw you kill my innocent father! I saw the black suits, the guns. I saw him fall! You think because you saved Theo and you’re nice to me sometimes that I’ll just fall in love? I would die before I love you, Razvan! I would rather be back in that dungeon than give my heart to a murderer!”
“You saw me?” I whisper. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It’s thin. Brittle. The voice of a man watching his world collapse in real-time.
“I saw you!” she screams again, the sound echoing off the high ceilings like a physical blow. “I saw the black suits. I saw the guns. I saw him fall!”
In her mind, I am the bullet. I am the gun. I am the monster that ended her father’s life.
I reach out, my hand trembling—a weakness I would have executed a soldier for an hour ago. I want to touch her, to steady her, to tell her the truth. But as my fingers ghost near her arm, she flinches so violently it’s as if I’ve tried to burn her.
I pull my hand back, tucking it into a fist at my side. The rejection is a physical ache in my marrow.
