I suck in a deep breath, forcefully dragging my eyes away from the sight as I whisper, “Where are they?”
Mikhail opens his mouth to speak, but a tall, familiar shadow falls over the doorway, and he clamps his mouth shut, then quietly moves aside with his dismantled gun.
The figure at the door steps into the safe house, and my hand flies to my chest.
“Oh my God…”
Leonid steps over the threshold. He’s a sight torn straight out of a nightmare. There are dark purple bruises around his eyes. He’s battered and splattered with a horrific amount of fresh blood that, unlike Mikhail’s, seems like some of it might be his.
His grips his ribs through his torn leather jacket. His knuckles are split raw, and yet he still finds a way to be as commanding and terrifying as ever.
He doesn’t look like a man who just survived death—he looks like the god of death itself, radiating a lethal, dark energy that makes every man in the room briefly drop their gaze.
Tatiana clings to his side, her face pale with exhaustion. Tears stream down her face, and when she wipes them away, I spot the bright red markings around her wrist.
My heart squeezes. I can’t imagine the terror she suffered at Vasili’s hands.
Her frame shakes so violently she can barely keep her footing. Leonid keeps a heavy, protective arm anchored around her shoulders, keeping her against his side.
Without breaking his stride, he glances toward the darker corner where Ace and Mikhail help one of the men into a chair.
“Ace,” Leonid barks, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that cuts through the room with authority. He gives what I assume is a swift, commanding order in fluent, rapid Russian, before ending it with English. “Tati needs medical care. Take her now.”
The younger man, with bloody scratch marks on his cheeks and a busted lip, steps forward into the light to gently guide her toward the back wing of the safe house. Tatiana lets go of her brother’s sleeve, and their footsteps fade down the corridor.
Then the heavy silence of the room collapses entirely on me.
Leonid turns his head. Steel gray, piercing eyes lock onto mine from across the expanse of the room, cutting right through the space between us.
My breath catches in my throat at the intensity of his gaze, and my heart does that familiar, erratic dance against my ribs as he begins to walk forward.
He moves with a slow, deliberate pace, his boots leaving faint crimson smudges on the polished floor. As he gets closer, the stench of metallic copper precedes him, wrapping around me before he even reaches my side.
I stand frozen, trapped in the sheer gravity of this moment and everything we know it signifies.
His jaw ticks and his fingers flex at his sides. There’s overwhelming anger in his eyes, but also conflict. I recognize it. I’ve livedwith it from the first moment I set my eyes on him.
The tension between us thickens until it’s suffocating. Unable to bear it any longer, I step forward, and he shocks me by moving back.
I frown. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You’re moving away from me and…and you’re hurt. Let me take a look.”
“It’s a surface wound. It’s not deep. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
He sighs and drags a hand through his hair. “Ptichka, look, it’s best we talk after we get back to the house. You need to eat, and I should probably take a shower.”
“I need to eat? At a time like this? A shower…Leo…” My voice breaks and my heart stings. “I don’t…I don’t understand. You can come close. You can touch me, you know that, right? It’s me.”
“I know it’s you.” His eyes glaze over with an iciness that terribly contrasts the warmth I’ve slowly grown used to. “I know it’s you, Elena, and that’s why you have to see it. You have to seeme,allof me, for you to understand.”
“I have, and I—”
“You think you have, but you have no fucking idea how far this goes,” he grits out, barely able to control the venom seeping into his tone. “I shot him.”
