Page 43 of Marrying the Savage

His mouth tightens because we both know my silence is the answer.

“I know what you’re doing,” he says.

I lift my chin. “What?”

He stares at me, and for one strange second, I think he’s going to say it. That I’m choosing Damir because I can’t stomach Dmitri. That I’m using this disaster the way he used me, as leverage. That I would rather throw myself into his enemy’s hands than walk meekly into the life he chose for me.

But he doesn’t say any of that.

His gaze drops to my neck. To the place where Damir bit me.

My skin heats before I can stop it.

My uncle’s face shifts with something dark and almost painful. “I may be a monster,” he says quietly, “but he is worse.”

The words hit harder because he doesn’t sound angry now. He sounds certain.

“Do you know he killed his wife?”

8

SOFIA

For a moment, everything inside me goes still.

I look over my shoulder. Damir stands near the aisle with his men around him, black suit sharp against crushed white flowers, one cuff marked faintly with blood. His eyes are on us. On me. He looks like a man who knows exactly what my uncle is telling me and has already decided it will not change anything.

Maybe it should.

Maybe I should be terrified.

Maybe I am.

But then I look back at my uncle and think of Dmitri’s hand around mine. Dmitri’s voice saying I will adjust. Dmitri calling me filthy in front of an entire church while my uncle stood silent because defending me was less convenient than calculating damage.

I don’t say what comes into my head.

I’ll take my chances with him.

Instead, I say, “There is no other way to get out of this in one piece.”

His eyes harden. “You marry him and you are dead to this family.”

A tired laugh slips out of me. “Uncle, I was already dead to this family. You just bought me a dress for the funeral.”

For a second, his expression breaks. Not much. Just enough.

Then Damir steps into the space between us and the rest of the church. “That is enough.”

My uncle’s eyes cut to him. “This is between me and my niece.”

“No,” Damir says. “It stopped being between you when you sold her.”

My uncle’s jaw clenches.

Damir holds out his hand to me. I stare at it. His palm is large and bare, slightly calloused. Of course, my traitorous body chooses this moment to remember his hand in my hair, his fingers at my chin, his mouth at my throat.

I place my hand in his, and his fingers close around mine.