But Vera puts her hand on my arm.
I stop and look down at her hand and then up at her face, and she removes it immediately, so quickly, it's as if she's been burned by my sight alone. Then she takes half a step back. Something genuine crosses her expression for the first time since I walked through the door—the very correct understanding of how close she just came to something unpleasant.
"If you're standing between me and what I came here for," I tell her quietly, "you'll find yourself in exactly the same position she's in. I don't make exceptions for anyone in this house."
Vera opens her mouth and closes it like a guppy sucking water, and I watch her throat work as she swallows. Behind her, one of the daughters has gone completely still and the other is studying the floor. These women are quick studies, unlike Mila, who snatched that ring right off my fucking finger without even flinching.
I turn back to the staircase. "Mila. You have thirty seconds before I start opening doors."
There's a pause. Then footsteps from above, unhurried, and Mila Radin appears at the top of the stairs with her shoulders squaredand her jaw set. Her hands are behind her body, and she looks down her nose at me.
The composure she held half an hour ago is still there, but now with an expression of indignation on her face that only makes my blood boil more. She doesn’t even have the smarts to cower like her family. She descends the stairs with her chin level and her eyes on me, and she crosses the foyer and stops two feet away.
I reach out and take hold of her hair, forcing her head to arc sideways and her jaw to open in a tiny but silent gasp.
I get a fist of it at the back of her head and I turn toward the door because the lesson she needs to learn should not be taught in her stepmother's foyer where everyone can watch. Outside of the fact that I don't want witnesses, this job is messy and the cleanup required would cost me more than I want to waste on a soulless vermin like her.
"Stop." Her voice is tight but it holds. "There's something you need to read."
"I'm not here to read anything," I growl, now having closed half the distance between where I grabbed her and the door, and Vera hasn't once spoken a protest. Odd for a stepmother to allow a powerful man like me into her home to confiscate one of her daughters and walk out without saying a word…
"Read it," Mila spits as she pushes back against me. Then she gets her hand up and holds the letter in front of me. The paper is yellowed and the handwriting at the top edge is old. "Right fucking now."
I don't let go of her hair, but I stop moving and I look at the letter and take it from her hand.
"Yegor," I grumble when I see him at the doorway waiting. He's followed me like any good soldier would, and he steps forward.
I transfer my grip from Mila's hair to Yegor’s hand on her arm, and he takes hold of her while I snatch the letter she's holding out of her grasp and glance up at Vera, who stands at rapt attention. It's like suddenly, what was supposed to be a transaction has become a spectacle, and I'm in the spotlight.
"What is it?" Vera asks me, and now instead of the performance, I see genuine interest. I have no clue what it is, and I'm ready to ball it up and throw it away until I see the wax seal, the clover and vine, and it makes every hair on my body bristle.
"Please," Mila says, nodding as she rubs her head where I pulled her hair. As she does, I see the ring on her finger flash in the light and scowl at her.
I don't have to read it to know what it is, and it sickens me to unfurl it and let my eyes sweep across the handwritten page.
I've never seen it, but I've heard of its existence and swore an oath to my father to pay attention when it was presented. It's dated from a period when I was six years old, during months when the Kuzin family's enemies were aggressive enough that I was moved between locations for my own safety.
There were three days during that time that I don't remember clearly. Three days when the people responsible for keeping me safe made a mistake and I was found, and would've been killed, if not for the kindness of a stranger.
My father told me later, when I was old enough to understand the weight of it, that a man named Milos had come across me during those three days and kept me alive until our people could reach me. That this had been written down and sealed asa formal debt owed by the Kuzin family. That when someone bearing proof of it came forward, that debt had to be honored.
I've known about this debt my entire adult life. I've lived under it without ever having to contend with it because the letter existed somewhere I couldn't see it, and what you can't see you can, for practical purposes, ignore.
I look up from the paper.
Mila's watching me and her eyes haven't dropped for a second, and though Yegor has a firm grip on her, she still has that level chin and those narrowed eyes. It's infuriating and the letter only makes my blood boil hotter.
"My grandfather was Milos," she says quietly, in a controlled tone and entirely without apology. "The debt passed to my mother when he died and to me when she died." This only makes me angrier and Mila feistier. She pulls from Yegor's grip and tugs her dress straight. "Get out of my house."
Now the rage burns hotter.
I've built everything I have on the principle that a man who doesn't honor his word is a man who has nothing worth keeping. The Kuzin name means something today because of that principle. Everyone in this city, and in greater Russia, knows that I am a man of my word. If I say it, I will do it, because I don't say anything I don't mean.
And this complicates everything.
"Where did you get this?" I say quietly, though the growl is not soft.
"I told you. My grandfather was Milos Plichinko… The ring used to seal this belonged to my grandfather, and to my father when he married my mother. That's why Vera told me to steal it?—"
