“I have work,” he says. “Nina will show you the room.”
“Your room.”
“Our room,” he corrects.
He turns before I can respond and walks down the hall, leaving me standing alone at the top of the stairs with my ring heavy on my hand and Larisa’s words still crawling under my skin.
You are in a Volkov house now.
I look down the hallway where Yaromir disappeared.
Three days ago, I agreed to a marriage of convenience. Today, I understand the first lesson.
Convenience does not mean comfort.
And in this house, even the bed is a battlefield.
14
YAROMIR
I don’t goto bed.
The house quiets around me long before midnight. Doors close. Staff footsteps fade from the corridors. The fire in my study burns low, then lower, until it’s only red at the edges. Still, I remain at my desk.
There is work to do. There’s always work to do.
I should care about that.
Idocare. Just not enough.
My attention keeps moving upstairs. To my bedroom.
To Anya.
My wife is in my room tonight.
That fact sits under my skin like a blade.
She’s probably asleep by now. Or pretending to be. Either way, she’s behind my door, in my house, with my name on her hand, and I’m sitting downstairs like a coward pretending paperwork has suddenly become urgent.
I sign one document without reading it.
Then I throw the pen down. “Pathetic,” I mutter. The word sounds too loud in the empty study.
I stand and pour myself a drink I don’t need. The whiskey burns, but it does nothing to settle me.
Three days ago, I had her on this desk. Her mouth swollen from mine. Her skirt pushed up. Her thighs shaking around my hand. I can still remember the heat of her through thin fabric, the way she tried to hold back sounds her body was already making for me.
I stopped because she was cornered. Because she was exhausted.
Because I’m not my father.
Tonight, she is still all those things.
And now she is my wife.
A knock comes at the door, and I know who it is before she enters.
