Page 110 of Marrying the Savage

Mikhail moves to block me before Damir even finishes saying his name.

I turn on my heels, go around Nikolai instead, duck under the arm of a guard reaching too late, and follow Damir down the hall.

“Sofia,” Mikhail calls.

“I am wearing borrowed shoes and rage,” I say without looking back. “Don’t test me.”

Damir stops outside a room near the end of the corridor and turns. I nearly collide with him. He catches me by the waist with his good hand. For one second, all my anger scatters into useless sparks because his hand is warm and firm and exactly where it should not be if I want to think clearly.

Then I see the blood on his sleeve again, and my fear returns harder.

“You are impossible,” he says.

“You married me.”

“That argument will become tiresome.”

“Not to me.”

His eyes hold mine. Up close, I see the cut on his cheek is shallow but angry, a thin line with blood drying at the edge. His lower lip is split. There’s soot or dirt along his collar. His shirt is torn near his left arm, where fresh blood has soaked through the fabric in a dark, ugly patch.

I make a sound before I can stop it. Not quite a gasp. Not quite a hiss. Something furious and horrified.

His gaze sharpens. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like it matters.”

My chest tightens.

For a moment, neither of us speaks. The hall is full of distant voices, footsteps, the low murmur of men trying to organize the aftermath of whatever violence he has brought back with him. But right here, between us, everything is strangely quiet.

“It does,” I say. The words come out before I can protect them.

Damir goes still.

So do I.

Excellent. Wonderful. I have apparently chosen emotional honesty as today’s self-destruction method.

He opens the door behind him and pulls me inside.

The room is some kind of private medical room, or at least a room men like him use instead of hospitals when they can’t explain bullet wounds to normal doctors. Cabinets line one wall. A leather examination chair sits beneath a harsh overhead lamp. There are metal trays, bandages, antiseptic, and one exhausted-looking doctor already washing his hands near the sink.

The doctor glances up, sees me, and freezes.

Damir says something in Russian too fast for me to catch. The doctor nods and leaves immediately.

“Did you just dismiss medical help because I followed you?” I demand.

“I dismissed him because you were about to argue in front of him.”

“I can argue in front of anyone.”

“I know.”

“That was not a compliment.”