Page 174 of Marrying the Savage

“Yes.”

“Same as now, I imagine. Polite. Patient. He asked questions like he already knew the answers and was only checking if you were stupid.”

I laugh once despite myself. “That sounds like him.”

“You were close?”

The laugh disappears. “No.”

Arman waits.

I don’t know why I answer. Maybe because he’s not part of the house. Maybe because he knows Sergei but doesn’t belong to him. Maybe because I’m tired of carrying the story alone and pretending the only thing wrong with my life is a sudden marriage to a Bratva king.

“My parents died when I was young,” I say. “Car accident. Officially.”

“Officially,” Arman repeats.

I look at him. “In our world, that word does a lot of work.”

“Yes.”

“My uncle became my guardian. He didn’t raise me like a daughter. He raised me like a liability he was legally required to preserve until I became useful.”

Arman’s expression changes. Not pity. Good. I would hate pity from him. “How useful?”

“Very, apparently.” I look down at the ring tied to my finger. “He kept me away for years. Schools, tutors, houses that were never quite home. Enough comfort that no one could call it cruelty, enough control that I never forgot who paid for the comfort.”

“And then he brought you back.”

“When he needed Dmitri.”

“Ah, the infamous Antonov-Sokolov alliance.”

“Yes.”

“And you invited Damir Volodin to the wedding.”

“I was having a difficult week.”

Arman laughs, but softly. “That is one way to describe it.”

“I thought Damir would create a problem. I didn’t think he would become the problem.”

“Is he?”

I don’t answer. Because the answer keeps changing.

He is a problem. He’s also the only man who ever looked at me and seen a human with her own agency.

Arman watches my face. “That was not a no.”

“I hate perceptive men.”

“You married one.”

I don’t like that. I change the subject. “So my uncle gave you money. How does that become a rivalry with Damir?”

“Damir hates men he can’t place on a board.”