Page 203 of Marrying the Savage

His eyes flick toward Nikolai.

Wrong direction. Nikolai will not save him.

No one will.

“You sent him,” I say.

“I didn’t.”

“But you knew.”

His silence is short. Enough.

My grip tightens. He chokes once.

Sofia’s face cuts through my anger. The way she shut down when I said I had to leave. The way she looked away and accepted disappointment like it had arrived on schedule. The way she expected me to choose this before I chose her.

My hand loosens. I hate that it does.

I love her.

The thought is not dramatic. It’s not soft. It’s a fact, and once it’s there, everything else makes sense. The last three days. The city locked down. The men waiting on orders. The way my house felt wrong without her in it. The way I stopped myself at her throat last night and changed my hands before she had to ask.

I love Sofia.

That is why Sergei remains alive. Not because he deserves it. Because she deserves better than being left in a clinic while I come back covered in her uncle’s blood.

I release him. Sergei bends forward, coughing, one hand braced against the wall.

No one moves.

I step back. “You will give me the name.”

He straightens slowly. His collar is crushed. His face is still red. He looks older now.

“I told you⁠—”

“Bullshit,” I bellow.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I take your life apart while you are still alive to watch.”

His jaw tightens. I step closer again, and this time he can’t hide that he wants to step back.

“I’ll go through every man standing between you and me, not matter how many, until there are none left,” I tell him.

Sergei says nothing. He doesn’t need to.

He believes me.

I turn to leave.

Sergei’s voice is rough now, but steady. “I spent years raising her.”

I stop and turn to face him. Sergei straightens slowly, one hand still at his throat, his breathing not quite even. His collar is crushed, his face red where my hand was, but his eyes have sharpened again. He is afraid. He is also angry enough to forget some of that fear.

“She was a child when her parents died,” he says. “Do you remember that part, Damir, or have you reduced her whole life to the version that begins when you walked into a church and decided she belonged to you?”