Page 65 of Marrying the Savage

“That may become the same thing in this house.”

I almost smile again. Sofia’s mouth is trouble. I knew it in the restaurant. I knew it when she looked at my glove as if it had personally offended her. I knew it when she stood in a destroyed church and told me she would marry me if I stopped the insanity.

I knew it last night when I mentioned consummation and she waved her hand in my face as if she could banish centuries of marriage law by sheer annoyance.

Medieval paperwork sex, she called it.

Ridiculous woman.

I had not intended to laugh.

I nearly failed.

“She is frightened,” Mikhail says.

“Yes.”

“And angry.”

“Obviously.”

“And she believes you may have murdered your wife.”

I turn back to the window. The sea strikes the rocks again.

“Then she is learning quickly.”

Mikhail is silent for a moment. He knows better than to ask about Elena. People have questions, but I never answer them. Let them think what they think, even my finest lieutenant.

“You didn’t murder Elena,” he says.

I don’t answer.

That’s the problem with truth.

“No,” I say eventually. “I didn’t make her fall.”

Mikhail’s face hardens. “That is not the same as killing her.”

“Since when are we dealing with semantics?” I ask.

“And what does Sofia believe?”

I think of her in my bedroom, standing in a ruined white dress, staring at the ring on her finger as if it weighed more than metal. I think of the fear in her face when I opened the drawer, quickly hidden, but not quickly enough. I think of the way she stiffened when I said she would have staff, guards, rules.

Sofia believes she has traded one monster for another.

She is not wrong.

But I don’t like that she is afraid of me for the wrong reason.

“She will believe what she sees,” I say.

“Then be careful what you show her.”

I move back to the conference table and pick up the file Lev left behind. Photographs. Names. Locations. Sergei’s men moving in pairs instead of groups, which means he is communicating quietly. Sokolov’s family already sending doctors to Dmitri’s estate. Three old family heads requesting confirmation of the marriage.

“Will the marriage certificate will be filed?” he asks.