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“Do you think she knows that?” It was a question I’d asked myself a hundred times. What was going through Molly’s head? Was she confident in my ability to find her? Was she waiting for me? Worst of all . . . did she blame me for all of it?
“Of course, she knows. You are Kirill Viktorovich Chernov. No one can hide from you for long.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I’ll tell you a secret; I’m just an ordinary man.”
Olga wrinkled her nose as if she didn’t care for that humble assessment of the man she had decided was a superhero. “Not exactly ordinary. You are the man who loves her . . . that makes you stronger than any other.”
I didn’t have the words to respond. It was true. I loved Molly, and I always would.
I started to reply when my phone lit up and vibrated across the table.“Slyshayu,”I answered immediately. Nikolai might be calling for a ransom. If he told me to come and exchange myself for Mallory, I would do it in a heartbeat.
“Kirill? Kirill Chernov? It’s Sofia De Sanctis.”
* * *
I metSofia at the same place we had dinner with our fathers. She looked tired as she ordered soup and sank back in her seat. Her make-up was also conspicuously thick.
“What happened?” I asked as I forced down some pasta to fill the gnawing hole in my belly. I’d lost track of when I’d last eaten.
She raised a brow at me in question. I gestured toward her face, and she reddened.
“Nothing. An accident at home,” she muttered. “Besides, that’s not why I wanted to speak to you. I thought you should know my father isn’t happy about the delays in the engagement. I don’t know if you’re still planning to find a way out of this for both of us, but time is short. It might already be too late to do so without consequences.”
“Any consequence that comes down on me, I’ll bear it. Don’t worry about it.”
“It might not be just on you.” She let out a trembling sigh, and the part of me able to feel pity for broken women shuddered. “Antonio sees it as my fault if I cannot attract a husband.”
I thumped my fist on the table so hard that the cutlery jumped. “Blyat!” I swore darkly.“What the fuck is it with my father and yours?” I muttered as I tried to soothe my frayed temper. “This is my fault. I waited too long. I was distracted, and I didn’t want to rock the boat before I was ready, and now, everything is fucked.”
“We could go through with it,” Sofia said quietly. “I know you have someone else. It’s okay. I don’t mind. We could go through with it so—” She stopped and collected herself, but not before a tear slipped from her eye and wore a path through her heavy cover-up, revealing the purple bruise around her eye like a tiny stripe.
“So it won’t hurt anymore?” I supplied for her.
She nodded.
I reached out and touched her hand, wrapping my fingers around it. “Sofia, if circumstances were different, I wouldn’t hesitate. But I can’t. I will marry one woman and one woman only, even if I have to kill my father and brother to do it and even if I die immediately after. I’m a man hurtling toward his end with no idea how I’m going to stop before I hit the wall, but I’ve made my peace with that. I’m sorry, I can’t save you. I can’t save myself, either. I have only one shot at saving someone, and it’s her.”
Sofia was quiet; her dark eyes fixed on me. Then she smiled, and it was a beautiful, heartbreaking thing. “She’s a lucky woman.”
“She’d disagree,” I countered. “She’d say that meeting me was probably the worst thing that ever happened to her, depending on what my brother has planned.”
Sofia frowned, and her gaze turned musing. “Nikolai is a strange bird. He’s much smarter than anyone gives him credit for, and he likes to keep it that way.” She ate some soup and winced as it touched her lips.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, he’s not as unhinged and erratic as you think. It’s an act. He’s perfectly capable of controlling himself when he wants to. He’s not who everyone thinks he is, and that only makes him more dangerous. But I don’t think he’d hurt your girl,” Sofia said.
I stared hard at her, shocked at this revelation into my half-brother’s character I never saw coming.
“He doesn’t kill women. Surely you know that.” Sofia continued.
I thought furiously through the past, sorting over memories I’d mostly forgotten and didn’t care to remember. I’d never killed or hurt a woman, either. I never would. But Nikolai? He had always given the impression that nothing was off the table when it came to bloodshed and mayhem.
“He could have hurt me in return for scarring up his handsome face, but he didn’t. He held me when I cried and told me it was okay in case I felt guilty about it.” Sofia chuckled reluctantly.
I couldn’t wrap my head around this news. It didn’t fit with the version of the past that Nikolai himself had delivered.“But that night at dinner—”
“I told you; he keeps up the act. Around you and your father, it’s the thickest. You’d never see through, and he doesn’t want you to.”
