Page 132 of Merciless Daddy

No embarrassment. No detachment.

His touch remained intimate even after desire had stopped demanding anything.

He cleaned himself, brought water, and made me drink half the glass before he joined me.

“This is tyranny,” I murmured.

“Drink.”

I finished it.

“Good girl.”

Chapter 11

Salvatore

For two days, the war stayed beyond the lake.

It did not leave us. I was not stupid enough to believe that. Men still watched the tree line. Cars still came and went by routes nobody discussed at the table. Pietro called every few hours with updates that had too many questions in them.

But inside the house, Kiryl slept late. Tonio cooked too much food whenever he visited. Yelena laughed.

The first time I heard it from the kitchen, I stopped in the hall.

Kiryl had said something I could not catch. Yelena called him an idiot in Russian. He answered with a grin in his voice. Then she laughed, head tipped back, one hand pressed to her stomach.

Not the short laugh she used like a weapon.

This was unguarded.

I stood there longer than necessary, listening to the music she made.

Later, she caught me watching from the doorway.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. Just . . . relaxing.”

“You’re being strange.”

“Not the first time I have been told this.”

“By whom?”

“My entire family.”

She shrugged. “That tracks.”

She took a bite of toast. Kiryl sat across from her with a bowl of fruit, pretending not to study every movement between us.

The boy had become less afraid in forty-eight hours. Not relaxed. Nobody raised under Lev Sokolov relaxed quickly. But he had begun to occupy space. He asked for second coffee. He complained about Tonio’s eggs. He left books face down on the library sofa.

Small things, but important ones.

After breakfast, Yelena and Kiryl walked the lake path with two guards several yards behind them. The wind came hard off the water. Yelena wore a dark coat with the collar turned up. Kiryl had borrowed one of mine and looked younger inside it.

I watched them from the porch.