Page 130 of Marrying the Savage

My stomach twists.

Irina sees my face and speaks quickly, softer now. “I’m not saying he killed her.”

“But people say it.”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

She hesitates. That matters too.

“I believe,” she says carefully, “that grief turns people into strangers. And Damir was never easy to know, even before.”

“Before Elena died?”

“Before everything.”

I look at her. “Tell me.”

Her mouth tightens. “You asked,” she says.

“I know.”

“It doesn’t mean you will like hearing it.”

“I rarely like hearing anything in this house.”

Irina’s gaze drifts to the empty chair at the head of the table. Damir’s chair. I hate that I have already assigned it to him in my mind.

“They met when they were very young,” she says. “Younger than you are now. Elena came from an old family, not as powerful as the Volodins, but respected. Beautiful, educated, very controlled. The kind of woman every mother wanted her son to marry.”

“Did he love her?”

Irina looks at me. “Yes.”

Something in my chest folds inward.

Stupid. Absurd. Completely unreasonable.

Elena was his wife. Of course he loved her. What did I think? That he had emerged from the sea at forty-six years old fully formed, silver at the temples, untouched by any woman before me?

Still. The word hurts.

He loved her.

He loved her so much.

Irina continues, perhaps because I don’t know what to say. “They were married for years. Not easy years. Nothing with Damir is easy. But he loved her. Everyone knew that. Even when they fought, even when things became…” She stops.

“Became what?”

“Complicated.”

I almost laugh. That word. Men with guns use it to describe betrayals, murders, marriages, and probably breakfast orders.

“How did he change?” I ask.

I regret the question immediately. It sounds too revealing. Too hungry.