Page 133 of Marrying the Savage

A car sounds somewhere outside. Far below, near the front gates. Both of us turn toward the window. My heart betrays me immediately.

Damir?

Her expression shifts, not pity exactly, but close enough to make me hate myself a little.

“It may not be him,” she says.

“I know.” I stand anyway. Too quickly, my chair scraping against the floor.

For a second, I imagine him walking in again, blood on his sleeve, eyes cold and tired, carrying some new disaster with him. I imagine demanding why he let me wear Elena’s clothes. I imagine asking whether he loved her. Whether he killed her. Whether he thought of her when he touched me.

Then I imagine him giving me that blank, locked expression.

No. Not now.

I force myself to breathe.

“I’m going to change,” I say.

Irina nods.

I leave the morning room with my spine straight, because I have been trained to exit rooms while falling apart internally. Another one of my uncle’s useful little gifts. But halfway up the stairs, my hand curls into the fabric of the gray dress.

Elena’s dress.

My skin prickles beneath it.

19

SOFIA

By the next morning, I have arrived at a conclusion.

I am an idiot.

Not in the charming, impulsive, heroine-of-my-own-life way. Not in the fun way where I make one questionable choice and it becomes a story Anya and I laugh about over drinks later.

No. I am a spectacular idiot.

I am incapable of making normal mistakes. Other women send a rude text to the wrong person. I invite a Bratva Pakhan to my wedding and accidentally marry him.

I spend half the morning pacing my room. The other half, I spend glaring at the dresses Marina has left for me as if they personally betrayed me. They hang in the wardrobe, soft and elegant and expensive, all in colors that make sense now. Cream. Gray. Ivory. Deep blue. Clothes chosen for another woman’s body, another woman’s life, another woman’s husband.

Elena. Her name sits in the room with me.

I don’t wear any of them. Instead, I put on the least offensive thing I can find: black trousers from a pile of new clothes someone must have bought yesterday, a plain white blouse, and a long dark cardigan that thankfully doesn’t smell like old cedar, ghosts, or marital trauma.

I tie my hair back. Then I untie it.

Then I tie it back again because apparently, I am now the kind of woman who expresses emotional collapse through hairstyles.

Damir doesn’t come to breakfast.

Good. I don’t want to see him. If I see him, I might ask why he let me wear Elena’s dress.

If I ask, he might answer.

If he answers, I may find out something I don’t want to know. Or worse, he may not answer at all. That’s more likely.