Page 221 of Marrying the Savage

He smiles a little, but there’s nothing warm in it. His hair is disordered, his shirt untucked on one side, and the man standing in front of me no longer looks like the easygoing cousin who teased Damir at dinner and carried Maksim half-asleep through the house. He looks like someone who has been waiting for the house to empty and has finally run out of reasons to pretend.

“The important question,” he says, taking one slow step closer, “is why.”

I look past him toward the stairs. He sees that too.

The staircase is behind him. The main floor is below. If I can get there, if I can reach the entrance hall or the service corridor or even one of the remaining guards, I might live long enough for Damir to come back. There are only two or three men downstairs, maybe fewer after everyone rushed out with Maksim, but men with guns are still better than a locked room and Grigori blocking the way with one in his hand.

I only need to get past him. That’s all.

“Where is everyone?” I ask, keeping my voice as steady as I can.

Grigori tilts his head. “Gone where they were supposed to go.”

“Maksim?”

Something ugly moves across his face when I say his son’s name, and for one second the mask slips enough that I see real anger beneath it. “Don’t use his name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you care.”

My stomach tightens, but I keep my hand away from it. I can’t let him look there too much. I can’t let him remember the baby every second, because whatever he has come here to do, my child is part of the reason.

“I do care,” I say.

He laughs under his breath. “That’s what you are good at, isn’t it? You make them believe you care, and then suddenly everyone rearranges their life around you.”

I take another small step to the side, not toward the stairs yet, just enough to make him adjust. He does.

“You still haven’t told me where everyone is,” I say.

“Damir’s life is in danger, or at least that’s what everyone believes now, so his men are where they always are when something smells wrong. Around him.” Grigori tuts softly, like a man correcting a careless child. “Very touching, really. All that loyalty gathered around one man who doesn’t give a shit about them.”

My mouth goes dry. “What did you do?”

“I made sure the servants were sent where they were useful. The kitchen had an issue. The east wing needed clearing. The guards who should have stayed here were reassigned because my son is sick and everyone in this family runs when Maksim is involved.” His gaze drops briefly to my stomach, and this time I can’t stop myself from covering it. “There are two men downstairs now, maybe three if Nikolai’s replacement has not left yet, but they will not hear you from this corridor.”

I force myself not to look at the study door behind me.

The words go cold through me.

I take another step back, but the hallway gives me nothing. A wall on one side, Damir’s study behind me, the terrace corridor farther down, and Grigori standing between me and the stairs with a gun he holds too comfortably.

I need time. Time for Damir to realize something is wrong. Time for someone downstairs to come up. Time for Grigori to make a mistake.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “You have Maksim. You have Irina. You have Damir’s trust. Why would you risk all of that?”

His face changes at the mention of trust. “There it is,” he says. “Trust.”

He takes another step toward me, and I retreat the same distance. Slow. Careful. If I run too soon, he will catch me before I reach the stairs. If I wait too long, he may decide he is finished talking.

“You think Damir trusted me because I am family,” he says. “He trusted me because I survived. After the fire, after the funerals, after everyone who mattered was buried or burned, I was still here. Kirill was here. A few cousins were left. A few men. Enough to patch together a family and call it loyalty.”

His voice stays calm, which makes it worse.

“But it was never the same,” he continues. “You would not understand that. You came into this house and saw power. Rooms. Guards. Money. Men waiting for orders. You didn’t see the empty chairs.”

I think of Damir standing in the hallway after telling me about Elena. I think of his hand covering mine, his voice flat when he said he had not been there. I think of the family he lost before I ever met him, and for one horrible second I understand exactly why Grigori knows where to hurt him.