Page 6 of Marrying the Savage

My uncle’s eyes flick toward him in warning.

Damir’s gaze shifts to my fiancé with the mild inconvenience of a man noticing mud on his shoe. “Sokolov,” he says. “Still confusing noise with courage.”

A laugh threatens the back of my throat so suddenly that I have to lower my eyes to my dessert plate.

That is unfortunate.

I don’t want to like anything about this man. I know nothing about him except that he is dangerous, older, feared, and apparently capable of making Dmitri look like a child wearing his father’s suit.

Unfortunately, that last part is very enjoyable.

Dmitri’s jaw tightens. “You’re far from your territory.”

“Am I?” Volodin asks, a challenge in his voice.

My uncle steps slightly in front of the table, blocking more of me from Damir’s view than necessary. “This is a private lunch.”

“I can see that.”

“Then you can leave.”

Damir glances toward the table, toward the wine, the folder, the three of us arranged like the world’s least joyful family portrait. “I am meeting someone. He appears to be late.”

“Wait elsewhere.”

Dmitri gives a short laugh. “Careful, Sergei. He might think you’re afraid of him.”

My uncle doesn’t look at him. “Be quiet.”

That gets my attention.

So does the fact that Dmitri obeys, though not happily.

I look at my uncle more carefully. His face is composed, but there is a rigidity to him I rarely see. Sergei Antonov is not easily unsettled. He has eaten dinner beside men who tried to kill him the following week. He has smiled through betrayals, funerals, negotiations, and threats disguised as toasts.

But Damir Volodin standing twenty feet away makes him look as if an old wound has started bleeding beneath his suit.

Hatred, I realize. The kind that has history behind it.

Damir’s gaze moves past him again and returns to me. It lasts only a second, maybe two, but my skin seems to register it before my mind does. I feel it at my throat, my wrists, the curve of my knees beneath the table. My body, apparently, has no loyalty whatsoever.

Dmitri notices. His expression hardens. “This is my fiancée.”

Damir doesn’t look away from me immediately. When he finally does, it’s with the same insulting calm he gives everything else.

“I didn’t ask.”

The words are quiet enough to be polite and rude enough to be unforgivable.

Dmitri steps forward, but my uncle’s hand shifts slightly, stopping him without touching him. That tiny movement tells me more than any explanation could.

My uncle does not want Dmitri provoking Damir.

Not here. Maybe not anywhere.

Dmitri sees the warning too, and because he is Dmitri, it only makes him more determined to prove he doesn’t need it. His gaze drops to the wedding folder still open on the table, and I can almost see the petty little thought forming behind his eyes.

“You haven’t heard, then?” he says.