Chapter 2
The morning unfolded the way mornings always did. Fresh sheets in three guest rooms. The music room tidied. The library shelves dusted.
Damon never left his office. She knew because the door stayed closed and the guards in the corridor hadn’t shifted an inch. He never ate lunch with anyone. Not once.
Around two, Mrs. Petrova sent her to carry a stack of clean towels from the service wing to the linen closet in the west wing. The fastest route cut through the service corridor — a cramped, low-ceiling passage between the east and west wings on the second floor. Barely lit. Designed so the staff could move through the house unseen. It was so narrow that two people couldn’t walk past each other without pressing against the wall.
She moved quickly, the towels clutched to her chest. The corridor bent into an L near its center, right where a built-in cabinet met a wall sconce that had never worked properly.
That was where she found him.
Damon, coming from the other end.
There was no reason for him to be in that corridor. No one in the family ever used it. But there he was, and there she was, and there was no way to pass without their bodies touching.
She froze. He froze.
The sconce sputtered twice and went dark, leaving nothing but the thin wash of daylight from a window at the far end. She raised the stack of towels higher, as though linen could protect her from whatever this was.
He didn’t step aside. He didn’t look at her — not directly. His face was level with hers, but his gaze drifted past her shoulder to some fixed point on the wall behind her, as if meeting her eyes was something he couldn’t permit himself.
His breath landed softly on her hair. It lingered there. Warm. Unhurried. Long enough for her to know he wasn’t going to act. And long enough for her to know he wanted to.
Neither of them spoke.
Then he turned and walked away. No word. No gesture. No backward glance. His stride was even and controlled, and he rounded the curve of the corridor as if the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened at all.
She stayed rooted to the spot, gripping the towels, her pulse hammering in her ears louder than it had any right to.
The hallway felt suddenly freezing. Or maybe she was the one who had gone cold.
That night, she lay down with wet hair, closed her eyes, and ordered herself not to think. Not about the warmth of his hand around her wrist. Not about the way his gaze had dropped to her mouth in the corridor. Not about the silence that said more than any word could have.
Sleep was close. She was almost there.
Then the sound broke through. A heavy engine. Tires chewing gravel on the driveway. One vehicle, then a second, then a third. Brakes shrieked. Doors cracked open and slammed.
She sat up. The clock read 11:47.
Boots on the garage stairs. Muffled voices. Someone barked an order in Russian. Someone answered. And then rising above everything else, Kirill’s voice — sharp, tight — carrying a single word that traveled through the ventilation duct and into her room.
“Doctor.”
She didn’t move. The entire house seemed to go still around her, and she understood in that moment that someone upstairs had come home wounded.
The intercom buzzed at four minutes past two in the morning. She wasn’t asleep. She had been flat on her back for the past two hours, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling while her ear stayed pressed to the ventilation duct.
Alina Kir’s voice came through flat. No preamble. “Bring the big kit upstairs. Now.”
He hung up before she could respond.
The big kit lived in a locked cabinet at the far end of the servants’ corridor. Only three people in the house had the key. It was the Pakhan’s personal first aid supply — larger, better stocked, more serious than anything you’d find in a drugstore. She had only been asked to bring it up once before. The night Kirill showed up with a gash across his face.
If they were calling for it again, whatever had happened tonight was worse.
She threw a robe over her nightgown, stepped into her slippers, and retrieved the key from its hiding place behind the kitchen clock. Her hands were calm. She couldn’t explain it. Something inside her had already decided that trembling was a luxury the night wouldn’t allow.
Kirill met her at the door before she could knock.
“He won’t go to a hospital,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve already pushed.”
“What happened?”
“Knife wound. Right flank. Missed the organs, hit deep muscle. But it’s bad.”
She crossed the Persian rug with the kit held tight against her. The door to the attached bathroom stood cracked open in the far corner. She stopped at the threshold.
Damon sat on the rim of the marble bathtub. No shoes. No shirt. His gray trousers were soaked with blood along the right side. The wound on his flank, just above his waistline, was an open gash about three inches long. Deep enough to steal the air from her lungs.
He raised his head. His face was clean, his hair pushed back wet. His pale gray eyes held the same unshakable composure as always — as if a knife to his side ranked somewhere below lukewarm coffee on his list of annoyances.
“Shut the door,” he said.
She did.
She knelt on the bath mat, unlatched the kit, and laid out what she needed along the edge of the tub. Mrs. Petrova had trained her to suture skin during her first year in the house. At the Vulkoff mansion, a maid with that skill was worth twice her weight.
She cleaned the wound, injected the local anesthetic, and waited for it to take hold. He was watching her. She could feel his gaze move from the crown of her head to her face, then to her hands. She didn’t look up.
The needle entered the skin. Close to the edge. Shallow enough. Her hand stayed steady through every pass. One stitch. Two. Three. She counted them in silence.
On the fifth stitch, he spoke.
“You’re very good at this, Alina.”
The first time in two years he had said her name out loud.
Her hand stopped. Not for long. A heartbeat maybe. But long enough for both of them to notice.
“Thank you,” she said.
“That wasn’t a compliment. It was an observation.”
She finished the sutures. Spread ointment. Pressed the gauze down. Sealed it with tape. Exactly the way she had been taught.
When she looked up, he was still in the same position. Hands on his knees. Eyes on her.
She began packing the supplies back into the kit. Her hands were still steady.
May you like
And then his hand came — unhurried, without warning. His fingers closed around her wrist. The same one. The right one. The same wrist he had caught that morning to keep the tray from falling.
But this time, his eyes weren’t fixed on paperwork. They were fixed on hers.
