Blood in the Water

Xander’s pov

She was still standing over me, chest heaving, eyes blazing with a fury that could have burned cities to ash, and I should have been afraid, because any sane man would have been, but all I felt was a dark and shameless pride.

“You are smiling,” Kira hissed. “You are actually smiling.”

“You have a powerful kick, Zolotse.” I touched my jaw, which ached, and my ribs, which screamed, and my mouth curved wider anyway.

“Do not call me that.” She stepped closer, small fists clenched, her cheeks flushed and her curves rising and falling with every furious breath. “You left me at the altar. You let them mock me and humiliate me, and now I find you standing on two legs after I spent a week pitying the cripple? Explain yourself, Grisha, or I swear I will kick you again.”

“The disguise kept me alive.” I rose slowly, letting her see every inch of me as I unfolded to my full height, and she stepped back without looking away. “The moment my enemies believed I was weak, they stopped watching me. They stopped plotting. They stopped trying to bury me.”

“And what about me? What about what they did to me in that church?”

“My father interfered. I ordered the ceremony kept quiet to shield you, but he wanted to send a message to your family, and you were caught in the middle.” I took another step, and this time she did not retreat, so close now that I could feel the heat of her body through the thin silk of her dress. “I should have stood beside you and dared the whole world to laugh.”

“Then why did you not?”

“Because a man in my position cannot afford to want anything.” My voice dropped, rough and low. “And I wanted you the moment I saw you.”

Her lips parted. For one suspended heartbeat I thought she might slap me, and I thought she might kiss me, and I would have taken either one gladly, but she only swallowed and lifted her chin. “You do not get to say things like that and expect me to forget the church.”

“I do not expect you to forget anything. I expect you to survive.” I stepped back before I did something foolish. “From this moment you will have guards around you, every hour of every day.”

“I am not a prisoner,” she snapped. “I am not a piece of property you can lock away.”

“You are my wife, and someone is watching you.” I was already at the door. “I am not walking away, Kira. I am making sure that when I return, you are still breathing.”

By the time lunch was served I had stationed guards at every entrance, put eyes on every window and had the staff vetted twice, and I sat at the head of the dining room in the wheelchair with the old mask back in place, a ghost of a man under a silk blanket, while Kira sat across from me with her back straight and her eyes lowered, playing the broken bride beautifully. I knew better. I had felt the fire in her hands.

A silver platter arrived with honey-glazed duck, fresh bread and a glass of red wine, and a sleek gray cat slipped between the table legs and wound itself around her ankles, one of the strays my father tolerated and never acknowledged. Kira smiled, a real smile, soft and unguarded, and she cut a piece of duck and let it fall.

The cat devoured it. Then it stopped and swayed, and a horrible choking sound tore out of it as its claws raked a desperate arc across the marble, and in three heartbeats it lay twisted and still with its eyes open and its mouth frozen in a silent scream.

Kira screamed once and then went silent so suddenly that the silence frightened me more. She stood with her hands flat against the white linen, knuckles bloodless, staring at the animal with an expression I could not read, a fury so cold it looked almost like grief.

Every nerve in my body begged me to rise. I wanted to cross the room, pull her into my arms and carry her out of that house, but the servants were watching, the guards were watching, and the disguise held me in the chair like iron shackles. I gripped the armrests until the wood groaned.

Nikolai was at my shoulder before I saw him move. “Not yet, sir,” he murmured, his hand firm and grounding, and then he turned to the room and raised his voice. “Nobody moves. Nobody speaks. Nobody leaves.”

A chair scraped at the back of the room.

A footman broke from the line of servants, shoving a maid aside so hard that her tray crashed and scattered silver across the marble, and he sprinted for the servants’ entrance with his coat flapping behind him. Two of Nikolai’s men lunged after him and were too far away, and I watched his hand close around the door handle.

“Anton!” Nikolai’s voice cracked like a whip, and in the same breath he vaulted the corner of the table, snatched a crystal decanter from the sideboard and hurled it. It struck the footman between the shoulder blades and exploded in glass and wine, and the man stumbled with a cry before Nikolai hit him and drove him into the doorframe hard enough to rattle the paintings on the wall.

The footman twisted like a snake, slammed an elbow into Nikolai’s jaw and came up with a short blade from his sleeve. My legs trembled with the need to stand, and for one terrible second I felt the disguise begin to crack.

Kira moved first. She snatched a carving knife from the table and crossed the floor faster than I would have believed possible, her heels ringing against the marble, and when the footman lunged at Nikolai she caught his wrist, wrenched it back until the blade clattered away, and slammed him against the wall with her forearm across his throat and the knife beneath his chin.

“Do not,” she said, breathing hard, “move.”

“Mrs. Volkov,” Nikolai said carefully, wiping blood from his lip. “I will take him from here.”

“No.” She did not look away from the man’s face. “Who sent you?”

“I do not know what you mean,” the footman gasped. “I ran because I was afraid, please…”

The knife drew a thin red line along his skin. “Try again.”

“I cannot,” he whispered. “They will kill my family.”

“And I will kill you,” she said softly, “and I will not need a reason.” Her voice was steady, far too steady, and the servants pressed back against the walls as if she had become something they did not recognize. “Who sent you?”

His eyes darted toward me and back to her, and his lips trembled and said nothing. Nikolai caught her wrist with a gentleness I had rarely seen from him. “He will talk,” he said quietly. “Not here, and not like this. Let my men have him.”

For a long moment she did not move. Then she lowered the knife, and two guards dragged the footman away with his boots scraping through the broken glass while Nikolai gave the order to seal the house, and the room emptied until only the three of us remained with the small body on the floor.

“Someone tried to kill me,” Kira said. “In this house, at this table, with this food. And my husband has nothing to say?”

“He cannot speak right now,” Nikolai answered. “But he is listening.”

“He is always listening.” She laughed, a broken and bitter sound. “A ghost in a chair while someone poisons his wife.”

The words struck me like bullets but I dared not flinch.

“What do you want us to do?” Nikolai asked.

She lifted her chin, and her eyes burned dry and bright. “I do not want arrests. I do not want answers in a courtroom. I want every one of them found and brought to me, and I want to watch the light leave their eyes.”

Nikolai glanced at me, and I held his gaze, unable to nod, unable to speak, but what I wanted must have shown, because he bowed his head. “As you wish.”

Kira crossed to me then and leaned down until her face was inches from mine, close enough that I could smell her perfume and the faint iron of the wine she had spilled. She studied me as though she could see through the mask, and her voice dropped to a whisper meant for no one else. “You are not what you seem, and neither am I. One day you will tell me everything, and when you do, I will decide whether you are worth saving.”

She straightened, and the doors behind her burst open.

Heels struck the marble like gunshots. A woman strode in flanked by two armed guards, tall and elegant, her dark hair swept back and her lips painted red, a black suit cut sharply to her figure, and she took in the broken glass, the spilled wine, the dead cat and the woman standing over it with a knife, and she smiled.

“I see the honeymoon has already begun,” she said, her voice rich and warm and dangerous.

My blood turned to ice. Valentina.

“Who are you?” Kira said, and the knife came up an inch.

Valentina’s gaze flicked to the blade, unbothered, then slid over my slumped body in the chair with a pity so well rehearsed it made my skin crawl. “Poor Grisha,” she cooed. “Still so quiet.” She turned back to Kira, and her smile widened. “I have come with the team, for the honeymoon. As for who I am, I was his fiancée. Before you.”