Page 67 of The King's Pawn
My throat tightens painfully. Viktor’s face flashes behind my eyes—his fear, his excuses, the way he twisted the truth until it barely resembled reality. “He may be a liar, but he was honest about one thing.”
Sasha’s gaze sharpens, the air between us turning electric.
“I had to hear it from the man who ordered her killed.”
His face flickers for the briefest heartbeat before disappearing again, swallowed by that dark composure he wears like armor. For a moment, the coldness in his eyes shifts, softened and reshaped into something that makes my chest ache.
I don’t want to name it. Because if I do, I might start to understand him in a way that feels like betrayal to myself and to my mother.
“Inside,” he says. It isn’t a request.
Before I can step back and gather myself or decide whether to fight him on it or not, his hand closes around my wrist, not hard enough to hurt but firm enough to leave no doubt.
Sasha’s men look away as he leads me through the massive front doors and into the echoing quiet of the foyer. It’s subtle but unmistakable, their eyes shifting to marble floors, to doorframes, to anything but us. No one meets my gaze or intervenes.
His hand doesn’t loosen around my wrist as we start up the staircase.
Each step echoes too loudly beneath our feet, the sound ricocheting up the curved walls like a countdown. When we reach my room, he releases my wrist just long enough to open the door. The sudden absence of his touch is jarring, my skin still buzzing where his fingers had been.
He steps aside and inclines his head slightly.
“Go on.”
I walk past him and into the room, shrugging out of my coat. My fingers fumble with the buttons, clumsy and traitorous, refusing to cooperate. I can feel his eyes on me even without turning around. I toss the coat onto the nearest chair, the fabric sliding half off the armrest that I don’t bother fixing.
When I turn back toward him, he closes the door behind him with a soft click. The room feels smaller instantly, the walls pressing in as if they’ve shifted closer while I wasn’t looking. The familiar cream and gold decor suddenly feels overbearing, incapable of softening what’s about to happen.
For the first time since I returned, I pull in a slow breath and really look at him.
Up close, the cracks show.
He looks… tired.
Not physically. He’s still all coiled power and controlled menace, but worn in a deeper way. The kind of exhaustion that settles into the bones when choices pile up and none of them are forgiving.
“You’re not leaving this estate again under any circumstances,” he finally says.
There is no threat in them, no raised voice, no dramatics. Just a boundary laid down like a line carved into stone. The finality of it settles over me, pressing against my ribs until it’s hard to breathe.
I lift my chin despite the way my stomach twists. “So, that’s it? I’m locked away for good now?”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “You put yourself in danger.”
“I needed to know the truth,” I shoot back.
Something dark flickers in his eyes at that—not anger, exactly, but frustration sharpened by whatever it is he’s also refusing to acknowledge. “You disobeyed me. You involved my men. You walked straight into the path of someone who would not hesitate to use you as leverage the second it becomes convenient.”
I let out a soft, humorless laugh. “So, you’re punishing me for not getting your permission first.”
His shoulders rise with a slow breath, then fall again, as if he’s forcing something heavy back down into his chest. When he speaks, his voice is lower, stripped of its earlier polish and rougher around the edges.
“This isn’t punishment, Alina.”
“It feels like it.”
He steps closer.
Not enough to crowd me or enough that I can accuse him of looming, but close enough that I can feel the heat of him. The weight of his attention locks onto me like a vise, squeezing the air from my lungs, smothering the fragile confidence I’d managed to build during the days he was gone.
