Page 33 of The King's Pawn
She’d been taken from the outside world under the guise of protection long before I ever got ahold of her, smothered by rules that masqueraded as concern. I will not deny my own hand in continuing that pattern. I pulled strings. Persuaded the right people. Applied pressure where it mattered. I did exactly what was required to get what I wanted.
But I have never shown her an ounce of pure cruelty. Not like her father has time and time again.
It isn’t that I’m not capable of it. I am. My enemies know that quite intimately. But that distinction matters to me now more than ever.
I walk the halls until the noise inside my head dulls. Until the sharp edge of fury wears itself down into something I can contain again. My footsteps are silent against the polished floors, the house dim and watchful around me.
Control is supposed to be second nature. I have spent years perfecting it, honing it until it was instinct rather than effort. I learned early how to cage the chaos inside me, how to compress and sharpen it, weaponize it until it became a blade I could wield without cutting myself.
That discipline has kept me alive.
It has kept my men loyal, my enemies cautious, and my name untouchable.
But with her… it fractures.
Every time Alina looks at me with those furious, frightened eyes—so alive with defiance and grief and something dangerously close to want—I feel something rise in my chest that does not have a name I am comfortable using. It is not desire in the simple sense. It is disruption.
It is something I have no earthly idea what to do with, let alone solve.
I do not sleep that night.
Instead, I sit in the control room with the lights low, the estate’s CCTV grid spread out on the monitors before me. They glow softly in front of me, twelve quiet witnesses to everything that moves under my roof.
My fingers move without conscious thought.
Gatehouse. Perimeter. Tree line. Kennels.
Then her room.
It’s become a ritual at this point.
The camera feed flickers to life. Alina is sitting on the bed with her knees drawn to her chest, her posture tight and closed in on itself. She is clutching something to her sternum, fingers curled protectively around the worn photograph she had with her earlier. Her mother’s face is turned outward, frozen in a moment of warmth that feels almost obscene in this place.
The bedside lamp casts a soft halo around her hair.
She looks smaller like this, younger, stripped of the sharp edges she had at dinner that she’s used as armor since coming here. The anger has burned itself down to embers now, leaving behind something quieter and far more dangerous. Resolve.
She looks beautiful.
The thought lands unbidden, unwelcome.
I should cut the feed, I know that, heed my sister’s warning because this is not surveillance for security purposes no matter how easily I could lie to myself and say it is. This is something else. Possession masquerading as vigilance. Curiosity bordering on something I refuse to name.
Control and possession are two sides of the same coin, and I have never been particularly skilled at pretending otherwise.
I watch until her grip on the photograph loosens slightly and her head tilts back against the headboard and her eyes close. Her lashes cast shadows against her cheeks, her mouth slack in sleep for the first time since dinner, and something in my chest tightens in a way I refuse to examine too closely.
She looks exhausted.
There is a part of me that wants to go to her.
To leave the control room, climb the stairs, and barge into her room without ceremony. To stand at the foot of her bed and demand that she understand… that sherecognizehow narrowly she avoided something far worse. That she see the reality of her situation instead of the version shaped by fear and indignation.
I am not the worst man she could have ended up with.
Her father could have very easily chosen anyone else within the Iron Pact. He could have handed her over to Aleksandr Volkov who sees women as ornamental liabilities, interchangeable and disposable. Or Ivan Kuznetsov who believes obedience is best learned through pain and humiliation, whose idea of leverage is breaking someone until there is nothing left to resist with. Or Malyshko.
My jaw tightens at the thought.
