Page 31 of Ruthless Bratva's Forced Virgin
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The car turned through the manor’s gates. The lights of the house came up through the windshield—all lit, which meant the staff was still up. I did not want an audience for the state I was in. The state was private and I intended to keep it that way.
Viktor met me at the door.
“The staff,” I said.
“I’ll clear them.”
“Leave Mariya.”
She had been in this house longer than I had been running it and had the particular quality of presence that did not intrude—she would be in the kitchen, she would be available, and she would not look at me in the way that people looked at injured men when they were compiling evidence about vulnerability.
Viktor gave me a single nod and moved. I heard him behind me as I crossed the entrance hall.
I made it to the walk-in closet, having totally unbuttoned my shirt, before Elena appeared at the entrance of it.
She came down the stairs.
I registered that I was not going to be able to prevent whatever was about to happen, which was an unusual state for me, and adjusted accordingly.
“Don’t,” I said.
She was five steps away and her eyes had already found the bandage.
She ignored me completely. She stopped in front of me and looked at the bandage up close and then up at my face, and whatever she was doing internally was not visible in her expression except as a controlled absence of what it was.
“What… what happened? How bad is it?” she uttered, the urgency in her voice making it sound more like a demand and less like a question.
“Addressed,” I said. “The doctor—”
“How bad is it, Mikhail?”
“A graze,” I said. “Sutured. Not a significant medical concern provided I behave myself for forty-eight hours.”
She exhaled. The exhale moved through her whole body—I could see it, the release of something she had been holding—and then she straightened and looked at me with the direct eyes and said, “Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re standing after working until—” she glanced at nothing, she didn’t have a watch on, “—late. After being shot. You’re going to sit down.” The edge in her voice was something I had learned was not anger exactly but the specific determination of a woman who had arrived at a decision and was not requesting input on it. “Please.”
The please cost her something. I could tell by the way it came out—effortful, a conscious choice to make the request rather than simply insist.
I sat.
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We were in the small sitting room adjacent to the kitchen—her selection, close to where supplies were, removed from the formal rooms.
She was thinking. Even in this, she was thinking.
Mariya appeared with a tray she had clearly prepared before being asked. Hot water. Clean cloth. The antiseptic she knew the doctor’s supply would have depleted. She set the tray on the low table, looked at me with the expression she reserved for situations she found professionally unsatisfactory, and disappeared.
Elena sat beside me on the small sofa and looked at the unbuttoned shirt I still had on.
“Can you—”
I removed the shirt. The movement pulled at the left side in the predictable way, and I did not make the sound it wanted me to make, which Elena noticed.
