Page 9 of Obsessed Bratva's Pregnant Claim
Viktor looked at me. Just looked, for a long moment, with those dark eyes that didn’t shift or soften or offer anything.
Then he answered, “I know.”
That was it. Two words. No denial, no justification, no pretense of innocence. Not even the careful construction of someone who had prepared for this. Just a simple, direct acknowledgment that landed in my chest like a stone into water, the ripples going out in directions I hadn’t expected.
He reached past me to set the dark tablet on the desk behind him. The movement brought him closer by a matter of inches, and the inches were significant, because I could feel the heat of him—actual warmth, body heat, the physical fact of him in space—and the smell of him was clean and dark, something more fundamental than cologne.
“This is not a conversation you should be starting.” His voice was the same as it had been in the corridor. Low, controlled, and almost gentle. Like someone speaking carefully to avoid causing unnecessary damage. “Not here.”
“Then when?” I said. “You killed someone. In this building. And I watched you do it. So you tell me, if not here, where exactly is the right place for this conversation?”
Nothing moved in his face. His eyes moved once—just a brief, unhurried drop from my eyes to my mouth and back. It didn’t feel like desire.
My skin went hot. I hated it.
“You’re a monster,” I said. The word came out quieter than I intended, which made it worse. “I’m not your problem. I didn’t ask to be in that hallway, I didn’t ask to see what I saw, and I am not going to spend my life being managed by you, so if you’re going to do something about it, do it. But stop—” I pulled in a breath. “Stop watching me.”
Viktor moved.
Not back. Not away. He stepped forward, into the space between us, which had already been too small, and made it nothing. I did not step back, which meant I was standing close enough to him that I could see the grain of stubble along his jaw, close enough that looking up at his face required an adjustment of angle.
His hand moved to my side.
It didn’t touch me. It hovered near my hip—and stopped. Like a statement made in a language that didn’t have words:I could, but I won’t.
My breath did something involuntary.
“You are already my problem.” His voice was barely above a murmur. “You became my problem the moment you walked down that hallway. Nothing about that changes because you’re angry.”
“Let me be very clear.” I kept my eyes on his. My heart was doing something violent behind my ribs. “I am not afraid of you.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Or I had too many answers, and none of them were safe to say out loud.
“Sofia?”
We both turned.
Marco stood six feet away with the expression of a man who has walked into something he deeply wishes he had not and is now committed to pretending he saw nothing. His eyes were on me, deliberately not on Viktor, because three years of working at the Golovin Casino had apparently given him excellent instincts about where not to look.
“Section four needs coverage,” he said. His voice was carefully addressed purely to me.
“Okay.”
I left.
I didn’t look back at Viktor. I walked across the floor to section four, which was at the opposite end of the casino.
The shivering of my body was fury. I told myself that.
It was fury that he hadn’t chased me. That he had watched me walk away with the same remote control with which he watched everything else, had let Marco’s interruption serve as a natural conclusion, had made no move to stop me or follow me or continue what had—what had not been a conversation, I corrected myself. It had not been a conversation. I had said things to him, and he had said things to me. The gap between us had reached a temperature I couldn’t describe, and then Marco had arrived, and it had ended.
Viktor had let it end.
