Page 102 of Santa Daddy
Then he left too.
The apartment felt emptied out and overfull at the same time.
I realized my hands were still fisted in the shredded front of the shirt, knuckles white, skin flushed from where Maksim’s fingers had been. My wrist ached. My throat felt bruised from the grip that hadn’t quite closed all the way.
Konstantin holstered the gun with a sharp movement and turned to me.
His eyes went over me once: torn fabric, bare skin, bruises beginning to bloom. His face did something I’d never seen on him before, something that looked like rage and guilt and a kind of horror, all mixed.
He shrugged out of his coat and crossed the distance between us in three strides, wrapping it around my shoulders without asking. The wool was still cold from outside.
Then he pulled me into him.
His arms locked around me like he was afraid the building would walk off with me if he didn’t anchor me to something.
“This is what they are,” he said quietly into my hair. “The men downstairs. My so-called uncles. My cousin. They open your door. They turn off cameras. They say ‘protected’ while they throw you in water and see if I drown to pull you out.”
Care about.
Hate.
Own.
Whatever the word was, it lived under his skin, fizzing.
“They’re supposed to be on your side,” I said, voice muffled against his chest. “I’m supposed to be safe because I’m your wife.”
His laugh was short and without humor. “You are safer with me,” he said. “You are never safe with them.”
Outside our windows, the city glittered like nothing had changed.
Inside, under a torn shirt and someone else’s coat, I understood something I hadn’t let myself see before:
Being Mrs. Zverev didn’t make me untouchable.
It just made me the most valuable pressure point in a room full of men who liked to press on things until they broke.
And sooner or later, one of them was going to push too hard.
20
TRUTH LIKE A BULLET
DANI
The apartment looked almost normal.
If you ignored the faint red smear on the fridge where Maksim’s face had hit, and the hairline cracks in the marble where Konstantin had bounced his head off the floor.
The cleaners had come and gone. New wineglasses in the cabinet. Fresh shirt on my body. His coat folded over the back of a chair instead of around my shoulders.
But the air still felt wrong. Like something had been burned here that no amount of industrial cleaner could scrub out.
Konstantin stood in the middle of the living room, wrapped tight in his own fury.
Hands loose at his sides, but only because they were bandaged—white gauze wrapped around split knuckles, little spots of fresh red seeping through. Jaw locked. Those pale eyes cutting over every inch of the penthouse—the island where my shirt had torn, the path of dried droplets they’d missed between kitchen anddoor, the stupid white tree blinking in the corner like it wasn’t part of a test I hadn’t signed up for.
He wasn’t looking for evidence anymore. He’d seen everything.
