Blood spattered across the polished floor.
But Misha wasn’t done.
He stepped forward, slow, lethal, drawing something from beneath his jacket. I knew that blade. Slim, curved, obsidian-handled.
I had felt it on my skin an hour ago.
Not in violence. In sin.
That same knife had kissed the inside of my thigh as he’d whispered filthy things in the dark, tracing it over my bare stomach, holding it against my throat while he claimed me. He’d made me come with the weight of it. And now, he drove it into Chernov’s side with a savage twist.
Chernov howled, staggering into the wall. Blood soaked through his shirt, blooming like a dark rose across white linen.
Misha’s voice was ice when he finally spoke. “You don’t touch her. You don’t look at her. You don’t even breathe in her direction unless I say so.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Chernov gasped, clutching his ribs.
Misha leaned in, blade still dripping, his face inches from Chernov’s. “You’re bleeding because I was merciful. Next time, I’ll carve out your tongue and feed it to the dogs.”
He turned his back on him like Chernov was already dead.
Then he looked at me.
His eyes weren’t soft. They were burning.
Not with apology.
With possession.
With a need so deep it bordered on madness.
And maybe, just maybe, I burned too.
Because I didn’t flinch.
Not at the knife. Not at the blood. Not at the memory of what that blade had done to me behind closed doors.
I looked at Misha and said, voice steady despite the storm in my chest, “You used that same knife on me an hour ago.”
His gaze locked with mine. Unapologetic. Unrepentant.
“I know,” he said.
Blood dripped from the blade in his hand, each drop tapping onto the marble like a metronome of violence.
Chernov writhed, cursing through clenched teeth as two guards rushed forward to help him. He shoved them off, refusing the weakness, but his blood was already staining the hem of his custom Odessa-tailored suit.
I felt every eye on me.
Whispers curled like smoke through the air.
“He stabbed him—”
“He would never become Packhan this way—”
“The Odessa will wage endless war for this humiliation.”
“Just because he touched his wife’s hair?”
