Max pov
The taste of her was still on my tongue, sweet and wild, a stark counterpoint to the bitterness that had just flooded my gut. He touched you. The words Sofia had choked out—He tried to rape me at school—had ripped through the lingering haze of our intimacy like a surgeon's knife. My rage, usually a contained, precise weapon, had flared, hot and uncontrollable. Mark wasn't just a nuisance; he was a cancer, and now he'd dared to touch mine.
Mine. The possessiveness surprised me, even as I felt it settle deep in my chest. Sofia, with her vulnerable eyes and unexpected fire, was quickly becoming something I hadn't anticipated. A liability, certainly, given my line of… work. But also something else. Something worth protecting.
I'd forced myself to pull away, to focus on the cold, hard facts of Mark's latest move. Emotions were messy, a weakness in my world. But with Sofia, they were becoming unavoidable. Her tears, the tremor in her voice as she recounted Mark's depravity, had unleashed a primal urge in me I hadn't known I possessed.
The steam from the mugs curled into the sterile air of my kitchen, a poor shield against the storm brewing inside me. I watched her, draped in my shirt, looking small and fragile, yet radiating a quiet strength. It was that strength, I realized, that was truly dangerous. For both of us.
My phone buzzed again. Another message, confirming Mark's movements, his current location. He was being sloppy, emboldened. Good. Sloppy meant predictable. Predictable meant exploitable.
My mind, a precision instrument, began to construct a new strategy, weaving in this devastating new information Sofia had just laid bare. Mark thrived on fear, on control. He wanted to break me by hurting her. But Sofia wasn't just a weakness; she was a weapon. Her trauma, carefully deployed, could be the lever I needed to dismantle Mark completely.
The idea was cold, calculating. It was the only logical path. Using her pain, her past, as bait. The thought should have been clean, efficient, like all my plans. But it wasn't. It twisted in my gut, tangled with the memory of her body convulsing beneath mine, the raw pleasure we'd shared. The tenderness. The vulnerability.
You're safe, Sofia. Always. My own words, a promise made in the soft light of dawn, echoed in my head. Could I make that promise and still use her most devastating secret against her tormentor? Could I ensure her safety by putting her through more pain, albeit indirectly?
The conflicting emotions were a rare disarray in my usually ordered mind. This was unlike any equation I'd ever had to solve.
As she spoke about the project, her voice a soothing drone against the gnawing thoughts in my head, a memory flickered, unbidden, from the furthest reaches of my childhood. A hot summer afternoon. The hushed whispers from the adults in the house, tinged with shock and outrage. My father's face, mottled red with fury.
"Your mother… with that cheating bastard, Petrov. Right in his own house! His little girl was probably upstairs, Max. Can you imagine? What a lowlife!"
Petrov. Sofia's father.
The pieces clicked into place with a sickening finality. The auburn hair, the green eyes, the surname Petrov from our student records. It couldn't be a coincidence. Sofia. The little girl who might have been upstairs, oblivious, while her father and my mother shattered two families.
My father, a man forged from steel and resentment, had never let me forget it. He'd brought it up, subtly at first, then with increasing bitterness as I grew older. "Don't trust anyone, Max. Especially not the ones who look innocent. Like that Petrov girl. Like her father."
A cold, familiar tendril of something akin to satisfaction began to unfurl in my chest. Revenge. Not just against Mark, but a deeper, more ingrained vengeance. The universe, in its twisted way, had delivered Sofia into my hands. A chess piece I hadn't known I was waiting for.
The academic facade. It was a joke. I'd seen her name on the roster, a flicker of recognition, then dismissal. Petrov. Just another student. But then the alley, Mark's twisted fixation, and her terrified eyes looking up at me. The connection had been forged in violence, and now, it was deepening in intimacy.
My initial interest in her had been purely strategic—a way to understand Mark's patterns. But the more I was with her, the more complex it became. The way her laugh could lighten a room, the surprising resilience beneath her quiet demeanor, the way her body responded to mine with such unbridled passion. She was an unexpected variable, one that threatened to unravel my carefully constructed control.
But this new information. Mark's attack on her, and the revelation of her identity, merged into a singular, devastating opportunity. A way to hit Mark, and perhaps, to finally settle an old score for my father.
The conflict in my mind raged. The Max who had just held Sofia, tracing her jaw with a tender touch, the one who had sworn to keep her safe, warred with the colder, more ruthless part of me. The strategist. The son who had absorbed his father's bitterness like poison.
Could I use her vulnerability, her history, as a weapon and still protect her? Could the same woman be both the target of Mark's malice and the unwitting tool of my own vengeance?
The sun fully breached the horizon, painting the room in harsh, revealing light. My phone buzzed again, dragging me back to the present. "Trouble." Mark. He was the catalyst. He'd brought us together, and he would be the instrument of our shared past's reckoning.
I looked at Sofia, her eyes still holding a hint of the passion we'd shared, now clouded with fear and confusion. She was undeniably, inextricably, a part of it. A part of my past, my present, and my impending war. And I would use every advantage I had to win. Even if that advantage was the very girl I was beginning to swear to protect.