Chapter 8
700 Words
Ivan POV
I stop pretending the visits are accidental after the third one.
Alexander doesn’t even bother hiding it anymore. He’ll pause mid-conversation, look at my side, then at his watch.
“Clinic,” he says.
Not a suggestion.
Angelica is worse.
She doesn’t order. She corners.
“You’re walking stiff,” she’ll say casually, usually while holding her son. “Olga’s still there.”
As if that settles it.
And it does.
I tell myself it’s about the wound. Healing properly. Avoiding complications. All the logical things a man like me should care about.
But logic has nothing to do with the way my body reacts when Olga’s hands touch me.
It’s… different.
Not soft. Not tentative.
Certain.
Her fingers are warm, steady, unapologetic. She doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t ask permission, doesn’t treat me like I might break her if she presses too hard.
The first time I felt it, I almost pulled away.
A sharp, electrical awareness that traveled up my spine and settled somewhere dangerous. I’ve been touched before—by women, by enemies, by death itself.
This isn’t that.
This is awareness.
I hate it.
So I try to push it aside.
I keep my answers short. My expression neutral. I focus on the ceiling, the wall, anything except the way she leans closer when she concentrates, the faint crease between her brows, the way she smells faintly of antiseptic and something warm underneath.
She’s shy.
I noticed that early.
Not weak—never that—but reserved. Guarded in the way women get when they’ve learned the world takes more than it gives. She doesn’t fill silence unless she has something worth saying.
Except when she’s working.
Then she’s sharp.
Confident.
Unapologetic.
“You’re tensing,” she says during one visit, pressing gently but firmly along my ribs.
“Because it hurts,” I reply.
“That’s not the same thing,” she shoots back without looking at me. “Pain I expect. Resistance I don’t.”
I grunt. “You talk a lot for someone half my size.”
She finally looks up at me, eyes flashing behind her glasses. “And you bleed a lot for someone who thinks he’s invincible.”
Fair.
Another time, I tell her I don’t need the painkillers.
She arches a brow. “I didn’t offer them because you look tough. I offered them because you’re human.”
I don’t answer.
She hands them to me anyway.
I take them.
That unsettles me more than the pain ever did.
She doesn’t flirt. Doesn’t soften her voice. Doesn’t look at me like I’m something to be afraid of or something to be conquered.
She looks at me like a responsibility.
Like a problem she intends to solve properly.
And somehow, that makes my pulse jump in ways it shouldn’t.
I catch myself watching her when she thinks I’m not. The way she pushes loose strands of hair back with her wrist when her gloves are on. The way she mutters under her breath in Greek when something annoys her.
Once, I almost smile.
I stop myself.
This is a line I don’t cross.
She’s Angelica’s friend.
She’s a doctor.
She’s not part of my world.
And worse—
She could be.
That’s the real danger.
So I keep my distance where I can. I leave the clinic as soon as she’s done. I don’t linger. I don’t ask questions that aren’t necessary.
But no matter how much I tell myself this is nothing—
My body doesn’t listen.
My skin remembers her touch long after I leave.
And when Alexander or Angelica sends me back again, I don’t refuse.
I just tell myself the same lie every time:
This is about healing.
Not about the electricity that runs through me when she says my name.
Not about the shiver I feel when she tells me to sit—and I obey without thinking.
And definitely not about the growing certainty that Olga Konstantinou is the first person in a very long time who doesn’t see me as what I am—
But as someone she refuses to let destroy himself.
And that terrifies me more than any enemy ever has.
- Writer
