The Don’s Silent witness

Chapter 6

Blood at the Altar

The man collapsed near the front pew before two of Damian's guards caught him under the arms. Gasps rippled through the chapel, gloved hands flying to mouths, chairs scraping as guests half rose from their seats.

"Get everyone out," Damian said, and the calm in his voice was somehow more frightening than shouting would have been. Marcus was already moving, waving guests toward the side doors, murmuring apologies about a security matter, nothing to worry about, please make your way to the main house.

Elena stood frozen at the altar, still in her wedding dress, watching blood drip from the stranger's face onto the pale stone floor.

"Where did they hit you?" Damian crouched beside the man, gripping his shoulder.

"They didn't hit me." The man's breath came ragged. "They sent me. Told me to deliver a message and let me go so I could walk it straight to your front door."

"What message?"

The man lifted his head, and even through the blood, Elena could see the fear in his eyes, the kind of fear that came from having looked directly at something that should have killed him and hadn't, only because someone wanted him to survive long enough to talk.

"Petrov says congratulations on the wedding," the man said. "Says it's a shame the bride won't live long enough to enjoy the honeymoon."

The chapel went silent except for the man's ragged breathing and the faint hiss of candles burning down to their wicks.

Damian's hand found Elena's wrist, and for a moment his grip was almost too tight, like he was checking she was still solid and real and standing beside him.

"Take him to the back room," Damian said to Marcus. "Get him cleaned up and find out everything he knows. Elena—"

"I'm fine," she said, though her voice didn't sound like her own.

Damian looked at her for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes.

"You're not fine," he said quietly. "But you're going to have to be, for the next few hours at least."

He led her out through a side door, away from the chaos, into a private hallway that smelled of old stone and candle smoke. Once they were alone, he stopped and turned to face her fully.

"I need you to listen to me carefully," he said. "From this point forward, you don't leave this house without at least two men with you. You don't answer doors. You don't accept deliveries. You don't trust anyone who isn't Marcus, Lena, or me. Do you understand?"

"You're scaring me."

"Good," he said. "Fear keeps people alive in my world. It's the ones who stop being afraid that end up in a library after closing hours."

The comparison landed harder than he probably meant it to, and Elena flinched. Damian's expression shifted, something almost like regret crossing his face before he could stop it.

"That wasn't fair," he admitted. "But it's still true."

He guided her back toward the main house, past guards now stationed at every window, past staff clearing away wedding decorations with hands that shook slightly. Elena caught sight of her own reflection in a hallway mirror, still dressed in white, veil askew, and barely recognized the woman staring back.

Hours ago she had been closing up a library.

Now she was married to a man whose enemies had just proven they could reach the altar itself.

Marcus found them an hour later in the study, the same room where Elena had first seen the file with Yuri Sokolov's name on it. He looked exhausted, his jacket gone, sleeves rolled to the elbow.

"He talked," Marcus said, closing the door behind him.

"And?" Damian didn't look up from the drink he'd poured but hadn't touched.

"Petrov's furious about Yuri. More furious than we expected. Turns out Yuri wasn't just some low-level courier passing information." Marcus's eyes flicked briefly to Elena, then back to Damian. "He was Petrov's cousin's son. Family."

Damian's jaw tightened. "That wasn't in the file."

"No. Because Petrov kept it buried. Didn't want anyone to know he had a traitor in his own bloodline. Now that Yuri's dead, Petrov's using the wedding to save face, spin it as an attack on his family's honor instead of admitting his own blood turned against him."

"So this isn't about business anymore." Damian finally looked up. "It's personal."

"It's personal," Marcus confirmed. "Which means he won't stop at a warning. The messenger says Petrov's already put a price on her head." He nodded toward Elena without quite meeting her eyes. "Doesn't matter that she's your wife now. If anything, that makes her a bigger target. Killing her hurts you twice as much."

Elena's stomach turned over. She had spent the last four days trying to survive one impossible situation, and now she understood it had only been the opening chapter of something much larger.

"How much?" Damian asked.

"Enough that half the freelancers in the city will be looking for her by tomorrow."

Damian set his glass down without drinking from it and turned to Elena, studying her the way he had the very first night, calculating, assessing, deciding.

"You're going to need protection beyond what the house can offer," he said finally. "Marcus, pull Sergei and Tomas off the docks. I want them on her personally, around the clock."

"And you?" Elena asked before she could stop herself.

Something flickered across his face. "I have a war to prepare for."

"That's not what I asked."

Damian looked at her for a long moment, longer than felt comfortable given everyone else in the room, and something passed between them that had nothing to do with business or protection or the price on her head.

"I'll be close," he said finally. "Closer than you'll probably want me to be."

Marcus cleared his throat, breaking whatever moment had settled over the room. "There's one more thing," he said. "The messenger mentioned something about a location. A drop point Petrov's people are watching. Somewhere connected to the library."

Elena's blood went cold. "What location?"

Marcus hesitated before answering, and that hesitation told her everything she needed to know before the words even left his mouth.

"Your apartment," he said. "They've had eyes on it since this morning."