“I know going in feels wrong,” I whispered against his curls. “It feels wrong to me too. But we’re together. That’s what matters.”
He nodded against my neck, small and trusting, and I drew in a shaky breath. One step forward. Then another.
The glass doors whispered open on their own, sliding wide like a predator’s maw revealing the treasure inside.
The air was cool, scented with cedar and something darker.
The foyer soared three stories high, light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows, a waterfall cascading down one wall into a koi pond that glowed electric blue.
And there, at the foot of the grand staircase, hands in the pockets of a charcoal suit, silver threading his temples, eyes burning holes straight through my soul, stood Dmitri Volkov.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He simply looked at Vanya in my arms, then at me. And the expression on his face... it was raw, dangerous, aching grief that could level cities.
“Welcome home, milaya,” he said softly.
The words carried the weight of a lifetime of love and loss, each syllable a razor.
The doors slid shut behind us with a final, merciless click, the sound echoing like a verdict.
Vanya’s grip on me tightened, tiny fingers digging into my shoulder.
I swallowed, heart hammering so fast I feared it might leap out of my chest.
I met Dmitri’s gaze, the storm in those eyes matching the storm I felt in my chest. For a moment, time froze.
The house wasn’t just a home. It was his kingdom, and we were now irrevocably inside.
And yet, despite everything, despite the fear, the adrenaline, the danger... I felt a flicker of something I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in six years: that little traitorous part of me—the part thathad once loved him, the part that had never truly left—was still alive.
Alive, and furious.
We finally found an empty room and stepped inside, Vanya clinging to me like a lifeline.
I reached to set him down, but his arms tightened around my neck, anchoring himself with desperate strength.
His tiny chest pressed to mine, and I felt his heartbeat thundering against my collarbone—a frantic, chaotic rhythm, like a hummingbird trapped in ice, wildly out of place in a room this cold and silent.
He hadn’t uttered a single word since the doors shut behind us, yet his silence was deafening—he screamed in ways no voice could convey, filling the room with a raw, fragile urgency that gnawed at me.
And I hated it.
Hated that my five-year-old was being dragged into a war that began before he ever inhaled his first breath.
Hated that I had brought him here—into the lion’s den, into the past I thought I had burned.
The morning sun climbed higher, gilding the courtyard through the glass walls, turning the black marble into molten gold and the infinity pools into sheets of liquid fire.
I still hadn’t moved.
My body felt pinned to the earth, rooted by dread and memory and the weight of the child in my arms.
“Miss Pen,” a voice murmured behind me—low, rough, and devastatingly familiar.
My spine locked.
I turned slowly, Vanya finally loosening his grip enough for me to set him down, a tiny shield of courage pressed against my chest.
Dmitri stood at the doorway, only a few feet away, every inch of him radiating control and danger.
