“I assumed as much.”
“I have the diamonds,” she says. “But I don’t want to hand them over. Not yet, anyway.”
A corner of my mouth lifts. “Fair.”
She hesitates, then adds, “If I’m doing this… I need to know something first.”
“Ask.”
“If I give you everything,” she says, voice steady but tight, “and my uncle is exiled—” she takes a deep breath as though the next words are costing her something more than either of us anticipated. “Then I want to be free to go.”
“I’ll still chase you,” I confess. “But not because I want to cage you. Because I want to claim you, keep you, marry you, breed you. Whether you accept it or not, you’re my future, and I’m yours.”
Her pulse jumps. I see it.
“So not a cage,” I finish. “A courtship.”
She swallows, and nods lightly as though any stronger movement might break the ground beneath her.
“Finish eating,” I say gently. “Then tell me everything you remember. Start at the beginning.”
She picks up the plate again, slower this time, eyes never leaving mine.
Victoria
I pace back and forth across Leonid’s office like the movement might keep me upright, because standing still would make me feel like I would implode from the weight of it all.
Once I start talking, I can’t seem to stop. Every memory I ever buried claws its way up and out, lining itself neatly in front of him like evidence I didn’t know I’d been collecting my entire life.
I tell him about the diamonds first. Where they came from. Who Boris took them from. The quiet deals that were supposed to disappear men without noise. I tell him about shell companies and falsified books, about money moved through charities that never reached the people they were meant to help. I tell him about names I shouldn’t know and rooms I was never supposed to be in, the way my uncle talked freely in front of me because he thought I was too stupid, too obedient, too small to matter.
Leonid doesn’t interrupt.
He types as I speak, fingers steady, expression unreadable, occasionally asking a precise question to really hammer out what happened. Hours pass without either of us noticing. Light shifts in the windows. Coffee is replaced by water. Lunch appears and disappears untouched. Dinner arrives and goes cold while I keep talking because stopping feels more dangerous than continuing.
By the time I finally run out of words, my throat burns and my legs ache from pacing. Leonid reads the email through once more, slowly, then again, refining it until every accusation is sharp and clean and lethal. When he hits send, the quiet that follows is deafening.
“That’s it,” he says finally.
The tension drains out of me all at once. My knees buckle before I can stop them, exhaustion crashing through me in a delayed response. Leonid catches me easily, pulling me back against his chest and guiding me down into his lap before I even realize what’s happening.
I don’t fight it.
I’m too tired to pretend this isn’t exactly what I need.
His hands settle on my shoulders, firm and warm, kneading gently into muscles I didn’t realize had been too tight for years. The simple, unguarded kindness of it makes my eyes sting. I let my head fall back against him, breath shaking as the tension slowly loosens its grip.
“You did well,” he murmurs, not as praise, but as fact.
No one has ever said that to me.
I close my eyes, absorbing the steadiness of him, the way he’s solid without being heavy, present without demanding anything in return. The room feels different now. Safer. Or maybe that’s just me, finally empty of all my secrets.
“Leonid,” I say quietly.
“Yes.”
“Did you mean what you said earlier?” My voice barely holds together. “About… wanting a future. With me.”
