"We tell them everything," he said, crossing the study to take my hands in his. "About your father. About theBelyaev connection we still don't understand. Maybe they know something we don't."
His hands were warm around my cold ones, steady where I was shaking. I nodded because what else could I do? But my photographic memory was already pulling up fragments without my permission—images I'd filed away years ago because they hurt too much to examine.
My mother's face in the weeks before she died. Not just sick, but sad. Looking at my father with something that might have been guilt mixed with the morphine haze. The way she'd stroke my hair and whisper words in Russian I was too young to understand.
My father going silent whenever I asked about my mother's family. "They're gone, printsessa," he'd say, using the same endearment Nikolai used now. "It's just us. That's all that matters."
But he'd been lying. I could see it now, looking back with older eyes. The way he'd watch me sometimes like he was searching for something in my features. The way he'd flinch when strangers said I had my mother's eyes—not blue-green like mine were now, but the shape, the way they tilted slightly at the corners.
Who had my mother been before she was his wife? Before the cancer, before the medical bills, before everything fell apart? The memories were there, filed perfectly in my photographic recall, but I'd never examined them. Never wanted to see what they might reveal.
"Sophie?" Nikolai's voice pulled me back. "Are you with me?"
I blinked, focused on his face. The concern there, the fear barely masked, the love that had grown despite all his careful planning, all his strategic thinking that said caring was weakness.
"I'm here," I said, and forced my voice steady. "I'm with you. Whatever we need to do."
Little Sophie was crying somewhere deep inside me, begging Daddy to make this stop, to keep her safe, to choose her over everything else. But adult Sophie was the one who stood in Nikolai's study, squared her shoulders, and prepared to face the family who'd abandoned her father to gambling debts and early death.
Because Mikhail had been kind to me. Had looked at me with gentle eyes and called me granddaughter-in-law like I belonged in this family. Had taught me chess moves while Nikolai watched with pride. And I owed him this—owed him the truth, whatever it was, even if uncovering it destroyed what was left of my carefully constructed understanding of who I'd been before the auction.
"Two hours," Kostya said from the doorway. "I'll prep the car. Full security detail."
When he left, Nikolai pulled me against his chest, his heartbeat fast under my ear. For just a moment, I let myself be held. Let Little Sophie surface enough to press closer, to breathe in sandalwood and safety, to pretend that Daddy could fix this with careful planning and strategic thinking.
But the fragments kept pulling at me. My mother's face. My father's silence. The feeling that I was standing on the edge of understanding something that would change everything I thought I knew about where I'd come from.
About who I actually was.
Thewarehousesmelledlikemotor oil and decades of Brooklyn rain seeping through concrete. I followed Nikolai through the cavernous space, trying not to limp, tryingto look like someone worth meeting instead of damaged goods held together with surgical screws and borrowed courage. The single hanging light ahead created a spotlight—three men waiting at a metal table like judges at an audition, except this time I wasn't dancing for approval. This time I was here because my existence had become a problem multiple crime families wanted to solve.
Alexei Volkov sat in the center, and looking at him was like seeing my father through a funhouse mirror—same bone structure, same sharp cheekbones, but where my father had been worn down by debt and loss, Alexei was honed. Powerful. His ice-blue eyes tracked my approach with an intensity that made me want to hide behind Nikolai, and I hated myself for the impulse. I was twenty-four years old, had survived my father's death and an auction that sold me like furniture. I could survive meeting the uncle who'd cast us out.
The man to Alexei's right was massive—had to be Dmitry based on Maks's briefing in the car. Six-five easy, built like he'd been constructed to break things, with a face that would have been handsome if it wasn't currently arranged into an expression that suggested he was calculating how many ways he could kill everyone in this warehouse. His eyes were darker than Alexei's, almost black in the poor lighting, and when they found me they didn't soften. Just assessed. Cataloged. Decided whether I was threat or asset.
Ivan was on Alexei's left—younger, leaner, with the same Volkov features but arranged into something that looked almost scholarly. Wire-rim glasses caught the overhead light, and his expression was harder to read. Not cold like Alexei, not violently calculating like Dmitry, but distant. Like he was watching this meeting from somewhere outside his body, analyzing rather than participating.
My father's cousins. Family, in the genetic sense, even if every other definition of the word had been forfeit the day they exiled him.
Nikolai's hand found my lower back—grounding, protective, reminding me I wasn't alone even if I was surrounded by men who shared my DNA but not my history.
"You claimed she's family." Alexei's voice cut through the warehouse silence like a blade through silk, his Russian accent thicker than Nikolai's, carrying weight that came from decades of command. "Dmitri Volkov's daughter. The bastard who we exiled twenty-five years ago."
The word hit me like a physical blow. Bastard. Not thief, not exile, but bastard—the kind of insult that said my father had been worthless, disposable, less than nothing. My hands curled into fists at my sides, nails biting into palms hard enough to ground me when everything else wanted to fracture.
"Sophie Katerina Volkov." Nikolai's voice stayed level, formal, but I could feel the tension in his hand on my back. "Legitimate daughter of Dmitri Volkov. The exile was unjust. You know it was."
Something flickered in Alexei's expression—there and gone before I could fully catalog it. Not quite guilt, but close. Recognition maybe. Or shame that had been buried for twenty-five years under justifications and strategic necessity.
"He stole from family operations." Alexei's jaw worked. "We had no choice."
"He stole medicine." Nikolai's words landed with enough force to reorganize the molecular structure of the air between us. "For his dying wife."
The warehouse went silent except for water dripping somewhere in the shadows. A rhythmic plop plop plop that counted seconds nobody seemed capable of filling with words.
I watched Alexei absorb the information. Watched his ice-blue eyes—my father's eyes, my eyes—go from cold assessment to something more complicated. His hands were flat on the metal table, fingers spread like he needed the contact to stay grounded.
"We knew your mother was dying." His voice had gone rough, edges fraying on consonants that should have been sharp. "The cancer. We knew Dmitri was desperate. But he stole from operations that kept fifty families fed. We had no choice."
