I'd failed them both. The woman I loved and the grandfather who'd raised me. Had failed to protect Sophie from herself and failed to retrieve Mikhail before the deadline. Had been playing chess while Anton played a different game entirely, one where allmy careful strategy was irrelevant because he'd understood what I hadn't—that Sophie would sacrifice herself.
The door opened. Voices. Kostya's rumble, Maks's quieter tones, both of them saying things I couldn't process because words had stopped having meaning. Everything was sound without definition, noise without structure.
Then hands on my shoulders. Massive, warm, grounding. Kostya's hands, holding me steady while I shook apart.
"Kolya, breathe."
"Can't." The word came out strangled. "I can't—she's gone—"
"We'll get her back." Maks's voice, closer now. He was kneeling beside my chair, his tablet forgotten on the table. "Nikolai, listen to me. We'll get her back. We'll get them both back."
The promise was well-meant but impossible. Getting them both back required simultaneous extractions from a heavily fortified facility with minimal intelligence about guard positions or floor plans. Required resources we didn't have and time that was running out. Required me to be functional when I could barely remember how to breathe.
"Should've seen it." My voice didn't sound like mine. Too high, too desperate, all the careful control stripped away. "Should've known she'd—"
"She outsmarted all of us," Kostya said, and there was something almost like admiration in his voice despite the situation. "Your Little princess has teeth. Has strategy. She saw a problem and solved it the only way she could."
By destroying herself. By walking into danger because she thought it would save me. Because I'd been so focused on protecting her that she'd decided I was the one who needed protecting.
The irony would have been funny if it wasn't causing my nervous system to malfunction.
"Breathe with me," Kostya said, and his voice had dropped into that low rumble he used when situations required calm. I listened to his breath, matched mine to his.
Slow. Steady. Simple.
My vision was starting to clear. The tunnel was widening, letting in peripheral details. The war room's recessed lighting. The mahogany table grain under my palms. Kostya's face when I finally looked up—concerned but not pitying, worried but trusting that I'd come back from this.
I was coming back. Slowly. The panic attack was cresting, starting to ebb. My hands were still shaking but less violently. My chest was still tight but I could breathe around it.
Sophie was gone. Mikhail was captive. Everything was still completely fucked.
But I wasn't dead. Wasn't having a heart attack. Wasn't going to die here in the war room while the people I loved suffered.
"We'll get them back," I said, and this time my voice was steadier. Not controlled, not the Pakhan mask I usually wore, but functional. "We'll figure out how."
Kostya's hands squeezed my shoulders once—approval, support, brotherhood—then released me. Maks stood, already reaching for his tablet, his analytical brain probably running scenarios and probabilities even while I'd been breaking down.
That’s when the my phone buzzed. The name on the screen? Anton Belyaev. Maks reached for it but I was faster, my hands steadier now that there was a concrete threat to focus on. Something to direct the rage at instead of just drowning in panic.
I answered on speaker so my brothers could hear. So we could all witness whatever horror Anton was about to deliver.
"Where is she?" No greeting. No pretense. Just the question that mattered, my voice flat and deadly despite the terror still churning in my chest.
Anton's laugh came through tinny and cruel, the sound of a man who knew he'd won and was savoring every second of his victory.
"Nikolai Dmitrievich!" His voice carried false cheer, like we were old friends catching up instead of enemies negotiating over hostages. "So kind of you to send us what we wanted. Your devotchka arrived this morning—walked right up to our facility and knocked on the door like she was visiting friends."
Each word was designed to wound. To make me feel the full weight of my failure. Sophie walking into danger because I'd failed to stop her, failed to see what she was planning, failed to be worthy of the trust she'd placed in me.
"Very brave," Anton continued, and I could hear the smile in his voice. "I'm impressed."
My hands curled into fists on the mahogany table. Kostya had moved closer, his massive frame radiating the kind of violence that sat just under his skin waiting for permission. Maks was already on his tablet, probably tracking the call, trying to get a location even though we all knew the Red Hook facility was where they were holding everyone.
"If you've hurt her—" I started, but Anton talked over me.
"Hurt her? Why would I hurt my own half-sister?" The word dripped with possession, with claim. "She's family, Nikolai. My father's daughter. The Belyaev heir who's been missing for twenty-four years. We're simply getting reacquainted."
Half-sister. The word made my stomach turn. Anton calling Sophie family while planning to marry her, while treating her like property, while using their shared genetics as justification for whatever horror he had planned.
