“What will happen to me?” I ask, my fingers brushing the fabric of a blouse, pretending my hand doesn’t shake.
Dimitri tilts his head, studying me like he’s dissecting a puzzle. “You’re different. He doesn’t know if you’re enemy or ally, and that makes him hesitate. No one else gets hesitation from him. Not me. Not anyone. Just you.”
The words ripple through me, but I don’t let them root. I turn slightly, meeting his gaze. “You’re warning me?”
“I’m reminding you.” His voice hardens. “Whatever you think you’re playing at, it won’t last. You’re alive now because he hasn’t decided yet. Don’t mistake that for mercy.”
The silence after hangs heavier than the steam still clinging to my skin.
I slip into my blouse slowly, each button a small defiance, and finally say, “I never mistake him for merciful.”
Dimitri stands then, finally moving toward the door. He pauses with his hand on the handle, glancing back over his shoulder.
“Good,” he says simply.
Then he leaves me alone again, the echo of his warning thick in the air, the chain at my ankle colder than before.
The door shuts with a hollow thud, and I’m left staring at the velvet drapes as if they might answer the questions clawingat me. My skin is still warm from the shower, but inside I’m frozen.
Dimitri’s words circle like vultures—you’re alive now because he hasn’t decided yet.
I sink onto the bed, tugging the blouse tighter around me, the cuff clinking against the frame. My chest rises sharp, refusing calm. I tell myself I won’t break, not here, not for them. Yet when the silence swells again, I realize breaking might not be a choice.
Chapter Twelve - Alexei
The glass sweats in my hand, amber liquid catching the faint light from the desk lamp. I poured it minutes ago, maybe longer, but it sits untouched. My hands are steady, as they always are. Everything else feels unmoored, as though the floor itself shifts beneath me while I sit motionless.
When I force myself to replay every interaction, every detail, the signs are there. I should’ve seen them. I should’ve trusted less, watched more closely. She never flinched the way others did. Never stumbled. Her calm wasn’t strength; it was cover.
My jaw clenches. That kind of clarity only comes too late.
I lean back in the chair, the leather creaking softly, and let the last conversation run again in my mind. Her voice, steady, sharp as a blade:“Your family ordered my father’s death.”The venom in her tone, the certainty.
If it’s true, then everything shifts. It’s not just betrayal, it’s vengeance: personal, generational. That would mean her presence in my circle wasn’t just infiltration, it was a reckoning years in the making.
If it isn’t true, it still doesn’t matter. She still wormed her way into my world. She stood in my meetings, gathered my secrets, walked my halls. She used me. That alone warrants death.
So why haven’t I done it yet?
I tell myself it’s because I need answers. Because there’s more beneath the surface than one woman’s lies. I need to know who she worked with, who she spoke to, how far the rot reaches. I need to see the full web before I burn it.
That’s what I tell myself.
Even as I shape the thought, I know it isn’t the whole truth.
I remember the first time I saw her. Courtroom light slicing across her face, the way she moved like she belonged even in a place where she was meant to be an outsider. The control she wore like a second skin. She didn’t tremble, didn’t falter, didn’t let the room dominate her. She dominated it.
I hadn’t planned to want her, but I did.
What began as curiosity turned into something darker. Attraction that sank its teeth deeper every time she held her ground, every time she looked me in the eye without fear. Obsession, maybe. An itch I couldn’t scratch, a need to pull her closer, to strip back every layer until I knew what made her pulse race.
Now that obsession is laced with fury… and something worse: disappointment.
I swirl the drink once in my hand, watching the liquid catch light, then set the glass down untouched. The sound of it against the desk is sharper than I intend.
I rise, restless, moving through the estate’s corridors until I reach the security room. Screens glow pale in the dark, cameras capturing angles of gates, halls, rooms. I don’t look at those feeds first. I pull up the footage from the alley.
The moment that matters.
