His jaw tenses, shadow darkening his features. “I suspected many things. I never suspected that.”
The room feels smaller, the walls pushing closer around us. I want him to rage, to give me something fierce enough to strike against. Instead he stands there, broad shoulders bent slightly as if bearing a weight too heavy to hide.
“I don’t know how to live with this,” I whisper. It slips out before I can stop it. The admission coils between us, fragile and dangerous.
He takes one slow step into the room, then stops. “Neither do I.”
The air shifts, thick with everything unspoken. My pulse thrums wild in my throat, my body screaming for distance even as something in me aches toward him. I force myself to hold his gaze, even as heat climbs the back of my neck. “Do not think this makes you less of a monster. You’ve killed, Alexei. You’ve destroyed lives.”
His eyes do not waver. “Yes.”
The simplicity of the word slices deeper than any argument. I almost wish he would lie, would polish himself into something less jagged. Yet he stands here offering nothing but stark honesty.
I shake my head, nails dragging down the chair until wood splinters under my grip. “I can’t forgive you.”
“I haven’t asked for forgiveness.” His tone is quiet, steady, though there is a shadow of something else beneath it, something fractured.
Silence stretches taut between us, brittle and aching. My breath comes shallow, each inhale trembling against the storm inside me. The file remains locked in the drawer, but it pulses in my memory, my father’s name scrawled beside the wordterminated.
Finally I find my voice again, low and sharp. “You let me believe I was hunting you. Do you understand how many nights I lay awake dreaming of driving a knife into your throat? Do you understand what it means to hate someone so deeply, only to find the truth stolen from you?”
His expression does not shift, yet I see something flicker in his eyes: pain, regret, something close to loss. “Yes.”
The word echoes in me, stark and hollow. I turn away, unable to hold his gaze any longer. My reflection in the darkened window looks strange, pale and weary, a woman who no longer knows where her vengeance belongs.
Behind me, his breath catches faintly, then steadies. I picture him there by the door, massive frame anchored like a sentinel, yet uncertain of his place in this room.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I murmur.
His voice comes low, almost a rasp. “Nothing.”
That unsettles me more than any demand could. My fists tighten at my sides, nails carving crescents into my palms. I wanted him to want control, to want me under his hand, to want something I could fight against.“Nothing”leaves me with no foothold.“Nothing”leaves me adrift.
The ache in my chest grows sharper. I close my eyes, fighting back the sting of tears. When I speak, my voice shakes. “Then why are you here?”
The pause stretches, long enough I almost think he won’t answer. Then, soft and ragged, “Because I should have known.”
I turn sharply, breath catching, eyes locking on to him. The crack in his voice is faint but unmistakable, a fracture running through the armor of the man I built into a monster. It is wrong that it hurts me more than his threats ever did.
I do not move closer, though every nerve in me strains with the pull of it. Instead I stand frozen, arms wrapped tight across my chest, the storm of hatred and doubt tearing through me.
His gaze stays fixed on me, unwavering, as if he will not allow himself the mercy of looking away.
I whisper, raw and broken, “Get out.”
For a long moment he does not move. Then he inclines his head, slow and deliberate, and turns toward the door. His footsteps are steady, his back straight, yet I see the weight in his shoulders.
When the door closes behind him, the silence rushes in hard and suffocating. I sink onto the edge of the bed, trembling, hands pressed to my mouth to smother the sob clawing its way out.
His words linger, carved into me deeper than the ink on those pages. I didn’t know.
No matter how fiercely I want to hate him, the sound of his voice when he said it won’t let me go.
The room feels cavernous after he leaves, shadows stretching long across the floor, silence pulsing in the corners. I sit still for a long while, spine bent, palms pressed hard against my thighs.
My lungs ache with the force of holding everything in. No tears. I refuse to give him that. He has stolen enough without taking my grief as well.
I force myself to stand, crossing to the desk where the drawer hides the file. My fingers hover over the handle before pulling back. I cannot look again tonight. The words are etched into me already, every letter burned into memory. His father. Not him. My chest squeezes painfully at the thought.
