My father was caught between two monsters; the criminals who pull strings in the dark, and the government that pretends to be clean while gripping the same bloody threads.
I shut the file, pressing my palms flat against the cover to stop the trembling.
Now I see the choice clearly, a blade pressed to my throat. I can bury this. Stay silent, survive quietly in the place I’ve carved for myself beside Alexei. Pretend the truth never touched me. Pretend I can still hate only him, blame only him, and maybe, in time, forget.
Or I can use what I’ve gained. The power he’s handed me, the respect I’ve forced from his men, the access I never should have been given. I can turn it into a weapon sharper than any knife. I can finish what my father started. I can tear the system down from the inside, expose every name, every lie, every tie between blood and politics.
Except if I do, if I open this wound, it won’t just be the Council or the government who pays. It’ll be Alexei. The son of the man who signed the order. The man who, without realizing it, has made me strong enough to do what he never expected.
The lamp buzzes above me, shadows stretching long across the table. My reflection stares back from the glossy folder, pale and hollow-eyed.
I sit in the war room long after midnight, the file heavy beneath my hand. My mind spins with names, faces, signatures. Every word feels like poison in my blood.
I can almost hear my father’s voice again. His warnings, his quiet paranoia in those last weeks. He wasn’t afraid of shadows. He was afraid of men in suits. Men who smiled as they ordered his death.
I should tell Alexei. The thought needles me, twisting until my stomach aches. If I hand him this truth, what would he do? Would he deny it, swear ignorance? Or would he admit it and prove every suspicion I’ve ever had—that he’s never actually cared about me?
Yet something stops me. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s the way he’s begun to look at me during meetings, like I’m more than just a shield or a pawn. Maybe it’s the memory of his hand on my back, steadying me when I faltered in front of his men.
I close the folder and shove it back beneath the stack, burying it where no one will see. Not yet.
For now, I’ll keep it close. I’ll keep working, keep earning ground. I’ll wait until I know which side of me will win? The daughter hungry for revenge, or the woman who’s learning, against her will, how to stand beside him?
The choice isn’t ready to be made, but when it comes, it’ll break more than one of us.
Chapter Twenty-Two - Alexei
Something about her shifts, and it unsettles me more than I want to admit. Vivienne has always been sharp—quick with her tongue, quicker with her mind—but lately her sharpness cuts in a different way.
Her questions in meetings have grown quieter, not less intelligent but more deliberate. Her eyes track me across the war room with something unreadable, not the fury I’ve grown used to but a calculation that makes my chest tighten.
She’s present, but not. Sitting at my side, offering insight, making herself indispensable, yet always with a part of her withdrawn, locked behind walls I can’t break.
That night, I find the war room empty except for her scent lingering in the air and a folder resting neatly on my desk. She doesn’t wait for me, doesn’t demand my attention. She leaves it like an offering, or a warning.
I sit down, drag the lamp closer, and open it.
Her father’s name stares up at me from the first page. I recognize the documents instantly—signatures, coded orders, authorizations that I’ve seen a thousand times in other contexts. Here, the pattern is unmistakable.
I read in silence, each word heavier than the last.
The truth lands like a blade between my ribs. It wasn’t just a Bratva hit. My father didn’t order her father’s death as a simple punishment for debts or disloyalty. He ordered it to silence him. To bury the threat he posed not to the Bratva, but to something far larger. A network. Alliances with government officials, judges, ministers—men who smiled for cameras by day and bled the world dry by night.
My father orchestrated the murder to protect them. To protect himself.
I force myself to breathe, to keep turning pages. The signatures are all there. The coded names I once thought irrelevant, now exposed for what they were. Each document a piece of a machine designed to grind anyone who threatened them into dust.
The worst part isn’t the murder. I’ve seen death used as a solution more times than I can count. The worst part is how easily they continued their operations afterward. How they thrived while we took the fall, the Bratva painted as monsters so the men in suits could keep their hands clean.
I push the file away, lean back, and drag my palms down my face.
My father wasn’t just a kingpin. He was a shield. A puppet master who allowed himself to be seen as the villain so they could keep playing saints.
I should have known.
I rise, the chair scraping back hard against the floor, and stalk down into the underground archives. The air down there is cold, stale with dust and mold, the walls lined with steel cabinets that haven’t been touched in years. I unlock them with the old keys, fingers tight on the ring, and pull out boxes I once believed irrelevant.
I dig through them, one after another, the papers brittle and yellowed. Each folder cracks open another piece of the truth. Forged arrests. Politicians whose opponents vanished overnight. Manipulated elections recorded in code. Deals struck between state agencies and Bratva factions, disguised as routine operations.
