25 - Alexei
Three hours. Three fucking hours since I found her gone, Mikhail’s room destroyed, that back door swinging like an accusation.
The flashlight beam cuts through gloaming darkness, catching nothing but empty woods and my own controlled fury. My shirt is torn from branches, knuckles bleeding from pushing through undergrowth that shouldn't be this dense. Every tree looks the same in the dark. Every shadow could be her collapsed form.
My voice is raw from calling her name, but I keep searching. Methodical. Systematic. The way I hunt men who think they can hide from me.
"Sofia!"
Nothing. Just my echo dying between trees that close in with each pass. The lakehouse sits behind me, windows dark, holding whatever secret sent her running.
I sweep the beam across the forest floor again. Broken branches, disturbed leaves, the faint impression of bare feet in soft earth. She went this way first, then doubled back. Smart girl. But not smart enough. There, caught on a low branch, a thread from that oversized shirt she wore to bed. My shirt. I pull it free, the fabric soft between my bloody fingers.
She was here. Confused, maybe. Running without direction.
The dock next. Where we sat yesterday morning, her legs swinging over the water while she told me about Nico's pact of honesty. The wood creaks under my weight, still damp with dew.No sign of her. But I can see her there, phantom-like, turning to me with the sun in her hair. "I forgive you," she'd said about my father's cruelty bleeding into mine.
Lies. She ran the first chance she got.
The lake stretches black in the darkness. If there's blood, I'll burn this whole forest down.
Morning mist clings to the water's surface, hiding everything beneath. I wade in knee-deep, cold water flooding my shoes, flashlight skimming across the glassy surface. Looking for ripples that shouldn't be there. For the pale flash of skin beneath dark water.
The image assaults me: Sofia floating face down, hair spread like gold seaweed. My chest constricts hard enough to crack ribs.
No body. Good. She's still out there for me to find.
Back to the house. Mikhail's room, trying to understand what triggered this. Boxes scattered, photos everywhere, tissue paper torn like she'd been searching for something specific. One of Mikhail's architecture books lies open to a sketch of a concert hall, his neat notes in the margins about acoustics and sight lines. She'd been looking at this. Reading his dreams.
Then I see them: two halves of a silver heart on the floor, bracelet chains tangled together.
Two halves of one heart. Like something lovers would share.
My hand shakes as I pick them up. The metal is tarnished, old. One piece has initials etched so faint I almost miss them. M.V. in Cyrillic. The other piece has S.R.
My brother's? And hers? The metal burns cold in my pocket.
Whatever memory these unlocked sent her running from me. After I'd sobbed in her arms. After I showed her every fractured piece of myself. After I told her about my mother, my father, every shameful thing I'd done.
She ran.
The road to Chicago stretches ahead, empty as the passenger seat where she should be. Her scent still clings to my shirt from last night: flowers and sex and promises neither of us knew how to keep. Night falls heavy over the highway, car headlights showing what the darkness tries to hide. My hands on the wheel are destroyed. Cuts from punching through underbrush, dirt caked under nails from checking hollow logs where an injured woman might crawl.
I've called her phone twenty-three times. Dead or off, doesn't matter. The silence is answer enough.
My contacts throughout the city get the same order: find her. A woman on foot, probably disheveled, possibly injured. Every hospital, police station, bus depot.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Then my phone rings. The informant I keep inside the Rosetti compound.
"She was here. This evening. Saw her eldest brother in his study. Left about an hour ago."
The words hit like ice water in my lungs. She went to them. After everything, she chose them.
"How did she seem?"
"Destroyed. Like something inside her had broken." A pause. "She was only inside for twenty minutes. Whatever happened in that study… Marco was breaking things after she left. Heard glass shattering from the hallway."
