"Then we find out how many more people have to die tonight." Nico delivers Dante's words with perfect calm, but his hand rests on his weapon.
Tension coils through the buildings like electricity. One move from Alexei and this street becomes a bloodbath. The standoff holds for three heartbeats, four, five. I can hear Alexei's breathing, harsh and ragged, the sound of a man at war with himself.
Then Alexei steps back. One step. Then another.
"Go." The word comes out rough, destroyed. "Before I change my mind."
"Alexei…"
"GO."
I walk toward my brothers' SUV, each step feeling like dying. Like leaving pieces of myself on the asphalt between us. My shoes thud against the concrete, the sound too loud in the silence, marking my path away from him. Nico's arm comes around me, holding me upright when my knees threaten to give out. His familiar scent of cinnamon should be comforting, but it just reminds me of everything I've betrayed. Dante opens the back door and I climb in, my body moving mechanically.
I look back once. Just once.
Alexei stands alone in the street, blood still on his face, on his hands. Other men's blood, spilled for me. The streetlight casts him in harsh shadows, makes him look like something out of a nightmare or a dark fairy tale. The prince who rescued the princess only to watch her choose to leave anyway.
He saved me and I'm abandoning him, just like I abandoned the truth about my father's death, just like I abandon everything that matters when it gets too hard to face.
The image burns itself into my memory. Him standing there, destroyed and alone, watching me leave. It joins all the other images I'll never be able to forget. My father's last smile. Mikhail teaching me Russian. Marco telling me to get out.
Now this. Alexei letting me go because he loves me too much to force me to stay.
The SUV pulls away, and I watch him disappear in the side mirror until the street swallows him completely. Nico sits beside me in the back while Dante drives, his presence solid and familiar even though everything else feels like it's dissolving.
The silence lasts exactly three blocks before Nico speaks.
"Marco told us what happened. What you confessed."
I close my eyes, tasting salt from tears I won't let fall. "And you came anyway."
"You're our sister."
"I don't deserve…"
"Stop." His voice goes hard, then immediately softens. "We'll figure it out. But not tonight. Tonight you just rest."
Dante's hands move, signing in the rearview mirror where I can see: “You were fifteen years old.”
"That doesn't excuse…"
More signs: "It doesn't excuse anything. But it explains everything."
Fifteen years old. A child in love with a boy who asked her to keep a secret. A girl who thought one day would make a difference. Who thought she could have both: keep her promise to Mikhail and save her father too. Who was wrong about everything.
I don't have the energy to argue. Don't have the strength to explain that being young doesn't make me less guilty. Good men died because I stayed silent. My father kissed me goodbye and I let him go. The guilt sits like shattered glass in my chest, cutting with every heartbeat.
Nico takes one hand off the steering wheel and reaches back to squeeze my knee. "We've got you, Sof."
I want to believe him. Want to believe there's something left to save, some piece of me that isn't poisoned by what I've done. But all I can think about is the trail of destruction I leave everywhere I go.
Mikhail, dead because I loved him enough to keep his secret.
Papa, dead because I kept that secret too well.
Marco, shattered because his baby sister chose a Russian boy over their own blood.
And now Alexei, standing alone on a dark street, covered in blood he spilled for someone who can't even tell him the truth. Even now, miles away, my body aches for him. The memory of his hands, his mouth, the way he looked at me like I was worth burning the world down for.
