I break everyone I touch. Maybe Kaz was right. I am poison, destroying everything good that gets too close.
Chicago slides past the windows. Normal people living normal lives, completely unaware that some choices can't be undone. Some betrayals cut too deep to heal. Some truths are too terrible to speak out loud.
Behind us, somewhere in the night, Alexei is probably still standing there. Or maybe he's driving back to some safe house, washing my absence off his hands along with the blood. I can still smell him on my skin. Gunpowder and amber, violence and tenderness mixed together.
I wonder if he'll forgive me when he learns the truth.
I wonder if I'll ever forgive myself.
I already know the answer to both.
28 - Alexei
Istand in that empty street for eighteen minutes after her SUV disappears. Counting each one. The drive back to the compound stretches like a wound.
The compound looks wrong without her in it.
I drive through the gates with blood drying under my fingernails, the empty passenger seat mocking me. The leather still holds the ghost of her warmth from thirty minutes ago, when she chose her brothers over me. Again.
Chaos greets me inside. Men choosing sides in the aftermath of civil war, some loyal to me, others to what the bratva should be. I walk through it like I'm already dead, giving orders I don't hear myself speak. Boris needs medical attention. Pavel's crew requires new assignments. The warehouse needs cleaning before dawn.
None of it matters.
My quarters loom at the end of the hallway. I stop at the threshold, unable to enter, unable to turn away. Her scent drifts out, that floral perfume mixed with something uniquely hers. The sheets we tangled in so recently still carry the impression of her body.
I pour vodka with hands that won't stop shaking. The glass sits untouched on the side table while I stand frozen in the doorway. She left me. After I killed for her at that warehouse. After I chose her over my own blood.
The bracelet halves weigh heavy in my pocket. I pull them out, studying the tarnished silver in the lamplight. Two halvesof one heart. Hers and… Christ, it has to be Mikhail's. What else would send her running from the lakehouse like her world had shattered?
She found these in his room. Found something that broke her so completely she couldn't even look at me. And now she's gone, taking her secrets with her, leaving me with nothing but questions and the taste of her absence.
My mother is gone. Mikhail's been gone for eleven years. All I have left is a dead man's secrets and two halves of a broken heart.
Viktor's study hasn't been touched since he died. The door creaks open, releasing the smell of dust and leather and Cuban cigars. I've avoided this room, this shrine to my father's particular brand of cruelty.
Tonight I have nothing left to avoid.
His desk sits like a monument to organized evil. Every paper in its place, every file labeled with his precise handwriting. I've never gone through them. Couldn't face what brutalities might be documented there. But she ran from something in Mikhail's room, something connected to these bracelet halves, and if answers exist anywhere, they're here.
I start with the obvious files. Enemies. Allies. Territory disputes. Nothing about the Rosettis I don't already know. My hands leave bloody fingerprints on manila folders, marking my father's legacy with evidence of tonight's violence.
The locked drawer mocks me from beneath the desktop. Of course there's a locked drawer. Viktor always did love his secrets. I grab a letter opener and pry until the wood splinters, until the lock gives way with a crack that sounds like bones breaking.
Inside: a folder. Unmarked. Thick enough to hold years of secrets.
The first photo stops my breath. Mikhail in a garden, young and alive and smiling at someone outside the frame. The date in the corner: eleven years ago, three months before the massacre. I flip to the next photo and my blood turns to ice.
A girl. Blonde. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Laughing at something Mikhail's saying, her hand touching his arm with easy intimacy.
Sofia.
My hands tremble as I spread the surveillance photos across Viktor's desk. Dozens of them. Mikhail and Sofia meeting in secret gardens, holding hands, him teaching her something from a book. In one, she's wearing half a heart on a chain around her neck.
I grab the next document, searching for proof that this is some mistake.
The memo is typed on Viktor's personal letterhead, dated two days before the massacre:
"M has become compromised. Emotional attachment to Rosetti girl presents operational liability. Options: (1) Eliminate the girl. (2) Redirect M's loyalty through traditional methods. (3) Allow situation to resolve naturally. Recommendation: Option 3. M will likely attend meeting to warn the Rosettis. Acceptable collateral for larger operational success."
