“That is a question I'm trying to answer,” I admit, the honesty slipping out before I can catch it.
My sister leans forward, her elbows resting on her knees, and her dark hair falling forward to frame her face. “Mama used to tell us that the most dangerous people weren't the ones who threatened openly. They were the ones who slipped past your defenses without you noticing until it was too late.”
The mention of our mother tightens something in my chest. She died when Anya and Nikolay were twenty-one, her body consumed by cancer that no amount of money or influence could stop. I watched her fade over two years, her elegance never wavering even as illness stripped away everything else. She faced death with the same grace she brought to life, holding our hands and extracting promises we've struggled to keep.
“Mama also taught us to protect what matters,” I counter quietly.
“And does she matter?” Anya presses, her green eyes boring into mine with uncomfortable persistence. “Sage. Does she matter, or is she just another problem to handle?”
I don't answer because I don't have an answer that makes sense. Sage Bellamy should be nothing more than a lead to follow, a connection to investigate, a potential threat to neutralize, or an innocent bystander to release once her value diminishes. But something about her presence in the café day after day, theway Vega gravitates to her without prompting, and the fierce protection she shows for her sister despite drowning in debt, creates complications I don't need.
Anya studies my face, reading the silence as confirmation of whatever conclusion she's drawn. She rises gracefully, smoothing her skirt. “Be careful,brat. Sometimes the pieces on the board aren't pawns. Sometimes they are the match that sets the board on fire.”
Her warning sinks deep, settling into the spaces between my ribs where doubt and determination war constantly. I lean back in the chair, watching flames dance in the hearth and shadows flitter across the stone wall. The fire burns with the same intensity that drives every decision I make in this life I inherited.
Anya crosses to me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Call Otets tomorrow. He worries, even if he'd never admit it.”
“I will,” I promise, though we both know my definition of tomorrow might stretch into days.
She leaves through the front entrance with her driver, her departure marked by the soft click of the door and the crunch of gravel under tires as her car pulls away down the mountain road.
Vega lifts his head from where he's sprawled near the hearth, his eyes tracking my movements as I stand and pace the length of the room. My thoughts circle back to Sage despite my attempts to redirect them toward more pressing matters. To the fear in her eyes when I ended the call with her sister. To the way her hands shook even as she stood her ground and hurled accusations at me. To the rawness in her voice when she begged for permission to make one phone call.
I've locked up men before. I’ve questioned them in rooms designed for extracting truth through pain and fear. Watched them break under interrogation that stripped away lies and left only desperate honesty bleeding across concrete floors. But Sage doesn't break the way those men broke. She bends under pressure, then snaps back with renewed fury, refusing to crumble completely even when every rational instinct should tell her to submit.
Above me, the footsteps continue back and forth across the bedroom floor. I wonder if Anya is right. If Sage represents something more dangerous than an enemy with a weapon. If she's the match that will set everything I've built on fire, reducing years of careful planning and strategic control to ash and smoke.
The thought should trouble me more than it does. It should send me upstairs to extract answers by whatever means necessary and eliminate the threat before it fully manifests. But instead, I remain by the fire, wondering if fate has handed me something I cannot control, no matter how tightly I try to grip it. Because even locked behind a door with steel reinforcements and surveillance that tracks her every movement, Sage Bellamy feels dangerous in ways I'm only beginning to understand. And I genuinely don't know whether I should extinguish that flame or let it burn.
7
SAGE
The fire's warmth has faded from the bedroom, leaving behind a chill that seeps through the walls and settles into my bones. I pace the length of the room for what feels like the hundredth time, my feet silent against the hardwood floor. Each step measures the space of my prison, counting out the dimensions of this silken cage Luka Barinov has locked me in.
Twelve steps from the window to the door. Ten steps from the bed to the wardrobe. Nineteen steps if I follow the perimeter, pacing the edges of my confinement with the same restless energy that’s been gnawing at me for hours. Or has it only been minutes? Time stretches and contracts in this place, losing meaning when there's nothing to mark its passage except the gradual cooling of embers in the fireplace and the deepening darkness outside the window.
My sister's voice echoes in my head, fragile and worried, asking questions I couldn't answer honestly. The lies I told her sit like stones in my stomach, sinking deeper with every breath. Hope deserves better than a sister who vanishes without warning andspins tales about supplier meetings and equipment parts that don't exist.
Denver. I told her I drove to Denver for coffee beans and machinery repairs, as if that made any sense at all. As if I would make that decision without consulting her first, counting every penny three times, and calculating whether the investment would pay off before tourist season ended and winter's slow months settled over Aspen Ridge.
She didn't believe me. I heard the doubt and the suspicion that something wasn't right, even as she accepted my explanation, because what other choice did she have?
I stop at the window, pressing my palms against the cool glass. The contact centers me, giving me something solid to focus on when everything else feels like it's spinning out of control. Outside, darkness blankets the mountain landscape, broken only by scattered stars that pierce through the thin Colorado air with brilliant clarity. The view should be beautiful and peaceful. Instead, it mocks me with freedom I can't reach, and distance that stretches between me and everything I've fought to protect.
The café will open tomorrow morning without me. Jenny will arrive at five-thirty, find the door locked, then fumble with the keys in the pre-dawn darkness, probably still half-asleep from staying up too late studying for her nursing exams. She'll flip on the lights, wondering where I am, and when I don’t answer my phone, she’ll start the opening routine I've drilled into her over months of training. Grind the beans. Check the milk supply. Fire up the espresso machine and pray it cooperates for once.
She'll handle the early rush alone, taking orders from regulars who know their drinks by heart and tourists who take fifteen minutes to decide between a latte and a cappuccino. She'llstumble through the more complicated requests, the ones that require precise timing and practiced hands, probably apologizing every few minutes for being slower than usual. She’ll call again, certain something’s wrong, but I won’t be there to answer.
And the customers will notice my absence. They always do. Mrs. Henderson will ask where I am, her weathered face creasing with concern because she's known me since I was a teenager working my first shift at Bean & Bloom under my mother's watchful eye. The construction crew from the resort expansion will grumble about the wait times, though they'll tip Jenny anyway because they're decent men who understand what it means to work for a living.
The espresso machine will probably malfunction again, spitting steam and grinding to a halt right when the line stretches out the door and into the street. It's been threatening to die for months, held together with repairs I can barely afford and prayers I'm not sure anyone hears. Without me there to coax it back to life, to perform the specific sequence of button presses and valve adjustments that convince it to cooperate, Jenny will be forced to close early or turn away customers. Either option costs me money I don't have.
My reflection stares back at me from the window glass, pale and exhausted, my hair tangled from hours of restless movement. The face looking back barely resembles the woman who served coffee this morning, who smiled at customers and pretended everything was fine even as anxiety gnawed at her insides.
I look small in this oversized bedroom, dwarfed by expensive furniture and surrounded by opulence I can't begin to fathom. This isn't my world. These silk sheets and hand-carved wardrobes scream wealth and power that builds empires andcrushes obstacles without hesitation or remorse. And Luka Barinov sits at the center of it all, pulling strings I can't see, and making decisions that reshape my life without asking permission or offering explanations.
He terrifies me. Not just because of the obvious danger and the implicit threat in every carefully chosen word, but because of something deeper. Something that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the way my pulse kicks up when he enters a room.
