I meet his gaze, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it even. “You can't keep me out of this. She's my family.”
“And she is leverage,” he counters, quiet but lethal. “Ray took her because he knows what she means to you. If she’s still in his hands, or the Sokolovs have her, they’ll use her again. You walking into the middle of it helps no one.”
The logic is sound. I know it is. But logic doesn't ease the guilt clawing at my insides, or quiet the voice in my head screaming that I should be doing something, anything, to bring Hope home.
“I won't stay here doing nothing,” I insist, hearing the desperation in my own voice.
“You will.”
Anger burns through the fear, bright and hot. “You treat me like I'm delicate, like one more thing you have to control. I'm not.”
His teeth grind together, tension drawing lines through the stubble shadowing his face. “You walk into fire and call it courage. That is not strength, Sage. That is suicide.”
I glare at him through the ache in my chest. “At least I'd be trying.”
He exhales through his nose, a slow sound that carries exhaustion in every breath. For a moment, he looks less like the man who commands a criminal empire and more like a man breaking quietly behind his composure. The vulnerability lasts only a second before his mask slides back into place, but I see it. I see the man beneath thepakhan,the one who stayed by my bedside all night, even though he has an organization to run and enemies to hunt.
When he speaks again, his tone has softened, but it cuts deeper than any harsh words could. “You think I have not lost enough? That I can watch you walk into danger when I can stop it?”
The words steal my breath. For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. The monitor fills the silence, the steady rhythm of my pulse betraying everything I try to hide. I want to argue, to tell him I'm not his responsibility, but the look in his eyes stops me. There's something there I haven't seen before that looks dangerously close to fear.
He's lost his mother. He's watched his father deteriorate after a stroke. He's seen friends and family members fall to the violence that defines his world. And now he's looking at me like I'm the next person he might lose, and he can't bear it.
The realization softens the anger burning in my chest without extinguishing it completely. I'm still furious that Hope is gone and terrified of what might be happening to her. But I alsounderstand, in a way I didn't before, that Luka is doing what he thinks he must to keep me alive. Even if it means I hate him for it.
He steps back first, retreating to the edge of the room as if distance is the only control he has left. “Rest. I will update you when there is news.”
“I don't want updates. I want her.” My voice breaks on the last word, the careful composure I've been maintaining finally cracking under the gravity of everything.
“I know.” His voice drops to a whisper that doesn't sound like surrender but something close.
He leaves before I can answer, the door closing with a soft click. The sound echoes in the quiet room, a period at the end of a sentence I'm not ready to finish.
The quiet that follows is worse than the argument. I stare at the lilies on the table until their shape blurs, the white petals bleeding into the pale blue walls. My wrist throbs beneath the bandages. My ribs ache with every breath. But none of it compares to the hollow space inside my heart where Hope should be.
Night comes without me noticing. The room dims gradually as the sun sets beyond the window, the mountains outside turning from gold to purple to black. The hum of the monitors is the only sound. I wake from uneasy sleep I don’t remember surrendering to, footsteps sounding outside. I hear low voices through the cracked door.
I adjust carefully, the IV tugging at my arm, and listen. My body protests the movement, my ribs screaming and wrist throbbing,but I ignore the pain. Anything is better than lying here with my own thoughts.
Misha’s voice comes first, low and pragmatic, all logistics and no sentiment. “The trail is thin. Ray used shell accounts, but a transfer hit one of the Sokolov fronts in Denver. A small amount, but consistent with how he launders through freight companies.”
Luka's reply is quieter but hard enough to cut through the stillness. “Follow it. Every route, every supplier. If they are moving her, it will be through that network.”
“And if it is a trap?”
“Then I will spring it myself.”
There's a pause, charged with unspoken concerns. I hear Misha sigh, the sound carrying a warning. “You cannot keep running on no sleep. You will burn out before you reach him.”
“I do not have a choice.” Luka's voice lowers, rough around the edges now. “She is still out there. And he knows I will come for her.”
Silence stretches before Misha speaks again. “What about Sage?”
Luka doesn't answer immediately. When he does, the quiet between the words feels like something breaking. “She will hate me for this.”
“Better hate than dead.”
The hallway goes still. I hear their footsteps fade, then the click of a door closing farther down the corridor. The conversation ends, but the words linger in my mind, replaying themselves on an endless loop.
