Anger bubbles up first. She left me. She let me grow up piecing together scraps of my own life while she reinvented herself somewhere else. Fear follows quickly after. If she’s embedded this deeply, then my proximity to Rurik isn’t coincidence. It’s convergence.
And Rurik knows it.
If there’s one thing that feels undeniably true now, it’s this. I’m done running. I’m done pretending that distance alone keeps me safe. Whatever my mother is, whatever she’s done, I won’t let it hollow me out the way it once did.
I shower quickly, letting the hot water sting my skin, focussing on feelings instead of my thoughts. The room is full of steam when I finally turn off the shower and step onto the cool tiles, plucking the robe from where it hangs beside the shower door.
It’s time to face the day. Whether I’m ready or not. I head out into the living space.
Rurik is exactly where I expected him to be. At the table. Jacket off. Sleeves rolled up. Phone in hand. Screens lit with news feeds and documents, his focus sharp and unyielding. He looks up when he senses me, gestures to a spread of breakfast foods before hanging up the phone.
“You slept,” he says.
“All the way through,” I reply quietly, filling a plate with pastries and fruit.
Something like relief flickers across his face before he schools it away.
“I’ve been dealing with… everything,” he adds.
I walk closer, stopping a few feet away. “The governor.”
“And your mother,” he confirms. “She believes she’s insulated. She knew I was backing Michaelsson. She wanted Vegas again. Familiar ground. A place where power hides in plain sight.”
I wrap the robe tighter around myself. “She thinks marriage protects her.”
“She’s not wrong,” he says. “Just incomplete.”
I meet his gaze. “You’re going to dismantle her position.”
“Yes.”
My stomach turns sour. “Without killing her.”
“Yes.”
The silence between us is different now.
“Are you okay with that?” he asks finally. But I doubt it would make a difference if I wasn’t. Not in his world.
I pull apart a thick, sticky cinnamon roll as I think about the girl I was when my mother vanished. About the woman I built out of sheer necessity. About the future I want that isn’t defined by either running or ruling alone.
“Yes,” I say, meaning it.
Rurik nods once, decisive. Something clicks into place between us.
Nothing is simple anymore, but I feel like I’m standing exactly where I’m meant to be, staring down the truth instead of circling it.
“What does this mean—?” I ask, before settling on adding, “For us. I’m not even sure what we are.”
“You’re mine,” he says simply, like that answers every question that ever was. “We can stand here analysing it to death, or we can accept it.”
His eyes darken when he looks at me this time. Fatigue evident in the way his features are a little softer. A little more unguarded.
A tingling sensation starts in the soles of my feet and spreads all the way through my body.
“Come here,” he says.
I slide the plate of food onto the table, and go to him. The me before yesterday would balk at being ordered around by a man. But somewhere between his office and now, I learned I wanted to be ordered around by him.
