Nikolai nods, his face set in hard lines. “We’ll find out. We’ll get ahead of it.”
I wish I could believe him.
The hallway is quieter now, the chaos of the night receding into low voices and the distant beep of monitors. I leave Bella’s room, pausing for a moment to watch her sleep—peaceful at last, color returning to her cheeks. Nikolai nods at me from his post by the door, silent understanding in his eyes.
I walk toward Lily’s room, rubbing a hand over my face, exhaustion pressing hard at my temples. The sharp click of shoes on linoleum makes me glance up. A man comes around the corner, head down, shoulders hunched as if trying not to draw attention. We almost collide. He looks up, startled, and murmurs, “Sorry.”
He steps aside, but not before I see the mark on his wrist, half-hidden by his sleeve—a tattoo, simple and unmistakable. My mother’s sigil.
Everything inside me freezes.
He’s one of Irina’s.
The man keeps walking, slipping past two orderlies, heading for the far end of the hallway.
For a second, I freeze, heart pounding, watching as he walks away at a perfectly casual pace, never looking back. I can’t do this anymore—this hiding, this waiting for enemies to come to me. Not when the people I love are in danger. I force my feet to move, following at a distance, keeping to the shadows as he makes his way down the hall, past a cluster of orderlies, and slips through the heavy emergency exit at the end of the wing.
As soon as I push through, the chill of the stairwell closes around me. I reach for my gun out of habit, and he’s already halfway down the stairs, pausing just enough to look back.
Suddenly, the man stops, turns, and pulls a gun on me. I do the same, our weapons leveled at each other in the flickering stairwell light.
“I have no intent of killing you,” I say, voice even. “I just want to talk to Irina.” I swallow hard, lowering my gun an inch. “Please,” I say, the word tasting foreign, heavy. I can’t remember the last time I used it. “Just let me see her. Let me talk.”
The man narrows his eyes, as if searching for a lie. Then, without a word, he pulls out his phone, dials, says something in Russian too soft for me to catch. There’s a brief pause, then he hangs up.
He gestures, holstering his weapon. “Follow. But no guns.”
I hesitate, jaw clenched. It feels like suicide—walking in defenseless, into the lion’s den.
I know what it means. I know how stupid it is. I flick the safety on and hold out my weapon, grip-first. He takes it, checks the chamber, then tucks it into his coat.
He gestures for me to follow, and this time, I do—heart hammering, every muscle wound tight. I’ve never felt more exposed, or more desperate. But I walk into the darkness after him, because there’s nothing else left to do.
Irina waits outside, idling in the back seat of a sleek black car parked under the dull yellow spill of a streetlamp. The man with the tattoo opens the door for me, his face blank as I climb in. The leather is cold. Irina doesn’t look at me right away, just taps her fingernails against the edge of her phone, eyes fixed on the dark windshield.
We sit in silence for a beat. The engine purrs, a soft warning.
“Leave Bella and Lily out of this,” I say, my voice steady but low. “This is between us, not them.”
She glances over, her expression sharp and bored all at once. “So you’re here to beg.” Her lips twist into a sneer. “Did you forget what you did to me? You killed my son.”
My jaw tightens. I force myself to look at her, even as a cold shiver crawls down my spine. “I’m your son too.”
She laughs, and it’s not kind. “That line doesn’t work on me anymore, Aleksander. I gave you every chance. You chose your side a long time ago.”
I look down at my hands, feeling the words thicken in my throat. “You’re angry at me. Fine. Punish me. But leave the others out of it.”
She tucks her phone away, turning to face me, her gaze heavy and bright with something like disappointment. “You’re only regretting what you did because you think I’m going to kill your precious daughter.” Her voice is sweet and lethal at the same time. “And maybe I will. That would make us even, yes?”
The words hit like a bullet. My mouth goes dry, but I don’t let her see me flinch. I say nothing, not trusting myself to speak.
For a long moment, there’s only the idle rumble of the car and the sound of her breathing.
“I didn’t kill Kirov,” I say, meeting her eyes in the glass. My voice is raw, pulled straight from somewhere that still hopes the truth will matter.
Irina’s mouth twists, a sound halfway between a scoff and a bitter laugh escaping her. She turns to look at me, slow and deliberate, like she’s appraising a stain.
“Don’t insult my intelligence,” she snaps.
