The bunny.
Lily’s stupid, loved, worn little bunny.
Bella sucks in a breath, fingers tightening in my shirt.
They bring it to Irina. She takes it delicately, like it’s something fragile. For a heartbeat she just looks at it, thumb brushing one ragged ear.
Then she tears it open.
Stuffing rips, white fluff blowing across the tarmac like snow. Her fingers dig into the cotton until they close around something hard and small. She pulls it out.
A thin, dark drive, no markings.
My throat goes dry. That little piece of plastic and metal has the capability to ruin anyone, including me. With all that knowledge, my mother will be more powerful than ever.
Irina holds it up between two fingers, turning it in the light. “At last,” she says softly. She holds it up so I can see it. “All this,” she says quietly, “for something that fits in my hand.”
Bella tenses in my arms, eyes locked on the drive. “Are you really going to let her take that?” she whispers, voice raw. “After everything she’s done? After what’s on it?”
Irina hears her. Of course she does. She turns that cool gaze on me.
“Are you?” she echoes, a mocking edge in her tone. “Going to let me walk away with this, Aleksander?”
My fingers tighten on Bella’s shoulder. I know what that drive means. I know what she can do with it, how untouchable it will make her.
But I also know what it means if I try to take it from her here, now, with Bella pressed against me and my daughter hiding in a building a hundred meters away.
There’s no version of this where I keep them both.
I meet Irina’s eyes. “Take it,” I say.
Bella jerks, looking up at me like I’ve betrayed something huge. I squeeze her shoulder, steady and firm.
“It’s a small price,” I murmur, just for her. “She gets her power back. We get to walk away.”
For once in my life, I am choosing my family over the war. That has to count for something.
Irina turns as if it’s already decided, already over. She starts to walk back toward her car, her men closing around her, guns lowering but not put away. The jet is still humming behind us, but no one’s thinking about boarding now.
“Mother,” I call.
She doesn’t stop.
“Mother,” I say again, louder this time.
She reaches the open car door. One foot inside. For a second, I think she’s going to ignore me completely.
Then she pauses.
She looks back over her shoulder, eyes taking us in. Me, with my arm wrapped around Bella. Bella clinging to me, still shaking. The dark shape of Nikolai’s body on the ground.
For the first time all night, there’s something almost human in her face. Not softness, not quite. Something tired. Something like regret that never got the chance to grow.
“For what it’s worth,” she says quietly, “I never planned for it to be you standing on the wrong side of my gun.”
She holds my gaze a beat longer.
“You should have left when you had the chance, Aleksander,” she adds. “But then…you never did know when to walk away.”
