He hung up.
My hands should have been shaking. I should have felt panic clawing through my veins.
But instead... I felt calm.
Strangely calm.
Ruslan Baranov might have been a foreigner here, an outsider crashing into a carefully balanced ecosystem of power, an uninvited storm in California’s elite underworld—but I’d seen him last night. I’d watched him move. The way he’d dismantled Dr. Marcus Hale—methodical, merciless, elegant in its brutality—was a choreography of raw power and controlled fury.
The therapist hadn’t stood a chance.
The five families might think they could overpower him. That he could be outmaneuvered. That their networks, their spies, their assassins could intimidate him.
They were wrong.
He’d underestimated them once—enough for them to reach Yannis.
He would not make that mistake again.
I set the phone down carefully and exhaled, long and slow, letting the tension in my shoulders melt just a fraction.
I turned toward Yannis.
He was still asleep on my bed—small, curled tightly on his side, lashes dark and long against pale, fragile cheeks.
His tiny fingers flexed occasionally, as if dreaming of something ordinary and safe.
He looked impossibly young. Innocent. So unfairly burdened by grief and loss at such a tender age. His mother was gone. His father’s empire a storm of violence and danger. And yet here he slept, as though nothing in the world could touch him.
I stepped away from the bed, careful not to wake him.
The hallway stretched out before me, silent and immaculate.
Marble floors gleamed like still water, polished to a mirror sheen that reflected the golden morning sunlight streaming through the tall windows. Statues, Greek and Roman, stood likesilent sentinels in their niches, frozen in poses of heroism, grief, and eternal watchfulness.
I walked slowly, fingertips trailing along the cool walls.
The estate felt infinite, and yet suffocating. Beautiful, yes—but oppressive. Dangerous in its perfection.
I pushed open the tall glass doors to the outside.
The morning air hit my face like a soft, bracing wave—crisp, salty from the Pacific, carrying a whisper of jasmine and rosemary from the estate gardens.
The grounds stretched wide.
In the distance, the ocean shimmered silver-blue.
I turned left, away from the main drive, letting my feet carry me down a winding stone path bordered with lavender and rosemary, the scent clinging to the damp fabric of my sweater.
My mind wandered briefly—back to the graves, the rain, the blood, the brutality of last night—but the estate’s serenity tugged at me, coaxing my pulse to slow.
That’s when I saw them.
A mother elephant and her calf stood in a shaded clearing near the perimeter fence, impossibly still at first, then slowly moving.
The mother was enormous, gray, wise; her skin wrinkled like aged parchment, eyes calm and intelligent.
The calf was clumsy, tiny compared to her, ears flapping, trunk swaying wildly.
