I rolled my eyes, but I smiled too. With her, it was impossible not to.
We burned three batches that night. Three.
The smoke alarm shrieked like we were under attack, and we panicked, waving dish towels wildly beneath it, coughing through the haze while laughter spilled out of us uncontrollably.
My eyes burned.
My chest hurt from laughing too hard.
She bumped her hip into mine, steadying me when I bent over, and flashed that grin—bright, reckless, unburdened—like the world was still simple and kind and incapable of cruelty.
That was her. Joy, unguarded.
When she got accepted into the military academy—because of Jake, her boyfriend, already enlisted, already calling her brave—I pretended to be proud without reservation. But the night before she left, she broke.
She cried in my arms, quiet, shaking sobs she tried to swallow back, her face buried in my shoulder. Her fingers clutched my shirt like she was afraid I might disappear if she loosened her grip.
“I just want to keep seeing you,” she whispered, voice breaking. “Promise you’ll visit.”
I promised.
It broke my heart to let her go, but I did. I had to. She was Elena Senior—my shield when the world got sharp, my compass when I felt lost, my first home before I understood what the word home truly meant.
A year later, she called.
The line crackled badly, static chewing through her voice, turning it distant, fragile. I pressed the phone tighter to my ear, afraid I might lose her if I didn’t listen hard enough.
“Elena...” she said. “Me and Jake—we’re part of a twenty-one-member specialist team.”
My stomach tightened.
“We’re being sent to Greece. Classified op. Target: Al-Chapo. Alive or dead.”
I begged her not to go. I didn’t care about duty or honor or missions. I cared about her coming home.
She laughed—bright and fearless, exactly like the girl who burned eggs with me in that cold kitchen. The same laugh. Unchanged.
“I’ll be fine,” she promised. “I’ll come home.”
She never did.
The memory shattered as reality snapped back into place—sharp, brutal, unforgiving—and the absence she left behind felt just as vast as it had the day I lost her.
Ruslan was already halfway up the stairs.
I hurried after him, heart racing.
“Are the rumors true?” I asked, daring the words out. “Did you really kill Al-Chapo?”
He stopped on the landing.
Then he turned—slowly.
“Yes,” he said simply. “And I inherited what remained of his empire.”
The air seemed to tighten, as though the house itself had drawn a breath.
His eyes sharpened. “Why are you asking?”
