The place feels abandoned, even though it isn't. Like a body still breathing but no longer truly alive.
I find the study where Misha and I talked yesterday, the door standing open. I don't go in. The memory of that conversation is too fresh—his voice sayinga lot, the way he didn't flinch when I asked if he'd killed people.
Instead, I keep moving, drawn toward the light at the end of the corridor.
The back of the house opens onto a terrace, stone balustrades lined with more gargoyles, their faces worn smooth by decades of rain. Beyond it, the gardens stretch toward a high stone wall topped with iron spikes. The wall encircles the entire property, I realize—a perimeter of old stone and modern surveillance, keeping the world out.
Or keeping me in.
I descend the terrace steps and follow a gravel path into the gardens. The air is cold and damp, thick with the smell of salt and decaying leaves. I can hear the ocean somewhere beyond the wall—a low, constant roar that sounds like breathing.
The gardens are overgrown, I realize as I walk deeper. The hedges have been trimmed recently, but the flower beds are choked with weeds, and the fountains are dry, their basins filled with dead leaves. Whoever tends this place focuses on security, not beauty.
I pass two guards on my circuit of the grounds. They watch me but don't stop me, their faces impassive. Testing the boundaries, I walk closer to the wall, close enough to touch the cold stone. No one intervenes.
You're not a prisoner, Mrs. Novak said. But the wall is still there. The guards are still there. And somewhere beyond them, Sergei Morozov is planning to take me back.
I shiver and turn away from the wall.
That's when I see the greenhouse.
It sits at the far edge of the property, half-hidden by overgrown hedges and a tangle of dead vines. Victorian ironwork, glass panels fogged with age and grime. One of the doors hangs open, creaking softly in the wind.
I shouldn't go in. It's probably not safe—the structure looks like it might collapse at any moment. But something about it pulls at me, a recognition I can't name.
A forgotten place. A neglected thing. Something that used to be beautiful, before it was abandoned.
I push through the overgrown entrance and step inside.
The air is different here—warmer, humid, thick with the smell of earth and rot. Plants crowd the narrow aisles, most of them dead or dying, their leaves brown and curled. But here and there, something green pushes through—a fern unfurling in a crack, a vine climbing toward the broken glass roof, life persisting despite the neglect.
I find a wrought-iron bench near the center, half-buried under dead foliage. I brush it clean and sit down, the metal cold through my pants.
And finally, I let myself fall apart.
Not crying—I cried myself out last night. This is something deeper, something quieter. I sit with my hands in my lap and let the weight of everything settle over me. My father's betrayal. My brothers' complicity. Twenty-one years of believing I was loved, or at least valued, when really I was just an asset waiting to be liquidated.
The heart compensates. I told Misha that, two years ago, full of naive optimism about resilience and healing. But some damage can't be compensated for. Some wounds are too deep,too fundamental. You don't recover from learning that your entire life was a lie.
You just... keep going. Because the alternative is stopping, and stopping means dying, and I'm not ready to die.
Not yet. Not like this.
I don't know how long I sit there. Long enough for the light to shift, the clouds thinning enough to let weak sunlight filter through the grimy glass. Long enough for my hands to go numb with cold.
Long enough for footsteps to crunch on the gravel outside.
I look up as Misha appears in the doorway, his broad frame silhouetted against the gray light. He's dressed simply—dark pants, a black sweater that stretches across his shoulders. His face is unreadable.
He doesn't speak. Neither do I.
We just look at each other across the expanse of dead plants and broken glass—two people trapped in a situation neither of us fully chose. The silence stretches, thick and heavy, filled with everything we've said and everything we haven't.
I break first.
"I can't just sit in that room and wait." My voice comes out hoarse, scraped raw. "I'll lose my mind."
He steps into the greenhouse, careful to avoid the debris on the floor. Stops a few feet away from my bench, close enough to touch if either of us reached out.
