"What do you need?" he asks.
The question catches me off guard. I expected demands, conditions, rules. Not this—not him standing in front of me withsomething almost like deference, asking what I need as if my answer matters.
"I don't know," I admit. "Something to do. Something to focus on besides—" I gesture vaguely at everything. The greenhouse, the house, the wall, my whole shattered life.
He nods slowly, processing. "You were studying for an exam. Cardiovascular pathology."
The reminder is a knife to the chest. My exam. My career. Everything I worked for, gone in a single night.
"That life is over," I say flatly.
"It doesn't have to be."
I stare at him. "What?"
"I told you before—I can arrange for you to continue your education. Transfer your credits, set you up at a medical school here. It would require security adjustments, but it's not impossible."
"You want me to go to class while a crime lord is hunting me?"
"I want you to have options." His jaw tightens. "I want you to have something that's yours, that isn't about me or your father or any of this. If medicine is that thing, then we'll find a way to make it work."
I search his face for the lie, the manipulation. I don't find it.
"Why?" I ask. "Why do you care what I want?"
He's quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is low.
"Because you asked me once what makes you different. Why I had patience with you, when I don't have patience withanyone." He holds my gaze. "I still don't have an answer. But I know that watching you disappear into that room, watching you give up—that's not something I can do. Whatever else is between us, I won't be the reason you stop fighting."
The words land somewhere I wasn't expecting. I look away, blinking hard.
"I need to think," I say.
"Take whatever time you need."
He turns to go, then pauses at the doorway.
"This greenhouse," he says. "My mother used to tend it. After she died, no one had the heart to keep it up." He looks around at the dead plants, the broken glass, something distant in his expression. "If you wanted to fix it—bring it back—you could. It might give you something to do."
Then he's gone, his footsteps fading on the gravel, leaving me alone with the ghosts of things that used to grow.
I sit in the silence for a long time, turning his words over in my mind.
I won't be the reason you stop fighting.
I don't trust him. I don't forgive him. I don't know if I ever will.
But maybe—maybe—I can survive this.
Chapter 8 - Misha
The security footage plays on a loop on my monitor.
Bianca walking the grounds this morning, her arms wrapped around herself against the cold. Bianca pausing at the perimeter wall, close enough to touch, testing how far she can go before someone stops her. Bianca disappearing into the greenhouse and not coming out for over an hour.
I should stop watching. There's work to be done—threat assessments, security protocols, contingency plans. But my eyes keep drifting back to the screen, to the small figure moving through my family's forgotten spaces like she's looking for something she lost.
Or something she might find.
