“Yes, you do. I’ve seen you scared before, but this is different. This is... older.”
She was quiet for so long he thought she wouldn’t answer. Then, so softly he almost missed it, she said, “It wasn’t me.”
He frowned. “I know.” His chest tightened. “It was Raya.”
Her head snapped toward him, eyes wide, as if she hadn’t expected him to say it out loud. “You know?”
“I was there, Anka,” he said quietly. The memory still clawed at him—the endless hours, the hunt, the desperation to get her sister back before it was too late. “I helped bring her home.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed, voice breaking. “We were at that charity gala. Raya was nineteen, barely more than a girl, and she was so happy to be part of a grown-up event with us. She disappeared on my watch, Viktor. I let her walk away to the bathroom, and then she was just... gone.”
Her hands twisted the towel until her knuckles turned white. “I searched everywhere, asked everyone, but it was like she’d been swallowed whole. For eighteen hours, I thought my baby sister was dead. Every second felt like a lifetime. I didn’t know if she was being hurt, if she was crying for me, if she was even still breathing.”
He remembered too well—the ransom call, the tension in the room, the way Anka had been shaking but still trying to stay strong.
“Matvei and the boys got to her before the kidnappers could do anything permanent,” she went on, her laugh sharp and broken. “Physically, she was fine. But mentally… months of nightmares, panic attacks, not being able to step outside without trembling. That’s what they left us with.”
She looked at him then, eyes shining with raw pain. “And me? I never forgave myself. I was supposed to protect her. And I couldn’t.”
She looked at him then, and the pain in her eyes was so raw it nearly stopped his heart.
“I blamed myself. I was supposed to be watching out for her. I was the older sister, the one who was supposed to keep her safe, and I let her get taken right under my nose.” Hervoice cracked. “For eighteen hours, I thought I’d lost the most important person in my life because I wasn’t paying attention.”
The rage that filled him was white-hot and consuming, a fury so pure it made his vision blur around the edges. Someone had terrorized a nineteen-year-old and put Anka through eighteen hours of hell—and he hadn’t needed to ask who. Danny.
He didn’t need to ask. He had been there when they stormed the place to get Raya back. He had been there when the shooting started, when glass and gunfire turned the world into staccato light and pain. He remembered the crack and the smell and the way Danny had looked at him—surprised, terrified, then gone. He remembered kneeling over him, his hands shaking, the blood warm on his fingers. They had dragged Raya out as the last of them fell.
“Viktor—”
She didn’t finish. He didn’t need her to. She already knew. The memory didn’t bring relief. If anything, it made the heat under his skin sharper. Matvei and the others had done what had to be done, and he had done his part. Still, part of him wanted more—to have watched Danny suffer for every second he stole—and another part wished he could unmake the whole night and save Raya without anyone dying at all. The contradiction sat in his throat like a stone.
“Today,” she continued, her voice getting smaller, “when those men grabbed me, when they started dragging me toward that van... all I could think about was Raya. All I could see was my baby sister being pulled away from me, and I couldn’t... I couldn’t let that happen again.”
Now he understood the panic he’d seen in her eyes when he’d found her. It hadn’t just been fear for herself. It had beenthe terror of reliving the worst night of her life, of being helpless again while someone she loved was in danger.
Except this time, she’d been the one in danger.
“That’s why you fought so hard,” he said. “That’s why you managed to get away from three armed men.”
She nodded. “I couldn’t let them take me. I couldn’t put my family through that again, couldn’t make them watch me disappear the way I watched Raya disappear.”
The guilt was eating him alive. All this time, he’d been playing games with her, manufacturing fake threats and psychological torture, never knowing that he was poking at a wound that had never fully healed. He’d been so focused on his own pain that he’d ignored hers completely.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, meaning it more than he’d ever meant anything in his life. “I’m so fucking sorry, Anka. If I’d known—”
“You would have what? Been nicer to me? Treated me like a wife instead of an enemy?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t know because I didn’t tell you. Just like you didn’t tell me who you really were four years ago.”
They were both quiet for a moment, the weight of all their secrets and lies hanging heavy in the air between them.
“Viktor?” Her voice was so small and vulnerable that it made his chest ache.
“Yeah?”
“Would you... Could you stay with me tonight? Just until I fall asleep?” She looked away, embarrassed by the request. “I know you hate me, and I know this marriage is just business for you, but I don’t want to be alone right now.”
Hate her? Christ, if only it were that simple.
“I don’t hate you,” he said quietly.
