Chapter 16 - Avgust
Dinner should have distracted me, but it didn’t.
I sat at the long table with Ilana beside me, her knee brushing against mine under the polished wood, her presence grounding in a way nothing else was lately. Plates clinked. Zhenya laughed at something Timofey said. Clara leaned closer to Iosif, whispering something that made his mouth twitch.
Family. Noise. Warmth.
And yet my mind stayed locked on one thing alone.
TheRomanovs.
I still had nothing solid about them. No first names, no confirmed faces, no addresses. But just fragments of information that had been extracted from shadows or captured on grainy footage. I was not even sure if the surname was accurate or just something that had been whispered enough times to spread around for no reason. All of it gnawed at me.
“You’re staring holes into your plate, and your food has gone cold,” Lukyan muttered from across the table, his voice low.
I glanced at Ilana instinctively before answering. She was eating slowly, color back in her cheeks, though I could still notice how she was constantly on edge. I could not blame her. Even if my family had been welcoming, it was hard for anyone to adjust to new people this quickly. She was already doing really well. I reached for her glass, refilled it without comment, and brushed my thumb along her knuckles once before turning back to my brother.
“I’m thinking,” I told him.
“Dangerous habit.”
“There are still no leads,” I added quietly. “The Russian family. It’s like they want to be invisible, and it's been months already. How can anyone be that patient?”
Lukyan chewed, eyes narrowing. “That’s because they are being careful and are choosing not to show themselves. It is not easy to be a new family in a city full of other, stronger Bratva families. It is only understandable that they are taking their sweet time in coming to any decisions.”
“I don’t like this.”
“It could mean one more thing,” Lukyan said, his voice lower.
“What?”
Lukyan stood up from his chair and walked away from the table, towards the windows on the far end of the dining room. I stood up as well and followed after him, knowing that whatever it was he needed to say must be important. Lukyan was always careful when it came to trusting people. It was a good habit. Especially in our world.
“You might be too close to the truth to be able to see it.”
I stiffened. “What does that mean?”
Lukyan didn’t answer right away. His gaze slid towards Ilana and then back to me, the action certainly not subtle at all. I knew at once what he meant, but stayed quiet.
“You’re protecting her,” Lukyan said. “Which means you are being blind to the truth.”
My jaw clenched. “She is clean.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How? Have you checked her?”
“I have,” I replied at once, but I knew the statement was not completely true. I hadn’t run a background check on Ilana the way I would have for anyone else. I had tried to look for her, but it had been difficult to find much about her. And then I had given up without questioning anything. All I knew was that she had gone to Russia for her education, and her knowledge of the country was certainly impressive.
“You want to believe that she is clean,” Lukyan corrected. “But that’s not the same thing as knowing and being sure about someone.”
I leaned back slightly, one arm draping along the window pane. My gaze went straight to Ilana, who was laughing at something someone must have said at the table, looking unconcerned and at ease. I felt a sense of possessiveness take over me as I stared at her.
“She is not involved,” I said flatly, voice low enough for it not to reach Ilana, who was already busy in a conversation with Elisse now. The two of them had really hit it off.
Lukyan sighed. “I am not saying she is. All I am saying is you should research her anyway before coming to such a sure conclusion. It just isn’t sitting right with me that you found her accidentally at an auction where you went to look for the Romanovs, and Avgust Chernykh was so compelled that he bought and married a stranger. This behavior is very unlike you.”
