I should be grateful.
I should be relieved.
I should feel something other than this hollow, echoing emptiness that seems to have swallowed every emotion except disbelief.
“Kira.” Rafa’s voice comes from somewhere far away, though I know he’s standing right beside me. “Kira, we need to move.”
I nod automatically, but my body doesn’t respond to the command. It’s like my connection to the physical world has been severed, leaving me floating in a space between conscious thought and complete dissociation.
“Sestrenka.” Nicolai’s voice, much closer now, carrying the kind of gentle authority he’s used since childhood to guide me through crises. “Come on. Let’s get you somewhere safe.”
Strong hands lift me from the concrete, supporting my weight as my legs remember how to function. I catch a glimpseof Alexei’s retreating form, my brother disappearing into the night rather than face what our family has become.
Smart choice. I wish I could run too.
The ride to the safehouse passes in a blur of streetlights and muted conversation between Nicolai and whoever is driving. I stare out the window at a city that looks exactly the same as it did this morning, before everything I thought I knew about my life exploded into fragments.
How can the world look so normal when nothing will ever be normal again?
“Medical attention?” someone asks—Vito, I think, though I’m not processing voices clearly.
“She’s not physically injured,” Nicolai responds. “Just shock. Trauma response.”
Trauma response. Such clinical words for the complete destruction of everything you’ve ever believed about yourself and your place in the world.
The safehouse bedroom is decorated in soft blues and grays, designed to be calming and nondescript. I sit on the edge of the bed while Nicolai searches through drawers, producing a bottle of sleeping pills and a glass of water.
“Take these,” he instructs gently. “You need rest.”
“I need to understand what just happened.”
“What happened is that Father chose violence over reason. Chose death over exile. Chose to attack you rather than accept the consequences of his actions.” Nicolai’s voice is steady, but I can see the strain around his eyes. “What happened is that Rafael saved your life.”
“By killing my father.”
“By stopping a man who was about to murder his own daughter.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” Nicolai says firmly. “Not the same thing at all.”
I take the pills because it’s easier than arguing, but I know sleep won’t come. How do you rest when your entire identity has been stripped away in the span of minutes? How do you close your eyes when every time you do, you see the moment when love and loyalty collided with such devastating force?
“Stay with me,” I whisper as Nicolai moves toward the door.
“Of course.”
He settles into the chair beside the bed, and for a moment we’re just siblings again—not Bratva royalty or political assets or weapons in someone else’s war, but the brother and sister who used to sneak into each other’s rooms during thunderstorms.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Now you heal. You process. You figure out who you want to be in the aftermath.”
“And the organization?”
“The organization needs leadership. Stability. Someone the members can respect and follow.”
“Someone like me.”
