But his earlier hesitation tells a different story. Something he’s not ready to say. Something I’m not ready to hear.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Now you return to your room. Rest. Adjust to your new circumstances.”
“I’m not adjusting to—”
“Elena.” He says my name like a warning. “You’re alive because I allow it. Comfortable because I provide it. This conversation happened because I permitted it. The sooner you accept that reality, the easier this becomes.”
“Easier for whom?”
“Both of us.”
He moves to the door, opening it. Irina is waiting outside, exactly where she was before. Probably listening to every word.
“Take her back,” Aleksandr tells her.
I don’t move immediately. Don’t want to leave like a dismissed servant, obeying without resistance.
Staying accomplishes nothing except proving his point about power dynamics.
I walk to the door. Pause at the threshold, not looking at him. “This isn’t over,” I say quietly.
“No,” he agrees. “It’s barely begun.”
I leave before he can say anything else. Before my body can betray me with another reaction I can’t control.
As Irina escorts me back through endless corridors, back to my beautiful cage, I can still feel the ghost of his proximity. Still hear his voice telling me I’m lying to myself.
Still remember that moment when my hands were on his chest and I didn’t push.
He’s right. I am lying about what that means. I’m desperately trying not to examine it too closely.
Acknowledging it makes everything infinitely more complicated, and my life is already complicated enough.
Chapter Twelve - Aleksandr
The call comesearly[5] in the morning, dragging me from the two hours of sleep I managed to get.
I don’t recognize the number. That alone tells me it’s important—only certain people have access to phones that reach me directly, and they’re all carefully vetted.
“Yes,” I answer, already moving to the window. The grounds outside are dark except for security lights and the glow from guard stations.
“Sharov.” The voice is familiar—Tikhon[6] Volkov, cousin to Marcus, spokesman for a faction that’s been testing my boundaries for months. “We need to discuss a problem.”
I check the time—4:30 a.m. isn’t the hour for casual problems. “Speak.”
“The breach at your east facility. The Lawrence girl. It’s become… known.”
My hand tightens on the phone. “Known to whom?”
“People who matter. People who are questioning whether you have control over your own territory.” His voice carries careful neutrality that doesn’t hide the threat underneath. “A civilian breaching a secured Bratva facility? Stealing operational data? That’s not the image of strength we’ve come to expect from the Sharov organization.”
I say nothing. Let the silence stretch while I calculate how far this information has spread and who leaked it. Someone inside my operation talked. Someone will pay for that, but later.
“The consensus,” Tikhon continues, “is that this liability needs to be erased. Publicly. As proof that you maintain proper security protocols and handle threats appropriately.”
“The liability is contained.”
